From the start, Clay County’s history has been a fascinating tale

CLAY COUNTY – If you closed your eyes and let your imagination wander, you could still hear the steamboats chugging along the St. Johns River to drop off another load of visitors escaping the cold of the northern states. You could still smell the fresh-cut pines and turpentine being loaded onto boats along Black Creek. You could feel the ground rumble as 90,000 soldiers train at Camp Blanding for World War II. And you could still hear a little garage band practicing in the woods along the snake-infected banks of Peters Creek, creating a sound that became the unique and defiant genre known as Southern Rock.

It would be fun to imagine clinking champagne glasses and enjoying the economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties with Caleb Johnson, the heir to the Palmolive Soap Co., at his swanky winter home which now is known as The Club Continental in Orange Park. It would be been heartbreaking to watch Zephaniah Kingsley order the destruction of his plantation in Laurel Grove, which is now Orange Park, in 1812 to make sure the American rebels didn’t capture it during their fight to take Florida from Spain.

And you could have joined the party in 1858 when the state carved an area known as the Black Creek District from Duval County to create Clay County.

The county has been celebrating since.

Celebrate Clay County History Festival on May 18 will be the foundation of a month-long appreciation of the county’s earliest days – and how it continues to affect us today. During the next month, Clay Today will focus on many of the stories that helped shape the county into one of the best places to live and work in Northeast Florida.

Actually, how the county got its name is curious. It’s named after a Kentucky statesman who never came to the area. Henry Clay was a senator and congressman from Kentucky who later became the U.S. Secretary of State from 1825 to 1829. And while he never had any known ties to the county, he helped create the Republican and Whig parties, which was very popular in the area. Without ever meeting him, residents were such fans of his politics, they named the county after him.

The rest is history.

During the next few weeks, stories will be retold of how rich northern industrialists spent their dollars during winter months soaking in warm springs and marveling at the rivers and creeks that still provide so much commerce and character.

In 1916, there were only eight hotels in Clay County and six of them were in Green Cove Springs. How things have changed.

During the first 100 years, the county was known for its snowbirds.

Now it’s known for its freebirds.

Southern rock roots run deep in Clay County. It’s where legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd perfected their raw edginess in a little shack known as Hell House in Lake Asbury. It’s where the Van Zant brothers, Johnny and Donnie, still live, along with Molly Hatchett guitarist Bobby Ingram. And it’s where Country music legend Slim Whitman and Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell lived and died.

The Middleburg United Methodist Church, the oldest Protestant Church building in continuous use in Florida, is 197 years old and still offering Sunday services. And speaking of Middleburg, it’s the oldest village in Florida.

The county’s history of conflict, from American rebels, to the First Seminole War, to the Civil War to World Wars I and II, is well-documented. Union soldiers once lived and trained at the Magnolia Springs Hotel until they were run out of the county following the battle at Halsey’s Farm on Oct. 24, 1864. Members from the Fourth Massachusetts Calvary who were killed in Clay County still are buried at the Magnolia Springs Cemetery near what’s now the St. Johns Landing Apartments in Green Cove Springs.

Not far away is a spent external fuel tank from the Space Shuttle program. It was supposed to wind up in Keystone Heights, but it’s stuck at Reynolds Industrial Park because it’s too big, too heavy to complete the trip to the Wings of Dreams aviation museum.

Apparently, history is timeless.

Appreciating Clay County’s history isn’t about digging up old stories and artifacts. It’s about understanding how and who shaped what the county is today.

And where it will be 100 years from now.

Just close your eyes and imagine …