Mayport Village in Jacksonville, Florida

Mayport Village is the small waterfront community on the south bank of the St. Johns River where the JTA's St. Johns River Ferry lands, next to Naval Station Mayport.

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority describes its ferry as linking Mayport Village and Ft. George Island and connecting the north and south ends of State Road A1A in Duval County, on a 0.9-mile voyage that crosses the St. Johns River 2.5 miles inland of the river's mouth. JTA gives the Mayport landing as 4680 Ocean Street, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233, a mailing address, although the village lies within the City of Jacksonville. The city's William Bill Gulliford Jr. Community Center stands nearby at 4875 Ocean Street, Jacksonville, FL 32233, with parking and a playground.

The village's neighbor and largest landholder is the Navy. Naval Station Mayport's official history records that during the British period many Spanish citizens moved into the Mayport area from the New Smyrna colony, and that many of their descendants still live in Mayport, adjacent to the naval station. The Navy page uses the older phrase City of Mayport; the community has no separate city government today.

The name recalls May 1, 1562, when French Huguenot commander Jean Ribault arrived off what is now Mayport, near the mouth of the St. Johns River, according to Naval Station Mayport's history.

The Navy history says Ribault was sent by Admiral Gaspard de Coligny to found a French Protestant colony, landed first on the north side of the river at what is now Ft. George, and on May 2 crossed to the south side, where his party set a stone monument on a sand hill near the river mouth, plainly visible from the sea. The page then follows three decades of rivalry over the same shoreline.

Source: Commander, Navy Region Southeast, Naval Station Mayport History. The Navy page gives the Drake attempt as six years after 1580 and does not state the year of the Fort Caroline attack; 1565 is the year of the Menéndez expedition it describes.

Before the base, the land beside Mayport was a Civil War fort site and then a late 19th century resort of summer cottages, according to the Navy's history of the station.

Old maps show continuous occupation of the Naval Station Mayport site by Native Americans, Spanish, English and Americans since the 16th century, the Navy history states. During the Revolutionary War period a group of British vessels called the St. Johns Fleet patrolled the river to keep American sympathizers from crossing from the south bank to the north.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Jacksonville Light Infantry built a fort on the present naval station and named it Fort Steele. Because the fort was considered indefensible, the company buried its guns and joined the main Confederate forces in Tennessee; the guns were found and recovered near the present pilothouse years before the Navy acquired the site.

In the late 19th century there were no jetties, and the wooded ground of today's base fronted a beach on the south channel of the St. Johns River. Summer visitors from Jacksonville built cottages there rather than at the ocean beach, and by 1890 a flourishing little colony stood where most of the station's installations are now, with a 1,000-foot pier at Wonderwood. The Navy adds that in 1932 a general store stood where the station's Security Office is now, selling Texaco gas at 21 cents a gallon.

The present brick St. Johns River Lighthouse was built in 1859 on a light station established in 1830, and it now stands inside Naval Station Mayport.

The U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office lists the light at the entrance of the St. Johns River as a conical brick tower, red with a white lantern, deactivated in 1929. Its record traces the station through three towers and two replacements.

Two federal records disagree on details. The Coast Guard gives the height as 80 feet and says the tower was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, while the National Park Service record for the St. John's Lighthouse (NRIS 76002237) shows a publication date of 6/3/1976, and its nomination form gives a height of 81 feet with a base diameter of 16 feet and walls 3 feet thick. The NPS record locates the tower at the U.S. Naval Station, Mayport.

Naval Station Mayport was commissioned as a U.S. Naval Section Base in December 1942, on land Duval County voters agreed to buy with a 1939 bond issue.

The Navy Region Southeast history traces the base to the Hepburn Act of May 17, 1938, whose board recommended on December 27, 1938, a major naval base at Jacksonville with carrier berthing at the inner end of the entrance jetty. Duval County promised to buy the land, and on July 18, 1939, its citizens passed a $1,100,000 bond issue to purchase land for the two stations. In April 1939 the Navy planned a carrier basin along the south jetties, and that December Ribault Bay was selected for it.

The basin was dredged to 29 feet and used by patrol craft, target and rescue boats and jeep carriers during World War II. The air facility at Mayport became a Naval Auxiliary Air Station on April 1, 1944, and on October 29, 1952, USS Tarawa (CVS-40) entered Ribault Bay as the first capital ship to use Mayport's new carrier basin, the Navy records.

A car costs $7 on weekdays and $8 on weekends on the St. Johns River Ferry, and walk-on riders and cyclists pay $1, under the fares JTA posted on October 18, 2026.

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority, which assumed operation of the ferry on March 31, 2016, lists service hours of 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on weekends. Boats leave the Mayport Village side on the hour and half hour, from 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on weekends, and leave Ft. George Island at quarter past and quarter to the hour, from 6:15 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. on weekdays and 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. on weekends. JTA puts the crossing at roughly 5 minutes.

Semitrailers are prohibited, and pedestrians and cyclists with a valid Senior or Reduced Fare ID STAR Card or a Paratransit E-STAR Card ride for $0.50 every day, according to JTA. Fares can be bought in the MyJTA app.

Mayport was one of the first Waterfronts Florida Partnership Communities named by the state, and Jacksonville's zoning code has a subpart for a Mayport Village Working Waterfront District.

A 2004 Florida Senate bill analysis lists Mayport, Duval County, first among 13 communities the Department of Community Affairs designated as Waterfronts Florida Partnership Communities between 1997 and 2003, and explains that designated communities received technical assistance over a two-year period and a grant toward the cost of preparing a revitalization plan.

In 2008 the City Council enacted Ordinance 2008-833-E, creating Section 656.394.1 under the heading Subpart L, Mayport Road Zoning Overlay and Mayport Village Working Waterfront District. The overlay applies to commercial zoning districts along Mayport Road, and its stated intent is to enhance the appearance of this gateway into the Beach Communities, retain property values, promote redevelopment of blighted areas and make the road safe for pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles.

The city has also worked on its own riverfront. A JaxParks notice announced a public workshop on July 25, 2024, at the Gulliford Community Center for commercial fishermen on Phase 2 of the Dock Redevelopment project, which was to redevelop docks along the City-owned riverfront in Mayport; the design phase was then just getting underway.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading Naval Station Mayport's history, the Coast Guard and National Park Service lighthouse records, JTA's ferry schedule and fares, the 2004 Senate analysis, Ordinance 2008-833-E and two JaxParks pages.