For many lifelong residents of Jacksonville, memories of the 1960s and ’70s come with the smell of leather saddles, and pine needles under hoof. We asked four natives to share where they rode horses in their younger days and what life felt like back then.
Tommy Alvarez, 72, remembers riding off old dirt roads on the Westside. “There were open fields everywhere,” he says. “We’d saddle up in the morning at Flying W Stables and be gone for hours. No cell phones. Our parents just told us to be home by supper.” He recalls hitching posts outside small country stores and cooling off with grape sodas before heading back down sandy trails.
Linda Mae Johnson, 68, grew up near the Intracoastal. “We rode in Palm Valley and it felt like endless stretches of woods,” she says.
“Developments like Sawgrass hadn’t popped up yet.” Weekends meant packing sandwiches in saddle bags and exploring with friends.
“It was freedom. You learned responsibility early, taking care of your tack and your horse.”
Harold ‘Buddy’ Greene, 75, spent his teen years riding near the Northside’s rural pockets. “There were pastures where neighborhoods stand now,” he says. Summer days were long and humid, but Buddy says no one minded. “After chores, we’d ride until the sun dipped low. Nights were for front-porch sitting and listening to the grown-ups tell stories.”
Carla Whitfield, 70, fondly recalls boarding her horse near Mandarin in the early ’70s. “We’d ride under big oak canopies draped in Spanish moss,” she says. “Gas was cheap, traffic was light, and everybody seemed to know everybody.”
All four agree: horseback riding wasn’t just recreation it was a way of life in a slower, simpler Jacksonville, where open land felt endless, childhood stretched a lifetime and good friends and memories were made.
