Frontier Florida : First car in Florida?

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

First car in Florida?

First car in Florida? Could be. (Credit:
Jacksonville Motorcar History website)

The hero of my upcoming Christmas novella is a man of his time and place, 1898 Florida. When he sees a magazine advertisement for a Winton automobile, he's so enthusiastic that he immediately wants to buy one of the new, innovative vehicles.

Such a purchase didn't fit into my storyline. But the idea made me wonder when Floridians saw their first gasoline automobile in action along local streets. Turns out that was in 1900 in Jacksonville, according to my internet research.

I'm not a car enthusiast or credentialed historian. If you know of cars in Florida earlier or elsewhere, please leave a comment. The car in Jacksonville was the first factory-made car to show up in town, so that qualifier may be important in a list of firsts.

Some websites quote relevant Jacksonville Times-Union newspaper articles, including one from Jan. 5, 1900. I can't locate that primary source, so this blog post relies on secondary online resources. I'll link to them at the end of this post. My thanks to all the chroniclers for the information below:

A crowd gathered on Jan. 4, 1900 to see undertaker Charles A. Cook drive "the first car in Florida" into the Jacksonville city center. Local men reacted much the way my fictional hero does. Many declared intentions to buy the same model car right away. That meant as soon as the factory could make them. Mass-production auto assembly lines didn't yet exist.

The vehicle that astonished everyone was a Locomobile Stanley No. 2. Mr. Cook happily granted onlookers rides in his fancy new contraption.

A few months later, a tourist drove another Locomobile on the beach in Jacksonville. It was a speed test, not an ordinary drive around town. Driver C.W. Seamans covered three miles in six minutes. An astonished newspaper reporter wrote, "This is about as rare a thing as a shooting star in Purgatory."

Within three years, in 1903, there were about 40 cars in Jacksonville. The city had a population somewhere between 28,000 (1900) and 57,800 (1910) at the time.

At first, no laws regulated use of automobiles on Florida roads. But legislators kept an eye on the rapidly growing popularity of cars statewide. A 1905 bill required car owners to register their vehicles with the state. Cost: $2 per car. That's about $69 today.

At first, owners had to make their own license plates out of wood, tin or leather, according to a history of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. A unified, annually renewable Florida license plate made of steel was created in 1917.

It's hard to imagine cars being such new inventions that people gathered just to see one in real life. Autos changed the Florida landscape over the past century. They're still doing so today. I can't wait for auto-driving cars to be perfected. I'll be one of the people waiting in line to get one.

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