Flagler County Swimming Pool

George Moody hired L. O. Upson to build a swimming pool in 1919 at the corner of South Daytona Avenue and 3rd Street in Flagler Beach. It was 40 x 110 feet with a depth ranging from three to eight feet. It was fed by an artisan well with a 4-inch casing. It is said that the flow of sulfur water had enough force to knock a man down. The water flowed over a spillway and drained into the marsh at the west end. T. J. Miller tells how he and some of the other kids would scrub the green slime caused by the sulfur water from the concrete walls two or three times a week in order to keep it clean.

Eventually, a vale was placed on the well to control the flow. When the pool was drained for cleaning, it would refill within 24 hours. The pool had a diving board at the deep end and was enjoyed by many of the town’s residents and tourists alike. During the 1930s the city paid different residents to clean the pool from time to time, paying the worker $2.00 to $4.00 depending on the economy and what the town could afford.

One day, Norma Durrance Turner took her younger brothers to the pool to swim. When they got there, they noticed that someone had dumped a box of Hershey’s kisses in the pool. The kids had a great time diving to retrieve the candy—and then eating it. Finally, someone asked why the kisses had been thrown in the water; they learned that a cat in the store had gotten into the box and made a mess.  Needless to say, that was the end of that adventure.

The pool was a very popular gathering place. The kids in town would go to the beach, and then go for a swim in the pool to wash off the salt and sand from the ocean. However residents began complaining about the odor from the sulfur water, so the well was capped in the late 1940s. The pool was left to deteriorate. The excavation was filled when the present Post Office was built in 1979. The lot where the pool used to be is now the Flagler Beach Post Office parking lot.