Penney Farms, small town and retirement community, holds rich history from famous namesake

• About three-fourths of Penney Farms' residents are retirees. The small town, featuring scenic live oaks and unique architecture, is built around a culture of volunteerism.
• In 1925, J.C. Penney bought 120,000 acres in Clay County, Fla. He envisioned an experimental farming project and a final home for retired ministers.
• While his agricultural ambitions failed, the retirement community has flourished in the past century.

An hour away from Jacksonville, off a road canopied by live oaks blanketed under Spanish moss, lies the town of Penney Farms.

It only takes 20 minutes to walk from the far end of town to the other, although the most popular mode of transportation is a golf cart, followed by tricycles. Some buildings are from this century, but many hint at Penney Farms’ long-ago origin with their French Norman architecture. There’s a post office with one worker next to a hair salon, and a museum next to the town hall.

Around 750 residents live in Penney Farms. Three-fourths of them are over the age of 55. They belong to the Penney Retirement Community.

An 'interesting agricultural experiment'

Florida is known for its retirees, but Penney Farms stands alone in its history. Named for its benefactor, James Cash Penney — of department store fame — the town began as a farming project and haven for retired clergymen and their wives, as well as YMCA and YWCA workers.

Penney began investing in Florida in the early 1920s, purchasing homes in Miami. Thomas DeVille, a member of the Historical Society of Penney Farms’ board of directors and longtime town resident, said that Penney rubbed elbows with the Rockefellers and other businessmen buying into the state.

“He was friends with all the big wheelers and dealers,” Pat Garlinghouse, the historical society’s secretary and retiree, said.

In 1925, Penney expanded his efforts. He bought 120,000 acres in Clay County for $400,000. The land accounted for a third of the entire county. At the time, it held Long Branch City, a partially abandoned town with crumbling infrastructure, and an adjacent Black settlement called New Hope that is still around today. A 1927 essay by John C. Snowhook about Penney’s project, modestly entitled, “How One Man is Solving the Farm Problem for Hundreds,” described the state of the land at the time of the purchase.

“Weeds grew over the huge acreage as high as a horse’s back,” he wrote, “and the rolling terrain was dotted here and there with dilapidated buildings in a sad state of repair.”

So, Penney fixed up the buildings, roads and railroad. A booklet about the settlement, created by the Penney-Gwinn Corporation Farms, said the revitalized area boasted 20,000 acres of cleared land, 100 miles of roads, 300 houses, two schools, two general stores, two gas stations, a church, a drug store, a post office and more. Penney and his associatesalso established the Institute of Applied Agriculture to teach farmers how to be successful in the new town.

Penney was not interested in selling real estate. He had different ambitions: an experimental farming community operated like a department store, where participants were fellow owners in the endeavor. The model harkened back to his own start in business over two decades before. Working for a chain of stores called the Golden Rule, Penney was offered equal partnership in newly opened stores, later buying full interest. These locations would eventually be incorporated into the J.C. Penney Company.

Penney wanted to pay forward his partners’ goodwill and his own success. He offered the settlement’s farmers the right to purchase their land — typically 20 acres — after they successfully worked it for a set period, which they kept the profits from. In 1927, journalist Albert Shaw praised Penney’s project in an article titled “How Florida is getting on.”

“It might be hard to find anywhere in the world a more interesting agricultural experiment than that which has been recently undertaken by Mr. J.C. Penney,” Shaw wrote.

While the land on farming settlements was commonly first-come, first-serve, Penney required interested parties to fill out an application. He mailed applications across the nation with an informational booklet to entice farmers. Snowhook wrote that the list of applicants was extremely large. Another contemporary essay, J.C. Sellers’ “What the Farm Project Is All About,” said that Penney even received letters from New Zealand and Germany inquiring about his experiment. The application asked about a family’s finances and farming experience, but also their character.

“It would ask you questions, point blank, ‘Do you use tobacco? Do you use alcohol?’” DeVille said. “[A ‘yes’] automatically puts you in the round file can by the desk.”

The application also asked if the family went to church, how many kids — or really, farmhands — they had and for a group photograph. Applicants needed three references to attest to their moral standing and agricultural ability. Families recommended by Penney’s department store managers were preferred.

That first year, around 40 farmers were accepted into the project. The next, there were 50 more newcomers. A Jacksonville Journal article from March 7, 1926, proclaimed in its headline, “PENNY BRINGING 6,000 FARMERS TO FLORIDA.”

But the farming project fell far short of 6,000. Five years after it began, it fell apart.

According to Arch F. Blakly’s book, “Parade of Memories: A History of Clay County, Florida,” the town, which was renamed to Penney Farms in 1927, experienced multiple struggles. The sandy soil needed more fertilizers than farmers could afford. Some planted crops weren’t suited to the climate. Yields declined.

“The farming was hard,” Garlinghouse said. But beyond that, produce regularly spoiled before it could be sold at local markets. “Even if they had [good weather], getting the products from farm to shipment wasn’t always reliable. They would have potatoes just rot. All their hard work — poof.”

Farmers fled the failed project. Penney himself wasn’t far behind. Left destitute by the Great Depression, he sold the land. His initial 120,000 acres encompassed Penney Farms as well as the nearby town of Green Cove Springs right on the St. Johns River.

“When he lost everything, he let it go for $10,” DeVille said about part of the land. “All that riverfront property, $10.”

But while Penney’s agricultural ambitions ended, his retirement community has lived on.

A final home for church servants

The early idea for the retirement community came to Penney at 4 in the morning. He and his associates, soon after the 1925 land purchase, were unsure what to do with some of the existing buildings on it. During a stay in Green Cove Springs’ Qui-Si-Sana Hotel, Penney said he was awoken “as if by a voice.” He hurried to the room of his business partner Ralph Gwinn to propose his plan: to house retired church employees.

Penney’s father had been a minister. As was custom at the time, according to Penney, his father went unpaid for the work. When Penney Sr. advocated for ministers to be compensated, he was let go. Although the family also farmed, Penney Sr. did not have the resources for retirement. He lived the last years of his life impoverished.

This was not a unique problem among clergymen. According to Blakly’s book, very few denominations had pension plans or housing projects for retired ministers.

Meanwhile, there was a growing effort across the nation to provide housing and care for older adults. Penney’s retirement community, which he described as an expression of gratitude toward his deceased parents, would be the largest of three developed in Florida in that decade.

When Penney saw the success of the relocated retirees, he became more involved in developing what was then called the Memorial Home Community. He began building new homes and amenities, beginning with the church. Penney laid its cornerstone on June 13, 1926.

The church was built in the center of the community as a refuge, echoing the medieval practice of townspeople rushing to the church if there was an invasion. These early buildings were built in a French Norman style, with yellow exteriors and pointed, red roofs.

When the Great Depression hit a few years later, Penney became unable to fund his philanthropic endeavors. He financially withdrew from the retirement community, but continued to serve in leadership positions until his death in 1971.

Some retirees left as Penney’s sponsorship did, but the majority stayed, according to Blakly’s book. They did work that was previously done by paid staff. They fed themselves through gardening. They relied on their professional skills. They implemented a maintenance fee and figured out ways to save money. They kept the community going.

A one-of-a-kind town

Almost a century later, perhaps the biggest change to the retirement community is that its residents can come from any profession nowadays. Otherwise, it has stayed true to the sentiment of that late-night vision that woke Penney up.

Penney Retirement Community provides continuing care as residents move from independent living — where two-thirds of its retirees live in cottages, apartments and more modern houses — to assisted living, memory care or the nursing home.

People usually spend 15-20 years living independently. Even then, they get the perks of not having to worry about home repairs, landscaping and the like. Garlinghouse said her husband still insists on mowing his own grass, though.

Other amenities include a nine-hole executive golf course which people can and do play on well into their 90s, marketing director Rebecca Padgett said. The commons building holds a coffee shop, library, fitness center, pool and game room. Across the street, there’s an arts and crafts center with service shops, where residents repair each other’s electronics, golf carts and clothes without a labor fee.

In November, the community holds an arts and crafts fair that draws outsiders to the town to buy handmade items. There’s a year-round resale shop that sells people’s old clothes and furniture as they downsize, or just seek a change in scenery.

“A lot of it gets recycled, but the community from outside has found that it’s a real good bargain,” Garlinghouse said. “It’s not only a convenience, but it’s a vital resource for a lot of people.”

All activities are run by the residents, from the model railroad club to the woodworking club to the bird watching club. Countless hallways and communal spaces are decorated by residents’ watercolor paintings and photography.

“There’s no reason for you to be bored here,” Garlinghouse said. “There’s something for everybody.”

So, it’s kind of like The Villages?

“But different,” Padgett says to that. “It’s very different in the culture.”

In fact, some people leave The Villages and other retirement communities to come here. It isn’t part of a network, and it isn’t run for profit. It’s the only retirement community in the state where one-third of its board of directors are required to be residents.

It’s small, where people know each other’s names. And if they forget, everyone wears a nametag. As Padgett drives around town in a golf cart, she greets each passerby. Hi, Wilma. Hi, Jane. Hey, David.

In the dining hall, which serves three meals a day for retirees, Padgett says hello to resident Ardith Keef, a self-described musician who used to work a side gig as a lawyer.

“Are we going out soon?” Padgett asks.

“Next week,” Keef says, “I’m playing the Miami Symphony this week.”

Later, Padgett is approached by someone showing her pictures from a wedding the weekend before. The groom is 90 years old. The bride, 82. They met here, in Penney Farms. Padgett said weddings aren’t common, but they’re not exactly rare. This wedding was the second one in June.

Padgett said that the retirees come from a diverse array of backgrounds, from missionaries who have lived almost entirely in foreign countries, to secular workers in the United States.

Al Larson, for example, was an electrician living north of Chicago. Padgett is sure to add that Larson did gymnastics in college. His best event was the high bar.

“For someone with a high preservation level,” Larson says, “I sure picked the wrong event.”

He and his wife, Jackie, have lived in a Penney Retirement Community cottage for a little over two years, half of that time with their toy golden doodle named Kinamona. It’s the Hawaiian word for cinnamon, complementing Kina’s brown coat. In his free time, Larson likes to play pickleball in a group.

“There’s a lot of interesting people here,” he says. “I consider myself kind of ‘blah’ compared to the stories that these people have.”

Padgett disagrees: “Not everyone can say they competed in high bar, Al.”

The most famous resident Penney Retirement Community has seen, however, is probably actor Meinhardt Raabe. He played the Munchkin coroner in “The Wizard of Oz” that examined the Wicked Witch of the East’s body. He had one line — although it was dubbed over with another actor’s voice — which Padgett knows by heart:

“She’s not only merely dead. She’s really, most sincerely dead.”

But what really sets Penney Retirement Community apart from other retirement communities, Padgett said, is the lifestyle of volunteerism. When retirees leave their jobs, they can experience a loss of identity, she said.

“What it does to retirees — you think of all the time and effort and education, sweat, tears — and then you leave it, they’re done with you. It lends to depression,” Padgett said. “Here, they have an opportunity to plug in.”

Residents are encouraged to serve their community using their various talents as well as newly acquired skills and hobbies. For Garlinghouse, that means working at the resale shop and helping run the historical society. She said the volunteers joke about giving each other raises. But they’re happy to do the work.

Penney Retirement Community also just doesn’t look like other retirement communities.

Sure, it has plenty of modern houses and apartments. But unlike typical neighborhoods, Padgett said Penney Farms has “cookie-cutter nothing.” Each home is unique, with incoming residents able to have input on renovations. For example, a lady who loves to bake asked for a big island in her kitchen to fit her cookies on. If it’s feasible, the requests are accommodated.

Within the town’s historic district, the buildings’ exteriors adhere to the style of the original cottages. Next to these clusters of homes, which are shaded by sprawling live oaks, is the quadrangle. Built in 1950, this two-story apartment building was initially built for singles.

Previously, the retirement community was only available to couples. If your spouse died, you had to leave to make room for a couple on the waitlist. This “million-dollar project,” as it was called, changed that policy. Padgett said that oftentimes afterward, a missionary would come to Penney Farms straight from the field with just their suitcase and move in.

As the retirement community has expanded, the church is a bit off-center now. But it’s still a pillar of the town. Representing 27 different Christian faiths, retirees and locals alike attend services led by a roster of former pastors.

Walking through the heavy wooden front doors, congregation members are transported back in time. The ceiling looks like the hull of a ship flipped upside down. The original stained glass adorns the walls. In the foyer, a commemorative trowel from the 1926 construction hangs in a shadowbox on the wall.

The retirement community will celebrate its centennial next year with various events, from a gala to a play about J.C. Penney, written and directed by Clay County local Elaine Smith of the Clamour Theatre Company.

In many ways, Penney Farms is not the town that its benefactor envisioned a century ago. His experimental farming project failed. The town itself has actually shrunk over the decades as the surrounding areas developed, drawing business away from local stores.

But the town and retirement community cherish its history and remain loyal to Penney’s ideals. Garlinghouse said that, across Penney Farms, you’ll see and hear the same words over and over again. It’s the Golden Rule, the namesake for the first stores that Penney owned. It’s the guiding principle of this small town’s lifestyle.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”