From Ruby to Jax Beach, how the railroad built the Beaches.

I’m Krista Fracke. Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach are each their own city inside Duval County, and the city a house sits in is the one that writes its building and beach rules. The lines between them come straight out of the story below: Atlantic Beach grew up around a Flagler hotel and incorporated in 1925, and Neptune Beach voted itself out of Jacksonville Beach in 1931.

The oldest blocks near the ocean carry the oldest houses. My guide to older homes at the Beaches covers what to check in them, and Jacksonville Beach neighborhoods walks the streets block by block.

It starts with the Scull family, who ran a tent store and post office on the sand. The settlement was named Ruby. According to the state historical marker, it was renamed Pablo Beach in 1886 and Jacksonville Beach in 1925.

The land sale came first. The city’s own history records lots going on sale at Ruby on November 12, 1884, when 34 lots sold for $7,514. The Murray Hall Hotel opened in 1886 (the city says it had 192 rooms) and burned on August 7, 1890. Pablo Beach incorporated on May 22, 1907.

The first rail line to the ocean was the Jacksonville & Atlantic, and local investors built it in 1885. Henry Flagler bought it in 1899, converted it to standard gauge and extended it to the coal wharf at Mayport by 1900, according to the Beaches Museum. Service on the line ended in October 1932.

You will often read that Flagler built the beach railroad. He did not; he bought a line that was already running and made it part of his system. What he did build was the hotel that gave the next town its start.

Flagler opened the Continental Hotel in 1901 north of Pablo Beach. The state marker at 10 10th Street lists oceanfront driving among the hotel’s amenities that first year, which tells you how long cars and the sand went together here. The hotel was sold in 1913, renamed the Atlantic Beach Hotel, and burned in 1919.

The town around it outlived the building. Atlantic Beach incorporated on December 4, 1925, with Harcourt Bull, Sr. as its first mayor, and a 1957 charter made it a city.

Neptune Beach was part of Jacksonville Beach until a tax fight. On August 11, 1931, Neptune voted 113 to 31 to secede over a tax levy, according to the Beaches Museum. Atlantic Beach had already incorporated in 1925.

That is why the three towns still have three city halls, as the section at the top of this page explains.

On the night of June 16–17, 1942, the U-boat U-584 landed four men on Ponte Vedra Beach. They buried the explosives they had brought and left the beach. The state’s historical marker records the outcome in a line: all of them were caught. The FBI dates the landing June 17, and U-boat records kept on German time give June 18, so “the night of June 16–17” is the fair way to put it.

Ponte Vedra was the second landing of Operation Pastorius; a first team had come ashore at Amagansett, on Long Island, four days earlier. The Florida team was Edward Kerling, Herman Neubauer, Werner Thiel and Herbert Haupt. According to the FBI, they made their way to Jacksonville and took a train to Cincinnati, then split up, two for Chicago and two for New York. Nobody was arrested on the beach. George Dasch, who led the Long Island team, went to the FBI, and the Florida men were picked up in New York on June 23 and in Chicago on June 27.

All eight were tried by a military commission. The Supreme Court upheld it in Ex parte Quirin on July 31, 1942, and six of the eight were executed on August 8.

The landings changed these beaches too. On July 25, 1942, the Coast Guard authorized beach patrols on all coasts, and the watch reached Jacksonville Beach.

One correction to the version told around town: the marker stands at the Ponte Vedra Inn, but the Museum of Florida History puts the landing about two miles south of it. If you want to stand near the spot, use a public beach access south of the Inn and stay on the beach side; the homes behind the dunes are private. The houses on that stretch are on the Ponte Vedra Beach oceanfront page.

The Beaches Museum’s History Park in Jacksonville Beach has moved some of the oldest buildings to one block. The 1903 Pablo post office, the Mayport railroad depot from about 1900 and the 1887 chapel all stand there. Add the Continental marker in Atlantic Beach and the Casa Marina and you can walk most of this story in an afternoon.

For the houses on the sand, see the oceanfront houses in Jacksonville Beach, and for the whole coast from Amelia Island to Matanzas, oceanfront homes in Northeast Florida.