Jacksonville Reflections - River Oaks Park (#0118)

River Oaks Park, a half mile from my childhood home, barely changed in 60 years, and the site of very many hours of adventure, including quite a few cuts and bruises. It’s in the ‘better’ side of the old neighborhood and its organizing factor is a shallow creek running between two low bluffs of homes; there’s a couple of bridges over the creek, lots of dense underbrush and swamp, and is/was seldom used except by dog-walkers in the evening. I had always assumed that the creek was just an inlet from the river, but per Google maps it extends a little further east under Hendricks Ave. and is called Craig Creek.

Visiting Jacksonville after many years away and quite a bit of travel, I was impressed by this and many other of its public parks. It seems to have more public parks than almost any other place I’ve lived and the parks seem to be quite accessible to everyone and generally well maintained.

Below are links to a couple of older photos from a trip in about 2000:

www.flickr.com/photos/donbrr/4955998957
www.flickr.com/photos/donbrr/4956589582

(One of a series of photo-essay postings on personal history and race with keyword FlaAla0518)