Welcome to the first installment of This Week in Flagler History, a new weekly AskFlagler series that takes a look at the historical events, anniversaries, and dates that have shaped Flagler County over the past century and a half.
Every week, we will revisit moments from the area’s past, drawn from the founding of the county, the rise and fall of its towns, the impact of major events, and the everyday milestones that built the place. Some entries will be momentous. Some will be small. All of them are real, sourced from local historical society records, archived news reporting, and primary documents.
This week takes us into mid-May, a quieter period in the Flagler County calendar but one with a few genuinely interesting anniversaries.
May 13, 1907: The Intracoastal Waterway Reaches the Hammock
At 8 o’clock in the morning on Monday, May 13, 1907, the crew of the dredge boat South Carolina severed the last obstruction in the Hammock area of what is now Flagler County. With that final cut, the waters of the Matanzas River to the north and the Halifax River to the south were joined for the first time, creating a continuous inland waterway that would eventually become part of the modern Intracoastal Waterway.
It was a moment Florida had been working toward for nearly 80 years. As far back as 1831, the Florida Territorial Council had incorporated the Planters and Citizens’ Canal Company specifically to “connect the waters of the Matanzas and the Halifax rivers in the counties of St. Johns and Mosquito.” That early effort never produced a finished canal. It would take four St. Augustine businessmen in 1881 to take up the project again, and another quarter-century of dredging through the marshes and hammocks of what was then southern St. Johns County to complete the work.
A large party of canal company officers, stockholders, and St. Augustine officials had set out that morning in two launches, the Hustler and the Kathleen, to witness the historic moment. They did not arrive until around noon. By that time, the workers had already finished the job and gone about their day. Only the crew of the dredge boat was present to see the cut completed.
The canal would not be fully operational until 1921, and so its impact on the early development of Flagler County was limited. But the cut at the Hammock that May morning was a milestone in Florida’s long effort to connect its barrier islands and inland waterways into a single navigable system, and it laid the foundation for everything that has come along the Intracoastal Waterway in Flagler County since.
Source: Flagler County Historical Society
May 1972: Marco Polo Park Opens Its Full Five-Land Expansion
Sometime in May 1972, the second phase of Marco Polo Park opened to the public in Bunnell. The original Japanese Village had been the only operational section since the park’s first opening on December 28, 1970. With the May 1972 expansion, the full park finally became what its investors had envisioned.
Four new themed lands opened that month: China, India, Turkey, and Venice, joining the existing Japanese section. A petting zoo opened as well. The five-land layout, connected by the park’s signature overhead Sky Ride gondola system and a perimeter steam train, traced the actual route of the 13th-century Venetian merchant Marco Polo’s famous journey from Venice through the Middle East to China and back.
This was the high point of Marco Polo Park’s brief existence. The full opening represented the culmination of years of planning by the park’s lead investor, Daytona Beach hotel and motel developer Oscar Leron “Jack” White, and his team. The park employed nearly 100 young people that summer. Television commercials promised “the greatest adventure of your life.” Television, radio, and print advertising across northern, northeastern, and central Florida tried to capture some of the enormous tourist traffic flowing south on I-95 toward the recently opened Walt Disney World.
The five-land park would not last long. Within two years, financial trouble forced Marco Polo Park to close in October 1974. Two fires of suspected arson destroyed much of the property in February 1975. The park briefly reopened in May 1975 under the new name Passport to Fun World, then closed permanently in 1976. The land where Marco Polo Park once stood is now occupied by Plantation Bay Golf and Country Club. The road that had once been called Marco Polo Park Boulevard reverted to its original name, Old Dixie Highway.
For one bright moment in May 1972, however, Bunnell had its own multi-themed amusement park. The bones of it are gone now, but the memory survives.
Read more: Marco Polo Park: Bunnell’s Failed Theme Park
What’s Coming Next Week
Next week, we move into May 18 to May 24. Among the anniversaries we will cover: the formal opening of the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami where Florida’s foreign influence law was signed last week, the Passport to Fun World reopening in greater detail, and several others from across the decades.
If you have a Flagler County historical anniversary you would like us to feature in a future installment, send it to AskFlagler. We welcome reader submissions of family stories, dated photographs, personal accounts, and other primary source material. The history of Flagler County is built from these small contributions over time, and this column is one place to gather them.
This is the first column in what we plan to be a long-running weekly feature. We will see where it goes.
About This Series
This Week in Flagler History is published every Monday on AskFlagler. Each installment covers historical events from across Flagler County’s history, drawn from records of the Flagler County Historical Society, the Palm Coast Historical Society, archived newspaper reporting, and other primary sources. Where information is unverified or uncertain, we leave it out.
For deeper coverage of any of the events featured in this column, see our history article archive. For corrections, additions, or to submit a historical anniversary, contact AskFlagler.
Looking forward to keeping up with things that are going on here in Flagler Beach.