MUSEUM & CULTURE
Beaches Museum
Duval County · North Florida & First Coast
A free museum at Jacksonville Beach whose History Park holds a 1911 steam locomotive, an 1873 cracker cabin and the old Mayport depot.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The Beaches Museum stands at 381 Beach Boulevard in Jacksonville Beach, and beside it is History Park, an outdoor set of buildings moved here and restored. The 1903 Pablo Beach post office was the first stand-alone post office in the town, in use from 1903 to 1909, moved and restored in 1986. The Mayport railway depot, from about 1900, was the end of the Florida East Coast Railway spur, and it still has its separate freight and passenger sides. Foreman's House number 93, built in 1900, was railway housing with no indoor plumbing and no electricity the whole time the company used it. The Oesterreicher-McCormick cabin of 1873 is one of the oldest pieces of Florida cracker building left in the area and opened to visitors in November 2016. The Beaches Chapel of 1887 was moved in during 2012 and can be booked for events. The locomotive is a 25-ton H. K. Porter engine built in 1911 that worked for a lumber company near Tampa, given to the museum in 1981 and brought up from St. Augustine. A heritage garden started in 2008 runs to six sections. Admission and tours are free, and the park can be walked with a self-guided tour on your own phone
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