Boat House Marina, Palatka, Florida

Beautiful sunny warm day here in Palatka, up in the 80s. This city of about 10,000 is known for its historic homes and churches, and for its murals. There are murals painted on many of the downtown buildings. There are walking tours of historic homes, many of which have been restored and are beautiful. As well, there seem to be a lot of churches, many of them historic and well maintained. The lady here at the marina told us that Palatka was the destination for people seeking to escape winter in the 1800's; we have read that pretty well every president came here for rest and relaxation. Then Henry Flagler built his hotels in St.Augustine and his railroads, and all of the tourists went elsewhere. Industries were based on citrus fruit and cypress mills, but the great freeze of 1894-5 destroyed the citrus crops and in time all of the cypress trees were harvested. In its heyday, several river boats took people on cruises up and down the St. Johns River and the Ocklawaha river. One of those boats, Noah's Ark, is actually pulled up on shore by the marina here. The people at the marina said that they have been trying to get permission to resore it and use it for evening cruises. The downtown is beautiful, and you can see that it has been a thriving community, but now, most of the downtown buildings are empty. As in so many town, the main shopping etc seems to be outside of the downtown area. We spent most of the day walking around the town looking at the buildings; stopped for ice cream this afternoon. We plan to move on south on the St. Johns river tomorrow.





A mural depicting the sinking of the ship Union Columbine during the Civil War

This has been quite an agricultural area, this mural depicts an early cattle drive

One of the many large historic homes here in town

We've seen two cars in town with tires like this, wonder if it is a new trend?

Dress code posted outside the courthouse; given the prevailing fashion which seems to be to show the maximum amount of underwear with pants fastened around the lower buttocks, we kind of like this

Another of the great murals