Desiree Reads’s Reviews > Amelia Island > Status Update

The Florida House In is the oldest continuously run hotel in Florida. It was built by David Yulee’s Florida Railroad Company. It was hoped the railroad would boost tourism in Fernandina.

The Palace Saloon, the oldest continuously operating bar in Florida, is in a building originally built in 1978 as a shoe store. The Saloon started operating there in 1903. During Prohibition, it was an ice cream store.

(Fernandina was platted in 1811 and named after King Ferdinand VII of Spain.)

Fernandina was laid out using the 1573 Law of the Indies, which was used to create all new Spanish towns in the New World. Fernandina was the last town to be platted with this code, a fact that is still taught in schools in Spain.

Fernandina became Fernandina Beach in the 1959’s, mostly as a marketing tool.

When Florida seceded from the Union, Amelia Island flew the flag of the Confederacy, its eighth.

December 23, 1817: Amelia Island is once again under the U.S. flag… 5 years after returning East Florida to the Spanish after a weeks-ling rule in 1812.

1817: Privateer named Luis Aury arrived on Amelia Island. He had 139 soldiers and $60,000. Desperate for capital, the people of Amelia granted him military command of the island in exchange for some of his money. He raised the Mexican Rebel flag, which he had on his ship from previous revolutionary undertaking. Smuggling was even more prosperous under Aury. The U.S.forced him to surrender.

In 1817, a Scotsman con man, Gregor McGregor, with 55 men, was able to take Fort San Carlos via surrender with no shots fired. Ge raised the Green Criss of Florida flag an even minted his own currency. After about a month, he fled when his men deserted.

While the economy of the new United States struggled, Amelia Island flourished as pirates and smugglers carried their goods into the U.S. from Spanish Florida.