Amelia Island sits at the northeastern corner of Florida, separated from Georgia by the St. Marys River and from the rest of the Florida Atlantic Coast by its own particular character. It is the only place in the continental United States to have flown eight different flags, a fact that the local tourism materials mention frequently and that is actually worth understanding, because it explains why the island looks and feels the way it does.
The eight flags are Spain, France, England, the Patriots of Amelia Island, the Green Cross of Florida, Mexico, the Republic of Florida, and the United States. Each of them represents a period of the island's history, and the town of Fernandina Beach, which occupies the northern end of the island, carries the architectural evidence of several of those periods in its historic district. The Victorian buildings along Centre Street date from the late nineteenth century, when Fernandina Beach was a prosperous port city and one of the first resort destinations in Florida. The shrimp industry, which shaped the town's economy for most of the twentieth century, is still visible in the working waterfront along the Amelia River.
Jackson Laurie first visited Amelia Island on a drive up the Atlantic Coast that was intended to end in Savannah. He stopped for lunch in Fernandina Beach and stayed for three days. The town has that quality that certain places have of being immediately comprehensible, of revealing itself quickly and rewarding the time you spend in it. The historic district is compact and walkable. The restaurants along Centre Street are good without being precious. The beach on the Atlantic side is wide and uncrowded and faces directly east, which means the sunrises are exceptional.
Amelia Island has a layered character that you do not find in towns built entirely in the twentieth century. The place has been inhabited and contested and developed and preserved over several centuries.
Fort Clinch State Park occupies the northern tip of the island and contains one of the best-preserved nineteenth-century forts in the country. The fort itself is interesting, but the park's real value is its natural landscape: maritime forest, salt marsh, and a stretch of beach on the Cumberland Sound side that is completely different from the Atlantic beach on the other side of the island. The sound beach is narrower and more sheltered, with views across to Cumberland Island in Georgia, and it has a quality of solitude that is unusual for a state park this close to a town.
The Atlantic beach at Amelia Island is among the better beaches on Florida's east coast. It is wide enough to absorb visitors without feeling crowded, the sand is darker and coarser than the Gulf Coast sand but pleasant, and the surf is consistent enough to be interesting without being dangerous. The beach is accessible from multiple points along the island, and the residential neighborhoods behind the dunes are quiet and well-maintained.
What Amelia Island has that most of Florida's coastal towns do not is a sense of its own history. The place has been inhabited and contested and developed and preserved over several centuries, and the result is a layered character that you do not find in towns that were built entirely in the twentieth century. Jackson Laurie's view is that this makes Amelia Island one of the more interesting places on the Florida Atlantic Coast, and one of the more underrated destinations in the state.
The drive from Amelia Island south along A1A is one of the better coastal drives in Florida. The road runs close to the beach for much of its length, through the communities of Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, and Jacksonville Beach, and then south through Ponte Vedra and on toward St. Augustine. This stretch of the Atlantic Coast is less dramatic than the Keys and less developed than the Gold Coast, but it has a consistency and a quality that rewards a slow drive with stops.
