It is believed that the Native American Timkua people have settled in the area of today's Jacksonville City since ancient times. A research team at North Florida University in Black Hammock Island in the northeastern part of the city unearthed relics of earthenware around 2500 B.C.

In the 16th century, the Mocama tribe, the coasts of the Timkua tribe, settled there. The Mocamas formed a powerful chieftain called Satuliwa around the mouth of the St. John's River. One of the early maps shows a village called Ossachite in the downtown area of the modern Jacksonville.

Fort Caroline (Theodor de Brie, published in 1617)

In 1562, the French explorer of Huguenot, Jean Libeau, was the first European to search the place and drew the St. John's River on a chart. Two years later, in 1564, René Gureine de Rodonnière built the first European settlement, the Fort Caroline, near the village where Rene Goolenne de Rodonnière was the capital of Satriva. However, on September 20, 1565, a Spanish who had settled in St. Augustine led his soldiers to attack Fort Caroline, and almost all the French soldiers who had guarded the fort were killed, and the fort was renamed San Mateo. The removal of the Frenchman from the land established St. Augustine's position as the most important settlement in Florida.

Spain lost the French Indian War in 1763 and ceded Florida to England. The British, having acquired Florida, built the "Path of the King" from the Georgian colony to St. Augustine. This road crossed the St. John's River where the river was narrow. Watatsu was called Wacca Piratka in the Seminole language and Cow Ford in the English language, and both of these names indicated the fact that cows were crossing the river at this point. After the British lost in the War of Independence in 1783, Florida was placed under the control of Spain again, but in 1791, a permanent settlement named Cowford (Cowford) was established, which took the British name of Watatsu and became the origin of the modern Jacksonville. In 1821, when Florida was ceded from Spain to the United States of America, the settlers from the United States planned to build a town on the north side of Cowford, provided streets and blocks, and named it Jacksonville after Andrew Jackson, the first chief of the county government in Florida. In the following year, 1822, Jacksonville became the official port of entry into the United States, and the Immigration Bureau was established. The new town's patent, drafted mainly by Isaiah Hart, was approved by the Florida Quasi-State Council on February 9, 1832.

When the Civil War broke out, Jacksonville became an important supply center to deliver the cattle and pigs that served the Southern Army from Florida. Meanwhile, the Northern Army occupied Fort Clinch, which was located on the American island to the northeast of Jacksonville, and blocked Jacksonville. And for most of the time since 1862 until the end of the war, the Northern Army had placed most of the Jacksonville and its surrounding areas under their control. The city was replaced by the Northern Army and the Southern Army and occupied the city, although no fighting occurred within the Jacksonville City. Therefore, after the war, the city was completely desolate.

From the reconstruction period after the end of the Civil War to the golden age, Jacksonville and St. Augustine developed as winter resorts where wealthy people visited on steamboats and railways. In 1888, a subtropical exposition was held in Jacksonville, and the then President Glover Cleveland also visited there. As a result, this area became popular as a sightseeing spot. However, at the end of the 19th century, the yellow fever that became popular in this area was a major blow to the city tourism industry. In addition, when the Florida East Coast Railway was extended to the south, tourists also passed through the Jacksonville and then went south.

1901 fires

A great fire of 1901 drove it to the ground. On May 3 of the same year, the fire from the textile factory burned down most of the downtown area for eight hours. Although only seven people died during the Great Fire, 2,368 buildings were burned down and more than 10,000 citizens were lost in the streets. It is said that the fire-lit was seen from Savannah, Georgia, 220km away, and the smoke from Raleigh, North Carolina, 730km away. The architect Henry John Kroesau, who learned about the fire in the article of the New York Times, moved from New York to Jacksonville, designed a number of buildings including St. James Building (now the Jacksonville City Hall), and made efforts to rebuild the city.

In the 1910s, film production companies have been attracted to the subtropical climate and scenery, the ease of transportation and the variety of buildings, and the collection of movie production companies has gathered in Jacksonville one after another. At its peak, more than 30 movie studios were set up, and more than 300 silent films were shot there. However, the film industry in Jacksonville was gradually deserted by the rise of Hollywood, and the film company left the town in about 10 years.

a reconstructed downtown of Jacksonville (1910)

From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the banking and insurance industries started in Jacksonville. Many of the banks and insurance companies established around this time were later acquired by large-scale financial groups with their headquarters in other urban areas, and Jacksonville became the foundation of the financial center. In addition, in the 1940s, Jacksonville had three naval bases and grew as a military city.

However, as World War II ended and the period from the 1950s to the 1960s, the Jacksonville also began to experience the effects of the suburbs, White Flight, and the deterioration of the inner city center, which were on a national trend, and the growth stagnated. The city's tax revenues were slow, the tax rate stopped high and the quality of administrative services decreased. On the other hand, because the new residential area in the suburbs had not yet been incorporated into the corporate system, the city was unable to receive administrative services. The city tried to incorporate and merge the surrounding residential area, but all the residents' votes held six times between 1960 and 1965 were rejected. The city administration was stuck in the middle of the 1960s due to corruption of the city government.

The plan proposed to solve this situation was the city-county merger. In 1967, the municipal merger plan finally passed through a referendum with an overwhelming majority in favor of it, and the municipal merger was realized on October 1, 1968. With the merger, Jacksonville quickly became a city with the largest population in the state and the largest (then) city in the world. The local Florida Times Union newspaper reported this with the headline: Biggest City In the World! (the largest city in the world). The integration of administrative services that had been provided separately by the Jacksonville City Government and the Duval County Government led to the realization of the homogenization and efficiency of administrative services at the same time, and the lowering of the tax rate prompted the creation of corporate recruitment and employment, which led to the transformation of the local economy into growth again.

Jacksonville-St. Mary's Paratuca metropolitan area

  Duval County (mostly Jacksonville City)

  Neighboring counties in the Jacksonville metropolitan area

  Palatuca Metropolitan Area

  St. Mary's Metropolitan Area

Jacksonville is located at 30 degrees 19 minutes 10 seconds north latitude and 81 degrees 39 minutes 36 seconds west longitude. It is located about 50km south from the border with Georgia, about 500km southeast from Atlanta and about 550km north-northwest from Miami.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Jacksonville City has a total area of 2,264.6km² (874.3 mi²). 1,962.6km² (757.7mi²) is land and 302.3km² (116.7mi²) is water. The area accounts for 13.34% of the total area. Due to the municipal merger in 1968, all the counties in Duval County, except the four towns of Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach and Baldwin who did not participate in the merger, became Jacksonville's cities, and as a result, the Jacksonville County area accounts for about 98% of the Duval County area.

Nassau County lies to the north of Jacksonville, Baker County on the west and Clay County and St. John's County on the south. The Jacksonville metropolitan area consists of five counties, including Duval County, which is the center of the four counties. The metropolitan area consists of these five counties, plus the Palatuca metropolitan area (Patnam County) and the St. Mary's small urban area (Camden County, Georgia).

From the south of the city, the St. John's River, which is the border between Clay County and St. John's County, flows north and east across the city, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean in the north of downtown with a channel turned east.

Like most of Florida, the Jacksonville City also stretches over low, flat land. According to the United States Geologic Research Institute, the highest altitude in Jacksonville City is only 40 feet (12.2 meters) above sea level, and it is one of the lowest elevations in the 50 largest cities in the United States, along with Houston and Miami. The low land makes Jacksonville vulnerable to flooding and storm surges.

climate

On December 23, 1989, there was an extremely rare snowfall in the Jacksonville building, which was the first white Christmas in the history of the city.

The climate of Jacksonville belongs to the warm wet climate (Cfa) which is widely distributed on the east coast and south of the United States in the Keppen Division of Climate, but it is actually a subtropical climate characterized by hot and humid summer and warm and comfortable winter. The hottest July average temperature is 28°C, the highest average is 33°C, and most days during the day exceed 30°C. The coldest January average temperature is 12°C, the average minimum temperature is 5°C, and the minimum temperature sometimes falls below freezing. The rainfall amounts are high in the summer and reach 160-200mm per month in June and September. The dry seasons are weak in April-May and November-December, and the amount of rainfall per month is around 50-70mm. Annual rainfall is about 1,330mm. Snow in winter is very rare.

City Overview and Architecture

Jacksonville Downtown (2013)

Subdivisions of Jacksonville

There are more than 500 districts in the wide Jacksonville area, which are roughly divided into six areas: Urban Core, Arlington, South East, South West, North West and North Side. Urban core is downtown and its neighborhood. In five regions other than Urban Core, suburban residential areas and forests are spreading. On the Atlantic coast to the east of Arlington and to the south of the mouth of St. John's, four cities, including Jacksonville Beach, which is not included in the Jacksonville City area, are collectively called Jacksonville Beaches or simply Beaches. It is about 27km from downtown to Jacksonville Beaches.

Downtown streets are well-defined. The downtown street running east-west is divided into E (east) and W (west) on the Main Street. The street running north-south is divided into S (South) and N (North) with Bay Street on its border, but the St. John's River runs two blocks south of Bay Street, so the section with S is short and has few addresses.

Bank of America Tower		Wells Fargo Center

Although there are not many of these for the city's population, as with many other big cities in the United States, there are several high rise buildings in downtown areas. The tallest building in Jacksonville is the 43-story Bank of America Tower, located at the northwest corner of Bay Street and Roller Street. One block south-east is the Wells Fargo Center (37-story, 163m high), the second tallest building of the Jacksonville. This white skyscraper, characterized by its wide-hemline shape, was the tallest building in Florida at the time it was built in 1974. Two blocks west of the building is the Evergreen Bank Center (32 stories high and 136m high), the third tallest building of Jacksonville. On the other side of the St. John's River, the Peninsula (36 stories, 133m high), the Jacksonville's fourth high rise building, stands. The 28-story River Place Tower, 132m tall and located near the Peninsula, is still the fifth tallest building in the Jacksonville, but when it was completed in 1967, it was the tallest building in the world as a prestressed concrete structure.

Hemming Plaza

North of three blocks of the Bank of America Tower is Hemming Plaza, the oldest Jacksonville park in 1857. The 1.54 acre (6,230m²) park was originally built as a city square, and was called the City Park, but in 1899 it was renamed the Hemming Plaza, a veteran of the Civil War who donated the Southern Army Monument to the park, Charles C. Hemming. The park is located at the center of the downtown, with the Jacksonville City Hall in the north, the Jacksonville Public Library's main building and the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art in the east, and the Federal District Court (Jacksonville Hall, Central District, Florida) in the west, all surrounding the park.

Jacksonville City Hall

Jacksonville has adopted a mayoral system. The mayor is the head of the city's executive office, as well as the head of the city's legislative body. The city assembly consists of 19 members, 14 of whom are selected from 14 constituencies, and the other five from all the cities. Both the mayor and the city councilors have a term of four years and the number of candidates is limited to two consecutive elections.

Due to the municipal merger in 1968, the legislative and executive branches of the Duvalu County government were integrated into the Jacksonville City Assembly and the executive branches of the Jacksonville City Government, respectively. Therefore, residents of local governments in Duval County, which do not belong to the Jacksonville City, also have the right to vote and eligibility to run in the Jacksonville Mayoral Election. In fact, in 1995, John Delaney, a resident of Neptune Beach, was elected Mayor of Jacksonville.

Before the municipal merger, Jacksonville City and Duval County had separate police organizations, the Jacksonville Police Station and the Duval County Sheriff's Office. In 1968, as part of the integration of the city, county and government, these two police organizations were integrated into one organization called the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO).

The security of Jacksonville is a bit worse than the U.S. National Average, but it is a medium among cities with a population of more than 500,000 in the United States and is among the best cities in the country, except for suburban cities in Florida. A 2012 survey by Morgan Quitnot (owned by CQ Press) showed that the incidence of atrocious crimes in Jacksonville was somewhat higher than that of Tampa, slightly lower than that of Tarahasi and St. Petersburg, and much lower than that of Orlando and Miami.

The St. John's, the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, where the floating river flows, and the flat-backed Jacksonville, was advantageous in the development of the city as a port city. In 1845, when Florida was promoted to the state, the Jacksonville Port had already established its status as a trading port for wood and cotton, and it has continued to support the regional economy of Jacksonville since then. The Jacksonville Port has an annual economic impact of $19 billion on the Jacksonville and surrounding areas, with 65,000 jobs generating.

Brown Island Terminal

The port of Jacksonville has three freight terminals, including the main freight terminal, Brown Island Terminal, which covers the western half of the St. John's River Central State, in the northeastern part of the city, as well as the Dimes Point Terminal on the opposite bank and the Tulliland Terminal located east of the downtown. The Jacksonville port has more than 900,000 TEU container cargo, one million bulk cargo and 600,000 automotive vehicles, all of which are among the country's largest container ports in Florida.

In addition, in 2003, a cruise ship terminal was completed next to the northwest of the Dimes Point Terminal, and a regular cruise ship was launched. The Carnival Cruise Line runs a four-day, five-day cruise to the Bahamas on the 2,052-seat Carnival Fashion throughout the year from Jacksonville. The cruise ships arrive at and depart from Jacksonville Port around 80 flights a year, and the number of passengers on board accounts for around 190,000 passengers a year.

Maiport Naval Supply Base

The Jacksonville Port is not only a commercial port but also a military port, the third most important port in the United States, after Norfolk and San Diego. The Maiport Naval Supply Base, located on the south bank of the mouth of the St. John's River, is the third largest naval base in the United States, with the Headquarters of the Fourth Fleet and the 34 warships being berthed at the same time. Approximately 23,000 military and civilian personnel are deployed at the Jacksonville Naval Air Base, south of downtown. The Brownt Island Marine Logistics Base, the eastern half of the island, plays a role in quickly supplying personnel and supplies to the front-line pre-emptive cargo. In addition, Kingsbey Naval Submarine Base is located in the northern suburb of Camden, Georgia.

And the strength of the regional economy of Jacksonville lies not only in the presence of the Jacksonville Port as a commercial and military port, but also in the diversity of industrial structures, which is different from other parts of the state where there is a strong dependence on tourism. The City's Bureau of Economy, Trade and Development has six particularly focused industries — manufacturing, aerospace, financial and insurance, information technology, life sciences and logistics and transport, which are also making efforts to attract headquarters and regional bases. The Jacksonville has four headquarters in Fortune 500.

Other companies headquartered in Jacksonville include the regional bank Everbank, which has stores in the Florida Peninsula, Johnson End-Johnson Vision Care Co., Ltd., which manufactures and sells the 'Acuview' brand of contact lenses, and GE Aviational Corp., which manufactures aircraft engine parts.

Jacksonville International Airport

The commercial airport, which serves as the gateway to the Jacksonville, is located at the Jacksonville International Airport (IATA: JAX). Three major airlines (Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines) have been operating flights from their hub airport, along with US Airways, Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue Airlines. The airport has direct flights to 20 cities in the United States, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, with nearly six million yearly visitors. The airport is shared by the military and has the 125th Tactical Air Corps of the Florida National Aeronautics Brigade.

Jacksonville is the east end/start point where the interstate expressway I-10 merges and diverges with I-95. I-10 crosses the continent through the Sunbelt States and I-95 runs through the east coast north and south, all of which are arterial highways. I-295, a branch line of I-95, is a circular line that encloses about 10-15km outside downtown. Further south from the I-295, the construction of the I-795/State Road 9B, the second branch line in the Jacksonville metropolitan area, was underway to alleviate traffic congestion from the St. Augustine area, and a part of the route opened in September 2013. The Arlington Expressway (Route 10A), which crosses the St. John's River east from downtown and across the Arlington area, the Heart Bridge Expressway (Route 228), which crosses the St. John's River southeast from downtown and runs to Beach Boulevard (Route 90), and the Butler Boulevard (Route 202), which connects the I-95 Main Line and the beach, are also part of the highway network of the building along with the interstate expressway.

Prime F. Osborne III Convention Center (formerly Union Station)

The Jacksonville station in Amtrak is about nine kilometers northwest of downtown. Originally, Union Station, the railway terminal of Jacksonville, was located downtown, but the railway station was moved to its current location in 1974 and the station building of Union Station was transferred to the Prime F. Osborne III Convention Center in 1986. At this station, the long-distance trains connecting New York and Miami, the Silver Star and Silver Meteo, both bound for the north and south, stop once a day. The Silver Star turns back to New York by way of Laurie and Colombia, and to Miami by way of Tampa, while the Silver Methio turns back to Miami by way of Feyetville and Charleston in the north, and goes south directly from Orlando and south to Miami. The Sunset Limited, a train that crossed the southern end of the continent and connected Los Angeles and Orlando, was also stopping at this station three times a week for both eastbound and eastbound, but the operation has been suspended indefinitely since the damage of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Jacksonville Skyway

The bus terminal of Greyhound is downtown, and to the north it takes buses bound for Laurie, Richmond, New York, Charlotte, Columbus, Detroit, to the south it takes buses bound for Tampa and Miami, and to the west it takes buses bound for Tarahasi.

The main public transportation system in the city is the bus network operated by the Jacksonville Transportation Bureau (JTA). The bus network of the station has Express Bus Route 4, Community Shuttle Bus Route 10 and Trolley 2 in addition to Route 30 or more, covering downtown, residential areas in the city and beaches. The JTA also runs a new automated monorail traffic system called Jacksonville Skyway in downtown Tokyo. Jacksonville Skyway has two lines, five on the north bank of the St. John's River and three on the south bank. In addition, a water bus called Jacksonville Water Taxi is also available on the downtown St. John's River.

North Florida University

North Florida University has a campus in the forest at the northeast corner of the downtown area, about 16km southeast, I-295 and Butler Boulevard. The university was established in 1972 and has five faculties of letters, management, engineering, education and health. The school is part of the Florida State University System, headquartered in Talahathy. The school has about 14,000 students in the faculty and about 1,700 in the graduate school, with over 40% of them from Duval County and 95% from Florida State. In the university rankings of US News & World Report magazine, the university ranked 50th among the 'Regional Universities' in the south and ranked 51st in the 2014 edition (published in 2013). The Ospreys, the sports team of the same school, belong to the Atlantic Sun Conference, which belongs to the division I (no football) of NCAA, and compete in seven male and 10 female events.

Jacksonville University

The campus of Jacksonville University stretches along the St. John's River, about five kilometers northeast of downtown. Founded in 1934, Doshisha University has seven departments: Literature, Management, Art, Health, Nursing, Education, and Dentistry, and it has about 3,300 undergraduate students and about 600 graduate students. The school was ranked about 60th among the 'universities in local districts' in the southern part of the school, and it ranked sixty-second in the 2014 edition (published in 2013).

Edward Waters University, whose campus is west of downtown, is a Methodist-affiliated private university founded in 1866 and the oldest Black University in Florida.

The K-12 program in Jacksonville is supported mainly by public schools under the jurisdiction of the Duval County Public School District. The school district has 104 elementary schools, 24 middle schools and 19 high schools, as well as two elementary, one junior and a junior high and a senior high school, two junior and a junior high and a senior high school, three special aid schools, one virtual school, seven alternative schools and 21 charter schools, and has about 125,000 children and students. There are also several private schools in Jacksonville, including those under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Diocese of Saint Augustine.

Museums and art museums

Museum of Science and History

Located on the south bank of the St. John's River in downtown Tokyo, the Museum of Science and History boasts the largest number of visitors to the Jacksonville museums. As its name suggests, the museum has a special exhibition on local cultural, natural and natural science, and The Body Within 2) exhibiting 12,000-year 12,000-year-long history of the area Currents of Time, 3) raising and exhibiting species living in Florida, such as owls, snakes, turtles, turtles, and crocodilesFlorida Naturalist's Center4) showing energyJEA PowerPlay: Understanding Our Energy Choices, 5) Raising and exhibiting marine organisms around species near Florida, Water Worlds, 6) Displaying things related to mammals, reptiles and invertebrates living in the sea of northeastern Florida, Atlantic Tails: Whales, Dolphins and Manatees of Northeast Florida, 7) The seven themes of the The Loft Gallery, which is a special exhibition. The museum also has Brian Gooding Planetarium, the world's largest single-eye planetarium.

Other than the Museum of Science and History, the museum located in Jacksonville is the Jacksonville Marine Museum, which exhibits things related to merchant ships, fishermen and sailors at the corner of the Jacksonville Landing, a complex located on the north bank of the St. John's River in downtown, and the Walter Historical Park, which is an outdoor museum reproducing the 19th century village and the village of Mandarin in the southeast of the city. The world's largest Calpérez Museum of Original Books has a Jacksonville with 12 of them in 11 cities across the United States.

Kammer Museum

Located in the Riverside area, south-west of the downtown area, the Cammer Museum of Art began when Nina Halden Kammer, a public figure and art collector, died in 1958, and she took over her will to repurpose her residence to the museum and exhibited her collections. The museum is the largest museum in the northeastern part of Florida, and its permanent exhibits range from ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian artifacts to medieval times, the Renaissance, the Baroque, and modern art of Europe and the United States after the 20th century, with more than 5,000 items on display. At the back of the museum is two English and Italian gardens built in the 20th century, with the St. John's River in the background. These gardens were designated as National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

The Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art is located in the center of downtown Hemming Plaza east of the area. The museum houses about 1,000 paintings, woodblock prints, sculptures and photographs since the 1960s, and has been permanently exhibited. In 2009, the museum established a partnership with North Florida University to be maintained and managed as a cultural resource of the university.

acting art

Ritz Theater

In the Labilla district in the northwestern part of downtown, there is a Art Deco-style litz theater built in 1929. The theater was dedicated to performances by African americans such as music, dance, and theater, and in the 1930s, the Labilla district was called 'Harem of the South,' and it was the cultural center when it flourished as a entertainment district. Musicians who performed at the theater included Cab Carloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong. Ray Charles, who lost his mother at the age of 15, moved to Jacksonville and lived with his mother's friends at the Ritz Theater playing the piano for four dollars a day. In the 1970s, when the Labilla district became deserted and crimes began to occur frequently, the theater was once closed, but it was rebuilt as a part of the River City Renaissance, a city redevelopment project promoted by the mayor Ed Austin in the 1990s, and was reopened in 1999. After the reconstruction, the Ritz Theater also has a museum that exhibits African-American history and culture.

The Florida Theater, located in the east part of the downtown, was built as a movie theater in 1927 and was once closed in 1980, but after it was rebuilt as a theater in 1983 it is used for ballet performances and for jazz concerts. The theater is one of only four existing theaters in Florida built in the Mediterranean Revival style, which was a boom in Florida and California in the 1920s. The Florida Theater was designated a National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Times Union Acting Art Center

The Times Union Acting Art Center, located on the north bank of the St. John's River in downtown, has three different halls, each of which can accommodate various events. The Moran Theater, which has the largest 2,900 seats among the three halls, is a multipurpose hall widely used for Broadway's musical, opera, ballet performances and gospel concerts. The Jacobie Symphony Hall, which focuses on sound, is exclusively used for performances by the local Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. The smallest terry theater is used for comedy and dance performances.

Large concerts such as rock and pop are held at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena, a multi-purpose arena with 15,000 seats, located east of downtown. The arena is used for concerts, as well as for Arena football and Jacksonville University basketball games.

sport

TIAA field

Only the NFL has a team in Jacksonville, out of the four major North American professional sports leagues. Jacksonville Jaguars is a team established with the Carolina Panthers in 1995 League expansion, belonging to the AFC South. The Jaguars made their first appearance in the AFC Championship Game in 1996, the second year of the team's establishment, and also played playoffs for the second consecutive year, including winning the district championship (belonging to the middle district at that time) in 1998 and 1999, but they have not yet entered the Super Bowl. The Jaguars-based Everbank Field, located to the east of downtown, is a refurbished project where the Gate Bowl Stadium has been refurbished at a huge cost of $121 million ($53 million to cover the city) over a year and eight months from the beginning of 1994 to attract the NFL. In 2005, Jacksonville became the first Super Bowl site in the history of the city, and the 39th Super Bowl was held at the Ever Bank Field.

The Island Green in the 17th Hall, Tournament Players' Club at Sawglass

At Everbank Field, college football matches will be held, in addition to the Jaguars' home games. Around New Year's Day every year, the Getter Bowl, one of the bowl games, is held. The Getter Bowl was the sixth longest-running bowl game in college football, which started in 1946, and was one of the five major bowl games, along with the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl and the Cotton Bowl, before the Alliance, the predecessor of the BCS, was formed in 1995. The Getter Bowl was also a bowl game in which Japanese companies often sponsor Mazda (end of 1986 - beginning of 1991), Toyota (beginning of 1996 - beginning of 2007), Konikaminota (beginning of 2008 - beginning of 2010), and so on. In addition, regular games are held at the end of October or early November every year between the Florida University Guests and the Georgia University Bulldogs. The game is also called World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party (the world's largest open cocktail party).

The PGA Tour also has its headquarters in the Ponte Bedra Beach, a golf resort in the southeast. The Players' Championship is held every year at TPC at Sawgrass, a tournament player's club at Sawgrass located in the area.

Parks and recreation

friendship fountain

In addition to the Hemming Plaza, the oldest Jacksonville park, there are more than 300 parks in the wide Jacksonville area, with a total area of over 80,000 acres (32,400ha), making up the largest urban park system in the United States.

There is a friendship fountain on the south bank of the St. John's River, to the north of the Museum of Science and History. The fountain was 200 feet (61.0 meters) in diameter, and 17,000 gallons (64,400L) of water soared to 120 feet (36.6 meters) per minute, and was the largest fountain in the world at the time when it was installed in 1965. Two blocks south of the friendship fountain, and Jesse Ball Dupon Park opposite Main Street, stands a 250-year-old live oak tree called The Charity Oak. The name of the Trietty Oak came from the 1930s when Pat Moran, a journalist for the Florida Times Union, made a fictional story under the tree that white settlers and indigenous people signed a peace treaty under the tree to preserve the tree. The friendship fountain and the Trieteau Oak are both a home of citizens and office workers in downtown and one of the Jacksonville attractions.

The Tree Hill Natural Center, located about nine kilometers east of downtown and in the Arlington area, was a natural park built in 1971 for both conservation and environmental education. The park has 50 acres (20ha) of trees and marsh trees in the south, streams of fresh water, local animals living there and four walkways. The center also has the Florida Natural History Museum, which exhibits energy and natural objects, and animal husbandry and exhibition.

Red carp raised in the Jacksonville Zoo

Approximately 7 km northeast of the Tree Hill Nature Center, and east of the junction of Arlington Highway and I-295, is the Jacksonville Botanical Garden, a larger natural park. The site of 120 acres (49ha) was originally an open-air mine of titanium ore from the middle of the 1940s to the early 1960s, but after the purchase by the city in the early 1970s, it was left vacant for about 30 years and finally opened to the public as a botanical garden in 2008. In the park where lakes, streams, and wetlands are formed in the forest, six walking trails with different difficulty levels are constructed so as to sew them together.

The Jacksonville Zoo, which opened in 1914, is located at the southern end of the downtown 10km north and North Side. The park is divided into areas of habitat such as wetlands in Africa, Monsoon Asia, Australia and Florida, where animals from each area are bred, and gardens and bamboo forests in Asia are also arranged in the theme of savannah. In addition, there are also areas where specific species of animals are featured, such as giraffe, jaguar and anthropoid monkeys.

urban population

The population of each of the counties that form the metropolitan area of Jacksonville and the metropolitan area is as follows (National Census of 2010).

Jacksonville metropolitan area

Jacksonville-St. Mary's Paratuca metropolitan area

urban population transition

Below is a graph and chart showing the population transition from 1850 to 2010 in Jacksonville City.

Jacksonville has established sister-city ties with the following eight cities.

• Via Blanca (Argentina) - Concluded in 1967
• Murmansk (Russia) - Concluded in 1975
• Changwon City (Republic of Korea) - concluded in 1983
• Nantes (France) - Concluded in 1984
• Yingkou City (Liaoning Province, People's Republic of China) - Concluded in 1990
• Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Area (South Africa) - Signed in 2000
• Critiva (Brazil) - Signed 2009
• San Juan (Puerto Rico) - Concluded in 2009

• Mayo Clinic - One of the branches of the Jacksonville Campus (headquarters in Rochester, Minnesota).

• Cooks, James B. Jacksonville: The Consolidation Story, from Civil Rights to the Jaguars. University Press of Florida. 2004
• Cowart, John Wilson. Crackers and Carpetbaggers: Moments in the History of Jacksonville, Florida. Bluefish Books. 2005 ISBN 9781411621312.
• Cowart, John Wilson. Men of Valor: A History of Firefighting in Jacksonville, Florida 1886-1986. Bluefish Books. 2006 ISBN 9781411683006.
• Foley, Bill and Wayne Wood. The great fire of 1901. 1st ed. Jacksonville, Florida: The Jacksonville Historical Society. 2001 ISBN 0-9710261-0-6.
• Mason, Herman Jr. African-American Life in Jacksonville. Arcadia Publishing. 1997
• Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics, and Social Development in Jacksonville, Florida, 1940-1970. Greenwood Publishing. 2000
• Oehser, John. Jags to Riches: The Cinderella Season of the Jacksonville Jaguars. St. Martins Press. 1997
• Schaefer, Daniel. From scratch pads and dreams: A ten year history of the University of North Florida. University of North Florida. 1982
• Wagman, Jules. Jacksonville and Florida's First Coast. Windsor Publishing. 1989
• Williams, Caroyln. Historic Photos of Jacksonville. Turner Publishing Company. 2006

• City of Jacksonville - City Official Site
• Visit Jacksonville
• Jacksonville.com - Florida Times-Union
• Jacksonville, Florida - City-Data.com