Following the Legacy of Gus Gerbing

by Jarrett Hill

This spring, the Amelia Island Museum of History was lucky to receive a pair of camellia
bushes from the Bartram Garden Club. These gorgeous white flower bushes not only beautify the exterior of the museum, but also add another layer of history to the museum’s grounds. These bushes are part of the story of Amelia Island’s modern tourism industry and connect to a legendary local whose work brought Amelia City to the national spotlight and had a lasting impact on the island’s clean waterways. These camellias come from the land that was once known as Gerbing Gardens, an early tourist attraction that caught the attention of Americans across the country, including the
President of the United States.

Gus Gerbing was born in 1900 in Amelia City, to Gustav and Anna Gerbing. His parents, after arriving in America from Germany, moved to Amelia Island in 1898 because it had a Lutheran Church and school. Growing up in the fledging Amelia City, Gus attended a one-room schoolhouse, which had one teacher and around 30 students. School couldn’t hold the attention of Gus, who began in his teens to trap the island’s raccoons and sell their furs to college students in Jacksonville, who paid a hefty price of $15 per pelt (about $270 today) to match the demand of the nationwide raccoon coat craze of the 1920’s. Encouraged by his success in these endeavors and his interest in Amelia Island’s maritime possibilities, Gus left school after 6 th grade. At age 19, Gus purchased his father’s riverfront property after seeing, as he described, “thousands of acres of the finest oysters” in the Amelia River. This land, originally part of the Suarez land grant, became the oyster beds that fed Gerbing’s Oyster Farm and the original Sandbar restaurant.

This 1940s menu from the Gerbing Oyster farm advertises all-you-can-eat oysters for $1.00 (approximately $19 today).

Established just after the close of the First World War, Gus Gerbing’s Oyster Farm had 60-70 employees, with up to 50 employees at a time dedicated to shucking the incoming oysters each day. The nearby Sandbar restaurant (no relation to the Sandbar Restaurant that exists today) was owned by Gerbing and Pierce Johnson and received fresh oysters from the Oyster Farm daily, insisting on their advertisements: “For That Added Vigor! Eat More Oysters!” The oysters were served in half shell, fried, roasted, and stewed, as well as sold in bulk by the barrel.

Beyond promoting Amelia Island’s reputation for fresh-daily seafood, Gerbing used his influence and industry to build up the physical foundations of Amelia City. In 1926, Gerbing worked with local utility companies to extend power and telephone lines to Amelia City, which he connected to Fernandina Beach by donating the shell byproducts of his oyster business. The 50,000 yards of oyster shells that Gerbing donated laid the base for a road connecting the two ends of Amelia Island. In the 1920s, the Gerbing family established St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the 1920s next to Gustav and Anna’s home in Amelia City.

Taking another look at the above menu from the Gerbing Oyster Farm, we can see a reference to the nearby Azalea and Camellia Gardens on the backside—a project that would increasingly become Gerbing’s passion through the 1950s. Gerbing discovered his passion for camellias and began growing them for sale in 1923. Later in the decade, Gerbing would meet with Harold Hume, a nationally recognized camellia specialist and future University of Florida president, before starting the nursery that would support the creation of novel flower varieties for Gerbing Gardens. Many of these varieties bear the names of Gerbing family members, such as the Mrs. G.G. Gerbing Indica azalea, a large white flowering bush that has become popular across the Southeast, particularly in Louisiana. With hundreds of unique varieties, flowers from the Gerbing nursery could be ordered from a catalog and shipped across the country, including weekly flights of flowers to New York City for sale. This focus on flower cultivation and study continued to grow in importance in Gerbing’s life, and in 1932, he leased both the Sandbar and oyster beds out to dedicate his full time to the newly opened Gerbing Gardens.

In full bloom from November until March, Gerbing Gardens contained 250,000 flowers sprawled over 15 acres along the banks of the Amelia River. Visitors were able to explore several distinct gardens, including a Rose Garden, Sunken Gardens, and the Azalea Terrace. Today, we can get a sense of what visiting Gerbing Gardens was like through the extensive color postcards preserved in the AIMH’s archives, which were distributed nationwide and effectively drew attention to one of Amelia Island’s earliest tourist attractions. When President Harry Truman was unable to stop by Gerbing Gardens on a trip down to Key West, he supposedly remarked that the gardens “looked beautiful on the postcards” he had seen.

The gardens drew hundreds of visitors on busy days, competing with the then-recently restored Fort Clinch for the most popular tourist site on Amelia Island. Gerbing Gardens weren’t just for visitors, though—as an establishment in the community for two decades, residents became involved, and a culture of unique events sprung up. The most well-documented event was the 1947 Festival of Flowers, a pageant sponsored by the Fernandina Beach Kiwanis Club to crown Miss Florida Kiwanis. Presided over by soon-to-be Florida governor Fuller Warren, the winner of the title was Joanne Carswell of Jacksonville, who chose Fernandina high schooler Virginia Kelly to sit with her on stage as a maid of honor. Gerbing’s hopes for the Gerbing nursery were not just to support the community and its fledgling tourism industry—Gerbing’s experiments with camellia cultivation provided the basis of Camellias, his acclaimed reference book that was so comprehensive it prompted Everett Mizell, the local bank president, to state “this time [Gus] has finally gone off the deep end”.

While Gerbing Gardens does not still stand today, one of Gus Gerbing’s lasting legacies can be seen every day in the clear waters around the island. Gerbing writes in his autobiography about the vast quantities of seafood along the shores of the island at the start of the 20th century. He notes that this changed most noticeably after the arrival of Container Corporation and Rayonier in the final years of the 1930s. Gerbing argued that the practice of discharging industrial byproducts and waste into the Amelia River “without a referendum by the people” had changed the abundance and taste of the seafood that many islanders relied on. Most relevant to Gerbing, the seafood from the polluted waters was reported to taste like kerosene and the island’s azaleas began to shed their leaves and die. Oyster beds became coated in sludge and the water around the island was reported to be brown for up to 10 miles from shore.

Gus Gerbing, standing on his fishing pier. Late 1940s.

Hoping to combat the decreased quality of fish caught near shore, Gerbing embarked on his newest project in 1944—building a 1300-foot fishing pier that was Fernandina’s first and the longest in the Southeast. This pier became a popular gathering spot for fishers and non-fishers alike, bringing attention to the beaches and community south of Fernandina. Unfortunately, Gerbing’s reasons for constructing the pier did not pan out—he determined that the fish still tasted bad due to the industrial pollution, even 1300 feet from shore, and both the fishing pier and his oyster beds closed in 1953.

With the closure of his major projects by the early 1950’s, Gerbing turned towards new passions. He continued with his environmental activism, eventually resulting in the 1970 case Gus Gerbing vs. ITT Rayonier, Inc. His environmental activism had many supporters and made news across the nation but saw resistance from local community members employed by the mill. In its defense, the Rayonier mill manager of the time argued that the decline in local seafood was only in small part due to the mill and that local overfishing practices were the real culprit. The visuals of the polluted waterway were unavoidable, though, as brown foam created by mill byproducts coated beaches and waterfront roads. Influenced by Gerbing’s decades-long activism and by the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in December of 1970, the Florida Pollution Control Division declared that the mills had to comply with anti-pollution measures and meet the new EPA requirements for waste disposal.

Gus Gerbing passed away in 1984 and is buried in Bosque Bello Cemetery. He left behind a significant legacy, having helped to grow the identity of today’s Amelia Island and its focus on seafood, the environment, and tourism. Gerbing was a representative for the local community and for the natural appeal of Amelia Island at a time of rapid transformation, advocating for decades for protections that wouldn’t become national law until the 1970s. While the Gerbing Gardens and the fishing pier no longer stand, you can find traces of Gus Gerbing’s passion through the camellias scattered around the island, particularly along Gerbing Road and now, in the museum’s parking lot.

The Amelia Island Museum of History gives special thanks to Jane Phillips Collins, whose research into Gus Gerbing’s life, work in the AIMH’s archives, and dedication to preserving Gerbing’s environmental legacy supported the creation of this article.
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