Jacksonville is located in
Duval County and it is the county seat. It lies between
Daytona Beach and the Georgia state line along Interstate 95, on the banks of the St Johns River.
There is also a Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Jacksonville has a 400-year history. In 1562, Jean Ribault sailed into what he named the River of May, now the St. Johns, to establish a refuge for French Huguenots. The French left and over the years, the area changed hands between Britain and Spain. Following Spain's cession of the Floridas to the United States in 1821, a settlement formed. Isaiah D. Hart surveyed the village and named it Jacksonville for Gen. Andrew Jackson. During the Civil War, the town was burned and deserted several times.
Today Jacksonville is a major port with beaches and numerous waterways, a financial center and home to Navy bases, a Mayo Clinic medical center, Jacksonville Zoological Gardens, and more than 700,000 residents.
