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Mayport, Jacksonville — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Mayport is a fishing village at the mouth of the St. Johns River, on the seaward edge of Jacksonville, boxed in by a naval station and the water.
About Mayport
Where to stay in Mayport
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Mayport lost its hotels twice over. Fire took the tourist-era rooming houses, and the Navy took the ground the rest stood on, so the village keeps a working waterfront and no place to sleep on it. Lodging on San Pablo Island starts a few miles south down State Road A1A in Atlantic Beach.
Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park holds a campground in coastal hammock nearer than that. You want this address for trawler engines at first light, not for a lobby.
About Mayport
What are the main landmarks in Mayport?
Safe Harbor Seafood works a dock at 4378 Ocean Street, where trawlers tie up and the catch goes over the counter within sight of the boat that landed it. At the street's north end the St. Johns River Ferry loads cars for Fort George Island. The St. Johns River Light of 1858 stands inside Naval Station Mayport, dome intact and dark since 1929, and it is the third light built to mark this bar.
Palmer Street ends at a fence.
What is the history of Mayport?
Sawmills named the place. Kingsley B. Gibbs bought the mill property in 1843 and called the town Mayport Mills after the River of May, the name that Jean Ribault and his Huguenots had given the St. Johns. Work on the St. Johns River Jetties ran from 1880 to 1895 and finally gave deep-draft ships a reliable channel over the bar.
The Mayport Presbyterian Church raised its sanctuary on Palmer Street in 1892. Mayport was incorporated as a city on June 3, 1909. Building the naval base in 1941 took most of the plat and left the village about sixty acres.
Where is Mayport?
The St. Johns River wraps Mayport on the north and west, Naval Station Mayport closes the east, and Chicopit Bay marsh edges the south.
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Updated September 2026