JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Terminal was once known as the ‘Gateway to Florida’. Thousands of passengers and hundreds of trains passed through everyday, making it the largest railroad station in the south, at one point in time.
Since 1974, there are haven't been any more more trains or passengers, and what's left of the station has been converted into the Prime Osborn Convention Center. But the tracks and tunnels that once hummed with activity still exist.
The Jacksonville Terminal Pedestrian Tunnels are locked in time, still intact and buried underneath vegetation and debris. Its brick-walled entrance gives a sneak peak of what’s inside.
“When you make it through, you go through a tunnel, or through the hole, you come on to the big hallway made of bricks," Abandoned Florida owner David Bulit said.
In 2019, David Bulit with Abandoned Florida went into the tunnels and waded through three-to-four feet of water.
If you plan to see it for yourself, be warned, this is private property.
“When you go down there, it's pitch black," Bulit explained. "There are mosquitoes and cockroaches in there, they have to crawl through that. You go to the end, and it opens a larger room with different pathways, two on each side. This larger room is flooded with about four feet of water. You can't see the bottom, it is all brown. You can feel their bricks and glass and pieces of metal."
As early as the 1890s, five railroad companies traveled through Jacksonville.
“When this was a train station at its height, over 20,000 people came per day. Over 200 trains came through this particular terminal at that point in time," Ennis Davis with Community Planning Collaborative said.
With more than 30 tracks, Ennis Davis with Community Planning Collaborative says passengers used the tunnels to get from the station to the platforms safely without crossing the tracks.
“The tunnel system itself, that’s really a relic of a different Jacksonville. A Jacksonville that was walkable, a downtown that was dense and vibrant," Davis said.
The trains stopped running in 1974.
“Travel declined and more people had cars. People began to fly more than US rail," Davis said.
Train service relocated and the Jacksonville Terminal sat abandoned until the 1980s, when it was renovated into the Prime Osborn. Most tracks were removed and all that’s left are remains of the passenger platforms and the tunnel system which is buried intact and forgotten underground.
Davis says he thinks the tunnels could be restored and used again.
"There has always been discussion about bringing Amtrak back to Downtown. It makes total perfect sense. As we continue to have these conversations about what to do with Downtown, we’re blessed to have assets that other cities and communities don’t have. One being our large rail passenger system and this tunnel system that is still out here today. Those may be opportunities to revitalize this section of LaVilla and use this tunnel system as a way of travel they did 50 years ago," Ennis said.
The Florida East Coast Railway uses the tracks still on the property. First Coast News reached out to the railway and the City of Jacksonville but have not gotten a response.
