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Description

One of two municipal cemeteries in Jacksonville Beach, the 26-acre H. Warren Smith Memorial Cemetery is located at 1538 North Second Avenue. The land was used as a cemetery from the area’s earliest inception in the late 1880s, when the town was named Ruby Beach. Local lore has it that the first burial in the town was here and was the unidentified body of a man who washed ashore. A large memorial to the 1888-1889 victims of a yellow fever pandemic was erected in 1979, referring to the belief that a mass internment occurred here in the town then known as Pablo Beach. Burials continued in the area, but it did not become a public cemetery until the 1920s, by which time the town was known as Jacksonville Beach. Former Mayor H. Warren Smith arranged for the donation of the land. Until the 1960s, Caucasian Americans were buried at this cemetery and African Americans were buried across the street at the Lee Kirkland Cemetery.