Waters from the St. Johns River floods the Fort Caroline National Memorial. | Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
Published on July 18, 2025 at 10:51 am
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The National Park Service will have a public meeting next week about plans to move the Fort Caroline National Memorial.
The meeting will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Bill Gulliford Community Center, 4875 Ocean St. in Mayport.
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The Park Service wants to move and rebuild the waterfront replica of the 16th century French fort to an upland location out of the St. Johns River floodplain, where it has faced chronic storm and flood damage.
The fort would be moved closer to the park’s visitor center off Fort Caroline Road. The redesign would be based on the best available historic research to recall key characteristics of the original fort, the Park Service said.
The redesigned fort would not recreate the original fort structure as shown now at the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve site.
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“It would selectively build out portions of the footprint to serve as a framework for understanding the physical scope and space the original fort would have occupied,” the Parks Service said in a Facebook post. “This will make the new memorial more historically accurate in scale.”
The new memorial would use existing and new trails accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act, park officials said.
Fort Caroline was a French colony established in Florida in 1564. It was France’s first attempt to settle in North America when Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere founded it as a haven for Huguenots (French Protestants). Spanish troops ultimately raided the wood and earthen fort in 1568, killing 140 settlers and renaming it San Mateo. The French abandoned the site in 1569.
The current Fort Caroline exhibit will be removed from the landscape, and native vegetation will be encouraged to reestablish naturally, park officials said.
No other details about the cost or project are available now. Park representatives will host Wednesday’s meeting and offer information about the project,.
The project is scheduled to be done in the next few years, officials said.
More information and links to project details are here.
