Baldwin: Where Two Railroads Crossed

Baldwin's whole identity is a crossroads. The site was first known as Thigpen, after a settler who ran a tavern on the stagecoach route between Jacksonville and Tallahassee. The first railroad came through in eighteen fifty-seven, a second in eighteen fifty-nine, and suddenly this small clearing in Duval County was the junction of two rail lines, one running east to Jacksonville and one running south toward the Florida interior.

The town was renamed Baldwin in eighteen sixty for Doctor Abel Seymour Baldwin, a figure in the Florida Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad. Union forces captured it in eighteen sixty-four and burned the town. After the war it was reincorporated as a railroad hub, a status it held for over a century.

Today Baldwin remains a small enclave town entirely surrounded by the city of Jacksonville.