Orange Park in the late 18th century was known simply as
Laurel Grove. The name Laurel Grove comes from Sarah and William Pengree, who received a land grant from the Spanish governor. Laurel Grove was sold to
Zephaniah Kingsley, of the
Kingsley Plantation, upon William's death. Zephaniah developed Laurel Grove into a model farming plantation for over 10 years. In 1813,
General Matthews invaded
East Florida, triggering the Patriots' Rebellion. After Mathews left East Florida, Zephaniah's wife,
Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, burned down Laurel Grove to keep it out of Patriots' hands. The Town of
Orange Park was founded, in 1877, by the Florida Winter Home and Improvement Company. After the
Civil War, the company bought several thousand acres of the McIntosh plantation at Laurel Grove, for the purpose of creating a southern retreat and small farming community. The property was divided into building lots and small farm tracts, division that involved laying out the present street system, including Kingsley Avenue and Plainfield Avenue. The town was incorporated in 1879 by a special act of the
Florida Legislature. In January 1880,
Ulysses S. Grant and
Philip Sheridan visited Orange Park. A large hotel was built at Kingsley Avenue along with a 1,200-foot pier. In October 1891, the
Orange Park Normal & Industrial School was opened. The school was founded by the
American Missionary Association and allowed for both black and white students to attend, the only unsegragated school in Florida at the time. However, by the end of 1913, the school was closed due to
Jim Crow laws. In 1922, the
Loyal Order of Moose, a fraternal organization, bought the former Hotel Marion in downtown Orange Park and rebuilt the property into Moosehaven, a 63-acre retirement community that is exclusively for its senior members.
Orange Park Elementary School, built in 1927, continues to operate a few blocks from the river. It is near Moose Haven, in the
River Road Historic District, a stretch of road parallel to the Saint Johns River and dotted with century-old trees, where many locals come to walk and jog in the afternoon. About a quarter of a mile away is Club Continental, previously called Mira Rio. Mira Rio, whose name was Spanish for "River Watch", was the winter
palazzo of Caleb Johnson, son of the founder of the
Palmolive Soap Company, now the billion-dollar
Colgate-Palmolive company. In 1930,
Robert Yerkes, with the support of
Yale University, the
Rockefeller Foundation, and the
Carnegie Foundation, established a research station in Orange Park to study primate biology and behavior. Originally called the Yale Laboratories for Primate Biology, it was renamed the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology after Yerkes retired in 1941. In 1956, ownership of the laboratory was transferred to
Emory University. The laboratory became the
Yerkes National Primate Research Center; it was moved to the Emory University campus in Georgia in 1965. ==Geography==