It was in the late 1950s when construction started on the east side of two-lane U.S. Highway 17 about a mile south of the Doctors Lake Bridge. That alone was something to talk about since nothing much went on between Orange Park and Green Cove Springs in those days.

A radio station, WAPE – The Big Ape – was coming to Clay County. Fifty-thousand watts of power, it was a giant and one of only a few in the nation. WAPE was state of the art design and engineering with a rare water-cooled transmitter.

Locals knew none of this so the soon to be neighbor was hardly worth conversation at Reed Wager’s gas station in Green Cove Springs. Around the lunch counter at Doc Snyder’s drugstore in Orange Park some wondered if it would mean more traffic on U.S. 17 and more business for the town. On the porch at Price’s Store in Doctor’s Inlet where movers and shakers gathered for a lunch of sardines and saltines with an icy Coke, it wasn’t even mentioned.

As construction neared completion the natives did begin to wonder at the engineering of the huge tower. A few snickered at a business with a swimming pool and high dive board. (The pool water cooled the transmitter; the dive board was decoration.)

The regulars at Price’s Store with their usual mistrust of big city outsiders speculated that monkey business might be exactly what those young slick haired, duck tailed, whipper-snapper disc jockeys were up to.

After a good laugh they went back to discussing politics, crops and arguing about quality of area moonshine recipes and forgot all about the radio station. But that would soon change.

Then WAPE started broadcasting – really broadcasting – and not just over the radios. Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis could be heard on every telephone and barbed wire fence in Clay County. Cattle stampeded through vegetable gardens and dairy cows quit giving milk. Only teenagers enjoyed hollering over Little Richard’s music when talking on the telephone.

Engineers made adjustments and milk production and everything else settled back to normal – for a while.

Summertime came and it all heated up again. The guy in the black ape suit appeared hopping up and down on the side of the road caused some distraction. Car loads of county workers heading to Green Cove placed bets as to when he would pass out from the heat.

But then the weekends came and a bevy of girls in scandalous two-piece bathing suits began cavorting in the pool and prancing around for the benefit of those disc jockeys and anyone driving past. Most local girls could only watch because Clay County was still so small that someone would have made sure that their mothers were informed before they could get dry and get home.

Some say an early cold snap ended the practice. Others swear that the Sheriff got tired of pulling cars out of the ditches for drivers that couldn’t keep their eyes on the road. Perhaps drivers just became accustomed to seeing skin. Times were surely changing.

For a while there - real or imagined - Clay County was hopping and WAPE was the main attraction for young people. An outsider would have thought that Hugh Hefner had built a Playboy mansion annex on U.S. 17.

Teenagers of the day were disappointed to learn that it was mostly talk. But the music was great and the reception perfect. Fans in Clay County could listen to the radio after the sun went down without constantly adjusting knobs or holding the clock-radio over their heads.

Young Clay County boys, new recruits at basic training all the way in Parris Island, South Carolina remember listening to WAPE and feeling a touch of home. County residents of all ages became instant celebrities anywhere on the southeast coast once people knew they lived just down the road from The Big Ape.

The station was imitated by wannabes all over the country, but Clay County had the real thing.