Lost Jacksonville: McCoys Creek

[Metro Jacksonville]

Lost Jacksonville: McCoys Creek



Today, McCoys Creek is a contaminated afterthought waterway known more for flooding North Riverside residents and businesses.  82 years ago, along with Hogans Creek, it was Jacksonville's answer to the City Beautiful Movement of the early 20th century.  Join Metro Jacksonville, as we share the story of Joseph E. Craig's McCoys Creek Improvement project.



Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2012-nov-lost-jacksonville-mccoys-creek

[fieldafm]

WOW, great history Ennis!

[Noone]

You can actually see the 1929 marker when entering the perverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks for the history lesson.

[thelakelander]

Looking at aerials it appears for whatever reason, we let Craig's original reservoir silt to the point of being ineffective.  What is the reason for building additional ponds instead of dredging the creek?

[Overstreet]

Who owns the creek? 

They (Bldg Dept, SJWM, etc)  can force the owner of a project to build a seperate pond in that project property  easier than maintaining drainage systems on other's property..  How many agencies would be involved with cleaning out this treed wetland?

 There likely isn't any private entitity that will directly benefit from this clearing willing to put time and effort into getting it done.

[thelakelander]

About three blocks.  It's immediately adjacent to 220 Riverside's proposed neighbor, Riverside Place.

[thelakelander]

Who owns the creek? 

They (Bldg Dept, SJWM, etc)  can force the owner of a project to build a seperate pond in that project property  easier than maintaining drainage systems on other's property..  How many agencies would be involved with cleaning out this treed wetland?

 There likely isn't any private entitity that will directly benefit from this clearing willing to put time and effort into getting it done.

The City of Jacksonville owns most of the greenway surrounding the creek.  The three ponds (one is in Murray Hill) COJ constructed a few years back were all located in existing COJ parks.

[fonz]

Wow.  Morgan Gress was my great grandfather.  My family still owns a tiny vacant parcel on Myrtle Ave.  My grandfather passed before I was born and my father passed when I was in high school so I never learned the history of how we ended up with that property.  Could you point me in the direction of your research for this story?  I believe Margaret Mitchell (my fourth cousin I was told) was GV Gress' niece and that is how Tara came to be.  Sadly, my father and his cousins sold the house and property in the late 80's.  About the same time we sold the old Roosevelt Mall which is where the labor camp for the second Gress mill was located.

[avonjax]

I went to Technical High School and when it rained watch out. It smelled bad too.

[thelakelander]

Cool story fonz. 

Over the years I've gotten pretty good at quickly digging up forgotten history.  All I typically need is a name/city or map to begin.


George Valentine Gress - http://berriencounty.smugmug.com/Families/Fletcher-Griner/Gress/2518595_X2jHPG/1/132293633_b5dxz#!i=132293633&k=b5dxz

I first came across the Gress Mill by first looking at properties along McCoys Creek in various Sanborn maps in the main public library's Special Collections Department.  My goal at the time was to identify a few businesses that lined the creek in the late 19th century.

I then wrote the names of some of the major sites and then ran google searches to see what potential hits and images would pop up.  For Gress, "Gress Manufacturing Company" was my initial keyword.  I already know Gress had a large facility near Ortega, so I went back to Metro Jacksonville's Marina Mile article to get the blurb on that site.  The names G.V. Gress and Morgan Gress came up several times during various searches and I was able to trace George Valentine Gress back to Atlanta, where their zoo today still mentions his contribution to their existence:

http://grantpark.org/history

With that said, some of the best information came from various century old lumber trade journals that had been scanned on Google.  Those old journals have everything from building permits and company incorporation information, to correspondence from Morgan Gress himself. That's how I found the link between the McCoys Creek site and Ortega.


A picture of an SN-419 locomotive constructed in 1892 and owned by Gress Manufacturing Company in the early 1920s. http://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/lima/sn-419.htm

There is another link I think you'll like but I'll have to dig a little harder to find it.  It had a ton of photos from the Gress Mill in Ortega in 1915.  Anyway, here are a few more that I just came across:


This one sheds some detail on the adult relationship between G.V. Gress and Morgan Gress:

Morgan Valentine Gress eloped with Eugenia Stephens, niece of Alexander Stephens, and was subsequently disineherited by his father, George Valentine Gress. Morgan was the second son. The older brother was John Hart Gress who ultimately lived and died in California.

Morgan and Eugenia founded a lumber city in southern Georgia near the Okefenokee swamp and ran the mill until the great fire in Jacksonville, Florida in 1901. They picked up and moved to Jacksonville to help rebuild the city. Morgan became instrumental in starting various charities (Community Chest, drive for WWI and WWII bonds, etc.) as well as helping the Daughters of Charity to start St. Vincent's Hospital.

His older borthe had left home and refused to help his parents when they became ill, so Morgan and Eugenia took care of his parents until their death.

They had 4 daughters, 2 of whom died shortly after birth. The oldest daughter, Alix, married a number of times but had 3 children by Morgan Sellars - Alexandra and Abigail Morgan who live in Ponte Vedra, Florida, and Peter, who committed suicide at an early age. The younger daughter, Gretchen, married Fontaine LeMaistre and had 4 sons, 2 of whom died shortly after birth. Fontaine LeMaistre III died suddenly in 1996, leaving 7 children. George V. Gress LeMaistre has 3 children and lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

George V. Gress left his Atlanta home to his son, Morgan. It has subsequently been acquired by the State of Georgia. It was the original "Tara" of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind", which was written as a composite of various friends, family and acquaintances of the Stephens family, of which she was part.

http://genforum.genealogy.com/gress/messages/67.html


Also an interesting story from the New York Times:

ABDUCTED HIS HALF SISTER: Morgan Gress Arrested for Obeying Instructions Given Him By His Father
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F20E10F8355911738DDDAB0994DF405B8785F0D3
 

[fonz]

Thanks Lake.  You have shared some pieces of my family hisotry of which I was unaware.  I look forward to delving into some of these links.  As you probably guessed, I am Fontaine LeMaistre IV.

[spuwho]

Lake,

Good research, good read, good write up. It is great that there are living connections to Jax history like this.

I agree with Stephen, how could such a great legacy built up by the city fathers be left to rot?

On the flip side, dredging McCoy's Creek based on what you have written here would no doubt pull up some undesirable stuff, probably worthy of federal scrutiny. 

This might explain some of the collective civic ignorance from Stockton Street all the way to the St John's. Keep people away from the risks and try to let nature resolve it. Unfortunately some of the compounds used back then (lead, phosphates, creosote) can't go away naturally, it would have to be removed.

[JaxNative68]

I don't see the restoration of these creeks as a catalyst of downtown growth, but quite the opposite.  I think the density of downtown needs to be increased for anyone to consider the financial burden of the creek restoration, not to mention the industrial area surrounding the creeks would have to be relocated, prior to building a promenade along the banks. Unfortunately in this city, if it is not seen, it is forgotten - and this area goes unseen by for to many.

[thelakelander]

I don't think we can revitalize downtown by putting it in a bubble and ignoring the impact of the urban neighborhoods surrounding it.  We've been doing that for over 40 years and the results have been pretty bad, despite billions spent. This is one of the reasons why I'm a huge proponent of a starter fixed transit system that begins to tie downtown back with the neighborhoods surrounding it.  Besides, wouldn't money for a creek restoration come from a different funding pot?  It seems, that we should be able to improve downtown and other neighborhoods throughout the city simultaneously and through a variety of funding sources and public policy changes.

[ricker]

Lake,
your questioning thoughts on re-dredging the overgrown widened portion of the creek vs. more retention ponds deserves an answer!

Your work on this site and for the betterment of this metropolis is staggering!