Kingsley Plantation Visitor Guide, Jacksonville, Florida

Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island is open Wednesday through Sunday, its grounds from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and admission is free (National Park Service hours page).

The visitor contact station keeps shorter hours: Kingsley Plantation is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the station, and closed Monday and Tuesday (NPS). The audio tour devices are picked up in the visitor center (NPS accessibility page). Arriving after 4:30 p.m. still leaves time on the grounds, but not at the desk.

Every National Park Service area of the Timucuan Preserve closes on three holidays. On the NPS schedule for 2026 and 2027, Kingsley Plantation is closed on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2026, on Christmas Day, December 25, 2026, and on New Year's Day, January 1, 2027, while Veterans Day, November 11, 2026, is listed as open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (NPS).

No entrance pass is required anywhere in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve (NPS fees page). The same page says the America the Beautiful pass is not currently available for distribution at Kingsley Plantation or Fort Caroline National Memorial, and suggests nearby fee parks such as Castillo de San Marcos National Monument or Cumberland Island National Seashore.

Kingsley Plantation is at 11676 Palmetto Avenue, Jacksonville, Florida 32226, reached from Heckscher Drive (Florida Route 105) and a two mile dirt road on Fort George Island (NPS directions).

From I-95 north of Jacksonville, the NPS route takes the I-295 East Beltway (Exit 362 A), then Heckscher Drive for 9 miles. After passing the St. Johns River Ferry landing on the right, the turn onto Fort George Island comes half a mile later at the brown National Park Service sign. From the south, I-295 crosses the St. Johns River on the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge, and the first exit leads east onto Heckscher Drive for the same 9 mile run (NPS directions).

From Amelia Island, A1A runs south across Big and Little Talbot Islands onto Fort George Island. The Kingsley Plantation turn is 8/10 mile past the blinking light at Huguenot Memorial Park, on the right; a driver who reaches the ferry landing has gone too far (NPS directions).

The NPS warns that Palmetto Ave. is a dirt road that is often rough, and that Fort George Road is paved but floods during storms and extreme tides (NPS). The plantation lot is small: the NPS suggests that drivers of a large RV towing a vehicle contact the park before visiting because there is limited space to turn around, and anyone with road concerns can call 904-251-3537. NPS lists both auto and bus or RV parking at the site (NPS place page).

The NPS says personal or rental vehicles are required to reach the park. It notes that ride share apps can bring a visitor out to Kingsley Plantation, but a pick up from Fort George Island is often hard to get, so a taxi or a pick up arranged in advance is the better plan (NPS).

Yes: the JTA St. Johns River Ferry crosses from Mayport Village to Fort George Island, and boaters can tie up at the Kingsley Plantation dock on the Fort George River (Jacksonville Transportation Authority).

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority describes a 0.9 mile crossing about 2.5 miles inland of the river mouth that takes roughly 5 minutes and leaves every half hour (JTA ferry page). Boats leave Mayport Village on the hour and half hour, 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on weekends. The Fort George Island terminal is at 9618 Heckscher Drive, and the NPS places the plantation turn half a mile past the ferry landing (NPS directions).

In 2026 the ferry charges $1 for a pedestrian or bicycle, $7 for a car on weekdays and $8 on weekends (JTA). JTA has already posted the change: from January 1, 2027, a car pays $8 on weekdays and $10 on weekends, and a pedestrian or bicycle stays at $1. Vehicles 20 feet long or longer pay the truck, bus or RV fare, $14 on weekdays and $16 on weekends in 2026.

For boaters, Kingsley Plantation sits on the south bank of the Fort George River, about seven tenths of a nautical mile east of the Intracoastal Waterway at Marker 57 (NPS directions). The dock fits boats up to 25 feet, personal watercraft may stay up to 59 minutes, and kayaks and canoes have a beach landing east of the main house.

Kingsley Plantation preserves the planter's house, which the NPS calls the oldest still standing plantation house in Florida, along with a kitchen house, a barn and tabby slave cabins (NPS, NPS accessibility page).

The NPS timeline dates the plantation house to 1798, built by John McQueen's skilled enslaved craftsmen while McQueen ran Fort George Island as a Sea Island cotton plantation (NPS timeline). The house itself is only open under certain circumstances and has four stairs at the entrance; the grounds, barn, kitchen house and visitor contact station with restrooms are easily accessed, while the tabby cabins sit in a grassy area and some have footer beams in the doorways (NPS accessibility page).

A fifth of a mile from the house, the remains of 25 tabby cabins stand in a semicircle. There were 32 originally, 16 on either side of the road (NPS slave community page). The NPS says Kingsley Plantation holds the largest collection of standing tabby slave cabins (NPS tabby page). Tabby is lime, sand and water, the lime made by burning whole oyster shells in a kiln, and the park asks visitors not to touch, lean on or sit on the walls.

The self guided audio tour at Kingsley Plantation runs 30 to 90 minutes, needs no reservation and allows pets (NPS things to do). It comes in a captioned and an audio described version, and it won the 2014 NPS Programmatic Accessibility Achievement Award (NPS).

Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and merchant, purchased the Kingsley Plantation property on Fort George Island in 1817, in what was then Spanish Florida, and his wife was Anna Madgigine Jai (NPS).

Kingsley married Anna in 1806, after she arrived in Cuba from West Africa, freed her in 1811 and put her in charge of his Laurel Grove plantation at Doctors Lake, in present day Orange Park (NPS). The NPS dates the couple's years on Fort George Island from 1814 to 1837 (NPS history page).

After the United States took Florida in 1821, territorial laws barred interracial marriage and inheritance by free people of color. Kingsley sent his wives, children and a few formerly enslaved people to Haiti, and in 1839 he sold the Fort George Island plantation to his nephew Kingsley Beatty Gibbs (NPS). The John Rollins family owned the island from 1869 to 1923, which the NPS timeline marks as the end of the plantation period (NPS timeline).

The enslaved men, women and children who lived and worked on Kingsley Plantation could not legally record their own history, so the NPS uses primary sources, oral traditions and archaeology to tell their stories (NPS).

The Ribault Club, an interagency visitor center in the Timucuan Preserve, is open Wednesday through Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (NPS hours page).

The NPS describes interactive exhibits, a kayak launch and Roaring Twenties architecture at the Ribault Club (NPS things to do). The hours page lists the Timucuan Preserve Visitor Center at Fort Caroline as open 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, while Cedar Point and the Theodore Roosevelt Area stay open from sunrise to sunset. The preserve's main phone number is 904-641-7155 (NPS).

Two official pages carry older dates than their content suggests. The NPS hours page shows a last update of January 18, 2024, yet lists the 2026 and 2027 holiday closures, and the Kingsley Plantation directions page was last updated November 15, 2022 (NPS). For anyone with concerns about road conditions, the NPS directions page gives the plantation number, 904-251-3537, and warns that Fort George Road floods during weather events and extreme tides.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the National Park Service and Jacksonville Transportation Authority websites.