In search of Jacksonville

In the 1940s, a neighbourhood existed near Trail called Jacksonville. For the longest time, I didn’t know where it was, much less how it came to be, who it was named after, or what happened to it.

But I now know that it was along Riverside Avenue/Casino Road and have a pretty good idea of its namesake(s), as well as the names of some of its other residents. I’m still wondering about its origin and demise, though.

Jacksonville was first mentioned in newspapers in February 1940 as belonging to a new election polling area outside Trail city limits. The polling area was “to be called Casino, which is the largest settlement within these boundaries. This also includes Jacksonville.” There was no elaboration on where Jacksonville was. I suppose they assumed everyone already knew.

I thought perhaps Jacksonville’s namesake lived in the neighbourhood, so I checked the 1940 Trail civic directory. Sure enough, it listed James Jackson and William Jackson as residing at 2316 Jacksonville and 2332 Jacksonville respectively! 

I suspected that Jacksonville was actually the 2300 block of Riverside Avenue and this hunch proved correct, for the 1939 directory listed William Jackson at 2332 Riverside. Same fire number, different street name. Jacksonville also appeared in the 1941 directory but then in 1942 the addresses reverted to Riverside. What was going on? 

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Left: 1940 directory showing James and William Jackson as residing in Jacksonville. Coincidentally, another Jackson family lived in the 2200 block of Riverside and another in the 1800 block. Right: The 1942 directory shows Jacksonville had reverted to Riverside Avenue. James Jackson had since moved to Hendry Lane.

The 2300 block of Riverside was outside city limits and therefore doesn’t show up on fire insurance maps. But it didn’t seem to be adjacent to the 2200 block. Old aerial photos don’t show any homes immediately to the east. So I wondered if Jacksonville was actually a little further south.

In addition to homes numbered 2316 and 2332, civic directories in the late 1930s and early 1940s list homes at 2308 Jacksonville/Riverside, occupied by Cecil Andrews; 2334A, occupied by Robert and Jean Robison; and 2339, occupied by George and Elizabeth Reilly.

Why was it necessary to come up with a name for a handful of houses? And why was the name so short-lived? William Jackson shows up on the 1921 census on Riverside Avenue. Perhaps he was renting out all of the homes, and therefore the neighbourhood was named after him. But it was only when James Jackson came along in 1940 that the name first appeared. I haven’t been able to find any relation between the two men. Maybe that was the joke: two unrelated Jacksons lived next to each other, so it was Jacksonville. 

The Trail newspapers are now digitized, but they haven’t been much help, in part because most of the search results bring up things about that other Jacksonville in Florida. I did find an ad in the Trail Daily Times of Dec. 4, 1939 that offered “Two 2-room shacks” and “some furniture” for $6. (Was that per week or per month?) “Also 4-room shack $8. Apply 2332 Lower Riverside.” The address is William Jackson’s.

The word “shacks” may be significant. When the book A Trail to Remember, Vol. II was published recently, eagle-eyed Jamie Forbes pointed out something interesting. A photo near the back of the book shows Victory in Europe Day at the Butler Park recreation grounds, on May 8, 1945. Across the river, you can see a cluster of shacks. I count at least nine roofs. Jamie suspects this is Jacksonville, and I agree.

(Courtesy Wally Golberg/Trail Historical Society)

So what accounted for this shanty town? I have two theories. It could have been a Depression-era relief camp. I’m not aware that one ever existed there, but these camps are not terribly well documented. We do know there were ones at Murphy Creek and China Creek. 

Or Jacksonville could have been a squatter’s camp — what in those days would have been called a hobo jungle. There was one in Nelson, known as Cottonwood City, which popped up in the 1930s on a federal rifle range around Ymir Road and Perrier Road. Residents were eventually able to get title to the very meager dwellings they had built.

Later references to Jacksonville are few. I could only find a single mention in Trail of Memories, an almost 700-page family history book covering 1895 to 1945. On page 423, we learn of a smelter worker named Donald MacLeod, who moved to Trail in 1919: “He did batching for a year in one of the Jackson cabins on lower Riverside … We, as a family, mother and five children arrived in Trail in 1920 and for a week we all lived with my father in his cabin until we moved to a home.”  

I found several other references to people living in shacks or small homes on “lower Riverside,” but it’s not clear whether they were part of Jacksonville. The City of Trail bought other homes in the 2200 block of Riverside in the 1980s and demolished them to widen the road.

In the 1953 civic directory (seen below), there was no longer a 2308 or 2332 Riverside listed. Cecil Andrews now lived at 2316. Did he move or was the house just renumbered? U.H. Mattson was now at 2334 and George Reilly was still at 2339. Unnumbered homes further south belonged to C.A. Phillips, Mrs. A. Ellis, and A.W. Hodgson.

In the 1963 directory, there was no longer a 2316. George M. Varga and A. Johns lived in different suites in 2234 and George Reilly was still at 2339. In 1979, the only remaining listings for the 2300 block were Mrs. H. Varga at 2334 and George Reilly at 2339. Reilly remained there through 1982. The house was vacant in 1988, which was the last time any property in the 2300 block was listed. Can anyone confirm where any of these people actually lived? 

Jacksonville, as a name, seems to have only lasted a couple of years. As a cluster of shacks, it seems to have lasted several decades before gradually fading away. Here’s what the view looks like today compared to the photo from 1945. 

In both photos, you can see the old Carlson property high on the hill at right (which has an interesting story of its own). Of Jacksonville, nothing remains, although an encampment can be found on the riverbank directly below where the shacks once stood.

Before Jamie Forbes pointed out the VE Day picture to me, I wondered if some other still-standing homes might have been part of Jacksonville. East of the 2200 block of Riverside Avenue is the 2000 block of Casino Road, which has a lone home. But BC Assessment says it was built in 1950, which is later than the shacks seen in the photo. It’s also further south.

No homes exist in the 2100 or 2200 blocks of Casino Road, but five homes are clustered in the 2300 block. For a while I entertained the notion that this might have been Jacksonville, given the block number. As we’ve seen, 2300 Jacksonville and 2300 Riverside were one and the same, so maybe 2300 Casino Road was another variation. But this area is much further south than the buildings seen in the photo. Plus none of the fire numbers match the earlier directory listings and BC Assessment indicates these homes were all built between 1960 and 1993.

Back to the Jacksonville namesake or namesakes: I couldn’t find William Jackson’s date of death. He might not have died in Trail. He was last listed in the civic directory in 1947. James Jackson died in 1953, by which time he was living on Hendry Street. His obituary mentioned nothing about Jacksonville.