City/Town: • Jacksonville |
Location Class: • Industrial |
Built: • 1966 | Abandoned: • 1999 |
Status: • Abandoned |
Photojournalist: • David Bulit |
In early-1966, Occidental Agricultural Chemicals Corporation opened a $3 million automated phosphate rock, triple superphosphate, and diammonium phosphate terminal. The terminal was part of a much larger complex, which included a phosphate mine and processing plant, located 68 miles northeast of Jacksonville in the town of White Springs. It was as “Florida’s fastest-loaded phosphate rock terminal,” with a loading capacity in excess of 3,000 tons per hour.
Located at the terminal were six concrete storage bins, each 40 feet in diameter and 110 feet high, each holding approximately 5,000 tons of phosphate in storage for export; a car unloading facility, which handles two 100-ton hopper cars at a time unloading on a 48-inch conveyor belt, carrying material directly to a loading ship or to the storage bins at the rate of 2,000 tons per hour; and a mooring facility. Six steel storage tanks would be built much later, able to hold a total of 13 million gallons of phosphoric acid.
In 1995, Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. purchased all the outstanding shares of White Springs Agricultural Chemicals Ltd. from Occidental for $291.5 million, this included the terminal and its related White Springs mining operations. Just four years later in 1999, Potash Corp. shut the Jacksonville terminal down and consolidated its phosphate export distribution system through Morehead City, NC, which was said to serve its global customers more efficiently and economically.
Not much has happened since its closure as it sits abandoned waiting to be redeveloped. The area still gets some visitors from time to time, such as fishermen or the occasional photographer. Many locals have come to know this place as the “echo domes” for the deep echos the inside of the steel phosphoric-acid storage tanks create. Follow this link to hear why it’s referred to as the “echo domes”. Be sure to turn the sound up! You can read about the PotashCorp Phosphate Terminal and many other abandoned places in my books, Abandoned Jacksonville: Remnants of the River City and Abandoned Jacksonville: Ruins of the First Coast.