Penney Farms, FL

Penney Farms sits near the geographic center of Clay County on State Road 16, eight miles west of Green Cove Springs and twenty miles east of Starke. J. C. Penney founded the community in 1922 as an experimental farming village, and Florida incorporated the town in 1927. The original plan changed after the real-estate downturn and stock-market crash, leading Penney toward a retirement community for Christian ministers and other church workers. That pivot is the key to the town's map: its name comes from a retail pioneer, while its daily institutions grew from a religious retirement experiment.

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Penney Retirement Community remains the dominant local institution. Penney Memorial Church was the first building, followed by 98 cottages, and the interdenominational community now includes residents from more than 25 Christian denominations. The town maintains its own council, clerk, manager, water utility, zoning, and public-records systems, with municipal offices on Clark Avenue. The retirement campus and town government sit together in a small Clay County settlement inside the Jacksonville metropolitan area. Penney Farms' local scoop is the unusual sequence: a planned farm village became a town whose central campus still carries J. C. Penney's original social purpose.