Fifty years ago, Dinsmore was a tiny hamlet on US One between Jacksonville and Callahan near the Duval County line. With the coming of a consolidated government and the crush of five decades, Dinsmore is now almost totally absorbed into the metropolitan area of the city. Once a community of dairy farmers, only the highway sign remains to alert the traveler he is anyplace but north Jacksonville. The Gateway City became the Bold New City of the South in 1968, when voters merged the city and county governments into the largest city (area-wise) in the United States.

To the west, following the CSX tracks, Old Kings Road (the old Dixie Highway) parallels the modern US One (New Kings Road) as it slips into Jacksonville from Nassau County. Not far inside the I-295 beltway, the city's new Amtrak terminal now hosts an ever-dwindling number of railway travelers in a modest concrete building that is a far cry in every respect from Jacksonville's majestic Union Station downtown. The old train station opened in 1919 and had a 75-foot vaulted ceiling that was stunning. In front stood fourteen limestone columns 42 feet high. The new train station is a single story concrete block building not much larger than your average convenience store. It is clean and well-maintained, but I wondered what impression someone would have arriving there for the first time. The old Union Station was built to impress by Henry Flagler, its marble floors echoing with the footsteps of hundreds of visitors. The shed would be full of coughing, sputtering steam locomotives, their raw power adding to the excitement among travelers on the platforms. Even when I traveled through here in the 1960's that same excitement was still present, although the sound of the locomotives had since changed to the throaty hum of huge diesel engines. The platform in the back of the Amtrak station seemed sterile and lifeless in the mid-afternoon heat. No train would be here for hours.

Jacksonville's suburbs and street names are windows to the past, dedicated to those families who established homes and businesses in tiny isolated communities that once were far from the civility of downtown Jacksonville. On the northwest side of the city, I can read history in the bright green street signs as they pass overhead. Edgewood Avenue runs where once a township stood. Lem Turner Avenue memorializes an early area merchant.

From the Amtrak station, US One passes through several blocks of freight terminals and factories, boarded-up motels and shabby trailer parks, none of which offer any clue as to the real character of the city you are entering. It is not until you pass the junction where US 23 parts company that you begin to see the blue collar neighborhoods of Northside. Here, US One will join US 17 to form Main Street, leading to the St. Johns River. The city has been hard at work revitalizing this area, known locally as the Springfield Historic district. In my youth, this was a miserable, run down neighborhood inhabited by toughs and hookers. It was a good place to find trouble if you were looking for it. Many of the houses were empty and dilapidated- some were whispered to be haunted- no one spent much time on the streets after dark unless they were armed in some way. Still, this was home to many of the underprivileged and working class families of north Jacksonville. A few blocks north of where US One and Main Street connect, stands Andrew Jackson High School. One block south, a familiar drive-in hangout, The Sheik, still holds on. A group of despondent-looking men loiter in front of a day-labor agency, hoping someone will give them work for a day, an afternoon, even an hour. The fact that they are not working by now means they will probably have to eat at the homeless shelter tonight.

Just south of the CSX tracks, you get your first good look at the skyline of downtown Jacksonville. The reworked sidewalks and newly-planted median through Springfield is a refreshing change from the industrial drabness that seems to permeate most of the Northside. Hogan Creek marked the boundary of Jacksonville proper until the 1920's, and Confederate Park was built along it's banks to provide city dwellers a place to retreat from the stifling heat of summer. The park was originally known as Dignan Park, but was renamed to honor a 1914 reunion of Civil War veterans held on the grounds. Nearly fifty thousand Confederate veterans filled the park and the following year, a monument to women of the Confederacy was completed. In the late 1800's, soldiers bound for Cuba during the Spanish-American War bivouacked on this same open patch of ground. Unfortunately, the creek that once provided drinking water and recreation for them is now so heavily polluted that even wading in it could be hazardous to your health.

Two blocks west of the park on the opposite side of US One is Bethel Baptist Church, one of the oldest historically black churches in Duval County. The original, built in 1838, was pressed into service as a hospital during the Civil War, but could not escape destruction in the Great Fire that leveled Jacksonville in 1901. The structure that exists today dates from 1904 and made the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

From Springfield, Main Street travels some six blocks to the edge of the St. Johns, through the core of downtown Jacksonville. Little of this area pre-dates the 1901 fire and many of the retail stores that powered the shopping district of the fifties and sixties are gone now. Instead, huge high-rise buildings occupy entire blocks of real estate along the riverfront, monuments to the twin engines of modern Jacksonville's economy- banking and insurance. Distribution, warehousing and transportation also play a huge part in the financial health of the city, but few cities in the south outside of Atlanta can boast the concentration of banking and insurance headquarters that Jacksonville can. Until recently though, that was not always a good thing. Even as late as the 1970's, my hometown was often referred to as the "biggest small town" in Florida, since most of the wealth and political power lay in the hands of a few influential (and ultra-conservative) families. The last two decades have seen enormous changes and nearly uncontrollable expansion across the metropolitan area. The real acid test for how well Jacksonville has handled this progress will be the 2005 Super Bowl, when the eyes and press of the nation will scrutinize it.