Friendship Fountain in Duval County, Florida

Photograph: Friendship Fountain and Jacksonville Landing at night.jpg by Jud McCranie · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Duval County attraction

Friendship Fountain

Duval County · North Florida & First Coast

A fountain 200 feet across on the Southbank Riverwalk that was the largest in the world when it opened in 1965.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Taylor Hardwick designed Friendship Fountain and the park around it in 1963, on fourteen acres given by the Southside Business Men's Club, and it was finished in March 1965. When it opened it was the largest and tallest fountain in the world. Three pumps come to 750 horsepower between them and move 17,000 gallons a minute. The basin is 200 feet across and holds 500,000 gallons, treated to swimming pool standards. There are three rings of nozzles: an outer ring of 36 angled to throw water 35 feet, a middle ring of 18 going straight up to 40 feet, and a center ring of 9 that can reach 120 feet, about the height of a ten-story building. Wind sensors cut the center jets back when a breeze would carry the spray out of the park. Every nozzle has four lights around it, dark red, light red, turquoise and amber, which is what makes the fountain worth seeing after dark. It was left to deteriorate for years, then rebuilt in 2011 and again between 2020 and 2024. It reopened in February 2024 and more than 600,000 people have been to see it since. It runs daily from 8 in the morning to 10 at night

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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