5 Reasons for Jacksonville's SMELLS!

Ever wonder why Jacksonville has an inferiority complex today? Despite the fact that 20 years have passed since the city started using municipal strength deodorant, it's long time acrid odor may have had something to do with it. For decades, Jax was described as an industrial city that sweats, and pretty much smells that way. On June 7, 1937, Samuel Kipnis announced to the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce at the Mayflower Hotel, his corporation planned to open a pulp and kraft paper mill on Talleyrand Avenue. Kipnis promised that his National Container Corporation would open a new frontier in Jacksonville industry, by creating hundreds of jobs, utilizing Northeast Florida's natural resources, and putting land on the tax rolls. 

Opening in 1938, National Container's pulp and kraft paper mill delivered what Kipnis promised. However, that promise came with a smell. A smell many local civic advocates of the era described as the "smell of money". 

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In 1953, St. Regis opened a kraft paper, board mill, and new pulp manufacturing facilities along the St. Johns River, a few miles north of National Container. Business was so good that St. Regis expanded the mill in 1957, increasing its pulp capacity to more than four times the original. By 1969, 40% of Florida's paper industry's production capacity was in the greater Jacksonville area. Locally, the industry employed 7,800. However, the negative side effect was bad air quality and pollution of the St. Johns River and its tributaries. To overcome these issues, the industry promised to spend $22 million in new antipollution facilities.


However, all the blame can't be placed on the mills. The city was also home to turpentine refineries and a JEA wastewater plant that all utilized crude sulfate turpentine in their daily operations. The concentration of industry in such a compact land mass led to an unforgettable smell that really put Jacksonville on the national map. In 1991, in order to phase out Jax's grotesque aroma, the City of Jacksonville enacted an anti-odor campaign, increasing fines for odor violations. 

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