ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – When Gayle Phillips was a young child in the early 1960s, she remembers her family loading up the car and driving down to the coast to visit Butler’s Beach.
“Our family would come to Butler Beach, and just have the beach, you know, all to ourselves with a cooler with our snacks and sodas and stuff and just hang out all day,” said Phillips.
Phillips, now the Executive Director of the Lincolnville Museum in St. Augustine, and other Black St. Johns County residents weren’t allowed at any other beaches back then. They were reserved for white residents only.
But thanks to the vision of entrepreneur Frank Butler, they had a place where they could safely enjoy the sun and the sand.
Butler came to St. Augustine in the early 1900s and quickly made his mark.
“He started working in another store. And then he built his own business, several businesses as a matter of fact, so he became kind of like a business mogul in the Black community,” Phillips said.
Eventually, Butler started buying oceanfront property on Anastasia Island with the dream of creating a Black beach.
During that time in 1927, Black residents weren’t allowed on any of the beaches between Daytona and American Beach in Nassau County.
In 1947, Butler and his real estate company finally established Butler’s Beach subdivision, in the area known as Butler Beach today.
The area became a bustling entertainment area for Black residents. It had a resort, bathhouse, an inn and a casino.
Butler even hosted key leaders of the Civil Rights movement at his Black oasis, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Even after segregation ended, it remained a landmark for Black residents in the South.
Today, his legacy continues to live on inside the Lincolnville Museum and beyond.
Butler sold part of the property to the state for the development of a state park. But after Butler died in 1973 the park declined without his continual lobbying for support, according to the St. Augustine Historical Society. In 1980 the state turned the park over to St. Johns County with the stipulation it was named Frank B. Butler County Park.
The area south of St. Augustine Beach is still known as Butler Beach and plaques at his park there tell his incredible and impactful story.
