Palatka, Florida

==Library==
With up to sixteen hundred people employed by the mills of the Wilson Cypress Company in its heyday, the town of Palatka was in need of a space to further the education of its young working men.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Belleville |first1=B |title=Palatka to Picolata |date=2011 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |pages=141}}</ref> Although some library supporters, such as Betty P. Welch, wrote letters to library sympathizers such as Andrew Carnegie in search of funding, the funds for the first Palatka Public Library were provided by James Ross Mellon, the son of the famous Judge Thomas Mellon of Pittsburgh, who regularly wintered in Florida.<ref name="The River Flows North">{{cite book |last1=Michaels |first1=B |title=The River Flows North |publisher=Putnam County Public Library |url=https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=fl_library_history}}</ref> Founded in 1930, the Larimer Library was gifted in commemoration of James Mellon’s wife, Rachel Larimer, and was revered as a “poor man’s university” and “the rock on which to build an enlightened citizenry.”<ref name="The River Flows North"/> Today the Larimer Memorial Library contains an arts center, and the Palatka Public Library was moved to the campus of the St. Johns River Community College.<ref name="The River Flows North"/>