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Object of This Folder
THIS folder is issued conjointly by the Chamber of Commerce and the Town Council to acquaint you by brief and plain statements with the exceptional opportunities whcih Crescent City and vicinity offer to the settler. In its preparation the customary advertising "dope" has been avoided. The information is contributed by conservative members of the Chamber of Commerce and is there trustworthy. Behind our development program are two strong financial institutions- The Bank of Crescent City, whose building is shown above at the left, and The Peoples Bank, whose new home is shown at the right. Inquiries addressed to the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce will receive prompt and courteous attention.
Business Opportunities
COINCIDENT with highway and other basic improvements the slogan for Crescent City became, "The Place of Opporunity," which epitomizes our publicity program. At present, however, the merchandising filed is occupied in the following lines: Drugs, dry goods and wearing apparel, groceries, meats and stock feeds, hardware, fertilizers, house furnishings and building materials. We also have two large garages with well equipped repair shops, two modern service stations.
Rich rewards await intelligent development of our back country. Drained muck lands are producing large profits for the truck growers as evidenced by the fat checks passing through local banks, and there are many acres yet to be developed. The growing of ferns for the norther floral market is highly renumerative, several successful ferneries now being operated here. No section affords better natural conditions for poultry and stock raising, farming and diversified fruit cultire. Attention is called to opportunities in special lines mentioned elsehwere.
Water Advantages
CRESCENT CITY occupies high ground between two beautiful lakes. The upper view at the left shows a magnificent body of navigable water, government lighted, sixteen miles long, connected by deep channel with the St. Johns River affording an outlet for water transportation. Another view of this lake taken from the center of the business district apepars on the title page.
Next below in this group are two views of Haw Creek at the head of the lake, a popular pleasure trip section. Boating is enjoyed the year around.
The dock views show locally owned pleasure boats, and a freighter of the Clyde-Miller Line, which afoords tri-weekly service in connection with the Clyde line.
The bottom view is taken from the Crescent City Heights section, a new residential development, overlooking Lake Stella, a deep body of clear water whose level is forty feet above Lake Crescent. From both the economic and pleasure viewpoints our water advantages are unsurpassed.
Good Fishing
Not only do fish around in our large lakes and their tributary streams but scores of small lakes near Crescent City afford find sport. The fourteen-pound bass shown below, caught by J. E. Bartlett and snapped on the running board of his trusty Ford, is the first of a good many large fish taken in our waters to be honored by the publication of its portrait.
The Citrus Fruit Industry
OUR local citrus crop has grown gradually each year until the six modern packing houses will ship over a quarter of a million boxes for the season of 1924-25.
This fruit is grown on groves totalling approximately one thousand acres, ranging in age from three to twenty-five years. The quality is unsurpassed.
A glance at the map of Florida will show that we have about as many small lakes as the famous "Ridge Section" of the state and when one takes into consideration Lake George to the west and Lake Crescent to the east we have a much greater area of water than any other citrus growing section in the state.
We are one of the largest shipping points of citrus fruits in the state, and each year there are more acres set to young trees and coming into bearing. There are still thousands of acres of cheap citrus lands available in this section; in fact, the opportunities for citrus fruit culture are unlimited. Transportation facilities are the best and the rates are lower than from more southern localities.
The yield of tangering, the "kid glove" orange, is greater here than in any other part of the state.
Our Delightful Climate
Florida is a state of local and frequent showers rather than heavy rains. The extreme in precipitation are 30 and 65 inches. Crescent City has an average of extremes, or about 50 inches annually. most rain falls during the summer months. Temperature is highest in June, July, August and September. The annual temperature is about 70. Summer temperature is not oppressive, the nights being uniformly cool; the days less enervating than in the northern states. Heat prostrations are unknown.
Prevailing direction of wind is northeast. There are many more days of sunshine than of clouds.
The first frost may be looked for in November; the last frost in February or March. These frosts should be distinguished from freezes. Light frosts are beneficial in coloring and ripening fruit. Damaging freezes are rare. Gardens usually flourish all winter.
State and Country Roads
SPEAKING of a good road, we have it!
Crescent City is on State Road No. 3, the most direct between Jacksonville and Tampa, otherwise known as the "St. Johns River Scenic Highway," via Green Cove Springs and Palatka. Tourists driving south from Jacksonville via St. Augustine connect with this road at East Palatka by way of Hastings.
Above is shown a view of this splendid highway, 16 feet wide, costing approximately $30,000 a mile taken when the eight-inch compacted rock base had been laid and on which a three-inch surface of penetration macadam is placed. The state forces have completed this highway south through Volusia County with the same type of construction.
Development is being stimulated greatly by the completion of this through highway. The county officials are also active in providing sand-clay laterals in many directions.
Street Paving
CONTRACTS have been let with engineers and the work of paving all important streets of city will be started as quickly as possible.
Public Improvements:
Local and long distance telephone servce, and Western Union Telegraph.
An ice plant.
Many miles of cement walks.
A municipal electric plant.
A new municipality owned water plant with high pressure mains and
A modern fire truck with chemical equipment
Village Improvement Association
THE V.I.A. is a woman's club whose object is town improvement. It owns a theater and club house shown respectively from left to right in the engraving below. It runs a first-class motion picture show. It departs are social, civic, "literary: and it maintains a public library."
The club house supplies a social center for the whole community.
The Association initiates and helps civic improvement.
It holds weekly reading and social meetings during the winter season, enjoyed by residents and visitors.
Two tennis courts are maintained on club grounds.
The association earns and requires much money, always for public needs and betterment, and in its work never loses courage.
Our Public Schools
THE schools of Crescent City are good. All sides of educiation receive due attention.
A $25,000 endowment supplements the funds from taxation.
Besides a teacher for each of the grades, there is a four-year high school organized on a departmental basis.
Athletics are popular.
The program of studies covers both Latin and Scientific Courses.
Graduates are received in Florida colleges and universities without entrance examinations.
The schools of Crescent City have always been good, and they increase in efficiency year by year.
Our Shade Trees
CRESCENT CITY is not a new town and its magnificent trees, protected by years of care, and not surpassed in the Southland.
Giant oaks shade practically every street and variety is given by the interspersed palms, long-leaved pines and camphor trees.
Citrus trees abound in the dooryards and a great verity of tropical flowering trees and shrubs give color to the scene. Trailing vines which climb to the tops of the highest trees flash their brilliant hues against the sky and one in Crescent city looks up as well as around to admire the beautiful scene. The oak shown below has a spread of 105 feet.
Religious Advantages
CRESCENT CITY is well supplied with comfortable church buildings, the following five denominations maintaining houses of worship: Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Catholic and Methodist Episcopal Church, south.
With the growth of the town of the Methodist people found it necessary to provide a larger plant and are completing a large and modern brick structure (shown above) which includes an auditorium on the main floor and a complete Sunday School equipment in the basement.
The Episcopalians are conducting a campaign for more adequate facilities.
In addition tot he regular church facilities Crescent City is the home of the Southfield Bible Conferences Association, and endowed organization which has conducted an annual Bible Conference for the last twenty years. Men of national reputation are heard from its platform from season to season.
Hotels and Boarding Homes
SINCE the flourishing days of the old Potter House, Crescent City has been a famous winter resort. Grove Hall (shown at the top) succeeded the Potter House as our largest hostelry and has been the winter home of many of our leading winter visitors. It has been renovated recently and offers good accomodations both with and without private baths.
The Turner House (shown next below) always has been a popular place and ha served many of its guests through succeeding seasons. It fuills the demands for those who like an ample table with homelike surroundings without the expense of private baths.
The gables (third from the top) was opened as a new place last season. It is steam heated, and provides all modern conveniences. Although its accomodations necessarily demand higher prices it was filled during its first season. Its services includes a public tea room and a gift shop.
AN EXCEPTIONAL OPPORTUNITY is offered here for a modern hotel and moren high-grade boarding houses. We are turning away many tourists every season who are in love with our beautiful location, but who demand rooms with private conveniences. We need also mroe good apartment houses. The attleboror (shown at the bottom) is never vacant, summer or winter.
THE increase in crop and live stock value of the United States for the last ten years has been 9 per cent per annum, while the crop and live stock value of Florida for the last ten years has shown 13 per cent annum increase. -The Florida Grower.
Crescent City, a Place of Homes
OUR homes have an unmistakable "homey" appearance, due largely to the fact that occupants generally own them and take interest and pride in their upkeep.
These homes are not great ostentatious piles of brick and stone masonry, but, with few exceptions, modestly attractive, bungalows and vine enbowered cottages with ample grounds, shade and fruit treest and flowering plants- homes of culture.
It is because of these plant and tree surrounded homes that it was found impossible to secrue photographic views of many of the most attractive for this folder.
Crescent city stands on high, well drained ground; it streets are lined with magnificent live oaks, making it the most delightfully shaded town in Florida; healthfulness is one of the town's chief assets, with contentment and happiness its concomitants.
Are you seeking a winter, or all-year-'round home in an ideally cosmopolitan American community, with an equable climate, intelligent, kindly disposed neighbors, clean social advantages? Then take a look a Crescent City.
We Extend a Hearty Welcome
CRESCENT CITY and vicinity offer great opportunities for development. It is through development that money is made. We have every natural inducement to encourage those who are looking for the opportunities mentioned in these pages, and our Chamber of Commerce will give every assistance possible to those who are seeking development and investment opportunities.
We invite you to BEAUTIFUL CRESCENT CITY amid the pines, plams, and giant live oaks, where citrus fruits are grown to greatest perfection and the fragrance of the orange blossom is in the air from February to June; where nature did its most beautiful work in the state. Natural sanitation, healthiest and best year-'round spot in Florida. The sportsman's paradise; bathing, boating, fishing and hunting unsurpassed.
CHAMBE OF COMMERCE.
Crescent City is on the main line of the A. C. L. R. R., 76 miles south of Jacksonville. We have two daily mails each way, two through Pullman trains and one local each way, and a new $20,000 station.
[Map of Crescent City]
Chicago Manual of Style
Crescent City Chamber of Commerce. Promotional Booklet for Crescent City, Florida, 1926. 1926. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. <https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/324364>, accessed 25 December 2024.
MLA
Crescent City Chamber of Commerce. Promotional Booklet for Crescent City, Florida, 1926. 1926. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.<https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/324364>
AP Style Photo Citation
(State Archives of Florida/Crescent City Chamber of Commerce)