Fort George Island

For the island in James Bay, Canada, see Chisasibi. 30°25′12″N 81°26′25″W / 30.4199°N 81.4403°W / 30.4199; -81.4403

Fort George Island is an island of some 500 acres (200 ha), about 5 miles (8.0 km) long,^[1]: 840 near the mouth of the St. John's River, in far northeast Duval County/Jacksonville, Florida. Part of the island is part of the 46,000-acre (190 km²) Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, celebrating the Native American population that was largely wiped out by infectious diseases brought by the Europeans. Fort George has the highest point along the Atlantic coast south of New Jersey.

In prehistoric times it was a center of the Native American Timacua people, who left huge oyster shell mounds, which were used in the nineteenth century to create tabby concrete, present in the foundations of several island buildings. The Spaniards founded a mission to Christianize the natives; a friar there, Francisco Pareja, studied their language and left in his writings most of what we know about it. Under Zephaniah Kingsley, who farmed much of the island from 1814 to 1836, it was a slave training and trading center. Later in the nineteenth century it hosted the luxurious Fort George Hotel as well as a club for locals. In the twenty-first century it contains an important historical site, the Kingsley Plantation, on federal park land (part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve), and a small state park hosts the Ribault Inn Club, which serves as a visitors' center for the Kingsley Plantation and the island as a whole.