Palatka, Florida
Historic Palatka
A river town with a festival for every season and a century and a half of stories.
Come for the festivals. Stay for the town.
Palatka has a better calendar than any town its size, and Hummingbird House sits in the middle of all of it, walking distance from most.
- Blue Crab Festival — Memorial Day weekend. The whole waterfront comes alive with music, boats, and more than a hundred thousand people, one block from your front door. Book early; this one fills first.
- Florida Azalea Festival — late February. Running since 1938, with the Ravine Gardens in full bloom and our own azaleas out front to match.
- Palatka Bluegrass Festival — February and November, out at Rodeheaver Boys Ranch, and worth every mile.
- The Mug Race — first Saturday in May. The longest river sailboat race in the world starts right here in Palatka, and the night before is a party.
- Porchfest — first Saturday in December, when bands set up and play on the front porches of this very neighborhood. Ours included. Pour a glass, sit down, and let the music come to you.
- Christmas Parade — the night after Thanksgiving, down St. Johns Avenue, with the whole town out on the sidewalk.
- Bass tournaments — the professional tours fish this water in winter, and the boat ramp is a one-block walk.
And honestly, the best weekends here are the ones with nothing on the calendar at all.
The Gem City of the St. Johns
Palatka takes its name from a Seminole-Creek word for a river crossing. The city received its charter in 1853, and in the decades after the Civil War it became a major river port and winter resort, a period local historians call its Golden Age. Four railroads arrived in the 1880s, and the town was known as the Gem City of the St. Johns.
A fire in November 1884 leveled five downtown blocks and the four largest hotels. The resort trade never fully returned, which is one reason so much of the old residential town survived. Two neighborhoods, the North and South Historic Districts, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Hummingbird House was built in 1871, at the start of that Golden Age, on a street the National Register nomination singles out for its homes of the period.
History you can walk to
The South Historic District
The neighborhood Hummingbird House stands in: twenty-three blocks of nineteenth-century homes, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Best seen on foot. Staying in the historic district.
Bronson-Mulholland House
Built in 1854 by Judge Isaac Bronson and now a museum run by the Putnam County Historical Society.
The downtown murals
More than 30 murals on downtown walls, sponsored by the Conlee-Snyder Mural Committee, each showing a piece of local history. A weekend in Palatka.
Larimer Arts Center
A 1929 library building designed by Henry John Klutho, home to the Arts Council of Greater Palatka since 1992.
Union Depot
The 1908 Atlantic Coast Line station, still an Amtrak stop, with the David Browning Railroad Museum inside.
Ravine Gardens State Park
Two ravines up to 120 feet deep, planted as a public garden in 1933. Azaleas peak between late January and April. Our guide to Ravine Gardens.