Jacksonville, FL
Opened 1968, replacing the older Imeson Field. Jacksonville is Florida's largest city by area — over 800 square miles. Naval Air Station Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport drive heavy military aviation in the region; the city sits at the mouth of the St. Johns River.
A 17-mile barrier island accessible only by boat, preserved as a national seashore in 1972. The Carnegie family owned most of the island from the 1880s until donating it; Dungeness, their 59-room mansion, burned in 1959 and the ruins still stand, slowly being absorbed by the maritime forest. About 150 feral horses roam the island, descendants of stock turned loose by the Carnegies. John F. Kennedy Jr. married Carolyn Bessette at the First African Baptist Church here in 1996. From above: white beaches running the eastern shore, salt marshes and live oak hammocks the western side, the chimneys of Dungeness visible in the south.
A 438,000-acre blackwater wilderness straddling the Georgia-Florida border — the headwaters of the Suwannee and St. Marys rivers. The name comes from Hitchiti words meaning "trembling earth"; the swamp's floating peat islands actually do shake underfoot. Tannin from decomposing vegetation stains the water the color of strong tea, and the still surfaces reflect the cypress canopy like a mirror. Population: roughly 12,000 alligators, plus black bears, sandhill cranes, and the largest stand of pond cypress in the world. The swamp burns periodically — major fires in 2007 and 2011 — which keeps it open and vital.
Oldest masonry fort in the continental United States — Spanish coquina construction begun 1672, completed 1695. Survived sieges by English forces in 1702 and 1740 (cannonballs reportedly stuck in the soft coquina walls without penetrating). National Park Service site since 1924. Sits on the bayfront in St. Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the US (1565). KSGJ is the gateway airport.
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-founded settlement in the continental United States — Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed on September 8, 1565, 42 years before Jamestown and 55 years before the Pilgrims. The Castillo de San Marcos anchors one end of the historic district. Two more landmarks sit just a few miles away. The St. Augustine Lighthouse is the current black-and-white spiral-banded tower on Anastasia Island, completed in 1874. It stands 165 feet tall, with 219 steps to the watch room. A wooden tower on the same spot served from 1824; before that, the Spanish built a wooden watchtower here in the 1500s — making it the longest continuously operating lighthouse station in Florida. The current tower is a working aid to navigation (active light, USCG-maintained) and a working museum. Generations of climbers have left graffiti carved into the masonry; the lighthouse has been featured on Ghost Adventures and Travel Channel paranormal shows due to the 1873 drowning of three children near the construction site. Henry Flagler — Standard Oil partner, then the most powerful man on the East Coast of Florida — discovered St. Augustine on his honeymoon in 1883 and decided to make it the "American Riviera." He built three luxury hotels here: the Hotel Ponce de Leon (1888), the Hotel Alcazar (1888), and the smaller Casa Monica (1888). The Ponce was the first major building in the US made of poured concrete — coquina aggregate and cement, hand-mixed by Black laborers — and the first American hotel wired for electricity, by Thomas Edison personally. The interior includes Tiffany stained glass commissioned from Louis Comfort Tiffany. Today the Ponce is the centerpiece of Flagler College. Flagler used St. Augustine as the launchpad for the Florida East Coast Railway — the railroad that extended all the way to Key West by 1912, crossing the Seven Mile Bridge.