On Friday, December 4, preordered boxes of Florida navels, satsumas and red grapefruit go home with their buyers from the Mandarin Community Club at 12447 Mandarin Road. A short walk east, along the river, stood the cottage of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose grove oranges went north on the local steamships during her winters here between 1867 and 1884.
The fruit in this year's boxes comes from much farther away. Mandarin is named for an orange, but the St. Johns citrus belt it belonged to was largely abandoned after the freezes of the 1890s. Today the fruit comes from a statewide crop that the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects to be smaller this winter than last. So the citrus pickup at the Club's Christmas Tree Lighting is the one night a year Mandarin's namesake fruit comes back to the road where it once grew.
The Name Came First, in 1830
According to a Florida Times-Union history of the neighborhood's name, the settlement was called Monroe until 1830. That year Calvin Reed renamed it Mandarin, after the mandarin orange, which was a major local crop at the time. The town also became a river port that shipped citrus north.
Stowe arrived in 1867 and made Mandarin her winter home. The Mandarin Museum's account of her years here puts her cottage on the river just east of today's Community Club. Her husband Calvin taught Bible studies on its big front porch, and oranges from her grove went north on the local steamships. The pieces she wrote for Northern periodicals, collected in Palmetto Leaves in 1872, are credited with helping build Florida's winter tourist trade with their descriptions of live oaks, Spanish moss and orange blossoms.
The Stowes left for the last time in 1884. In 1916 a Louis Comfort Tiffany window showing the view from their porch was installed at the Church of Our Saviour. Hurricane Dora brought a hickory tree down on the window in 1964 and destroyed it. A display of the window and some surviving fragments are part of the Mandarin Museum's permanent exhibit.
The Great Freeze changed the map. The Orange County Regional History Center dates the two worst cold snaps to December 29, 1894, which damaged groves, and February 7, 1895, which killed or damaged the trees themselves. According to the Florida Department of State, the citrus belt along the St. Johns was largely abandoned after those freezes and production moved south. Mandarin kept the name after the industry moved on.
What's in This Year's Box
The Mandarin Community Club, founded in 1923, runs the fundraiser with the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. This is its second holiday season. The first was in 2025, and First Coast News anchor Jeannie Blaylock helped launch it with an on-air feature about the state's struggling citrus industry, as Florida NewsLine reported. Proceeds support the Club's work preserving Mandarin's history and keeping up its three historic properties.
There are three kinds of fruit this year: classic Florida navels, North Florida satsuma mandarins, and red grapefruit grown under the state's Citrus Under Protective Screens program. Prices on the Club's Farm Bureau order page:
| Item | Pickup on Mandarin Road | Shipped direct |
|---|---|---|
| Florida navel oranges, 20 lb box | $35 | n/a |
| Florida navel oranges, 10 lb | $25 | $43 |
| Florida red grapefruit, 20 lb box | $35 | n/a |
| Florida red grapefruit, 10 lb | $25 | $43 |
| Florida satsuma mandarins, 20 lb box | $40 | n/a |
| Florida satsuma mandarins, 10 lb bag | $30 | n/a |
| Florida mixed citrus gift box, 8 lb | $30 | $48 |
The satsumas are the closest link to the neighborhood's name, since a satsuma is a mandarin. They also come from the closest growing region on the list. The shipped prices include $18 for delivery anywhere in the continental U.S. Shipped orders are taken through December 15 and arrive the week of December 21. Preorders for pickup close this month, so the order page is the place to check what is still available.
Restaurants and businesses can order 40-pound bulk boxes by calling the Club at (904) 236-8106.
A Smaller Crop Than Last Winter
The fruit is scarcer this season. The first forecast for the 2026–27 season from the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, released October 9, 2026 and summarized by Citrus Industry magazine, shows every Florida variety except lemons coming in below last season. The comparison uses the USDA NASS final 2025–26 forecast from July 10, 2026.
| Florida crop | 2025–26 final, July 2026 | 2026–27 first forecast, Oct. 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| All oranges | 12.92 million boxes | 10 million boxes |
| Grapefruit | 1.35 million boxes | 1.3 million boxes |
| Tangerines and mandarins | 460,000 boxes | 450,000 boxes |
Navels see the biggest drop. They belong to the non-Valencia group of oranges, which is projected at 3 million boxes, down 37 percent from last season. All Florida oranges together are expected to fall 23 percent. The navels at the Club's pickup this year come from the part of the state crop that shrank the most.
The grapefruit comes from a different system. UF/IFAS describes Citrus Under Protective Screen as trees grown inside screened structures that keep out the Asian citrus psyllid, the insect that spreads citrus greening. It reports more than 2,000 acres planted this way in Florida in 2026. The Club says the fruit grown under these screens is free of greening, and it calls this grapefruit among the first large-scale screened harvests sold to the public.
In the 1890s the St. Johns groves were lost to cold. The groves that still produce in Florida are now being protected from an insect with screens.
The December Calendar Along Mandarin Road
The citrus pickup falls in the same few weeks as the museum's lecture and open day on Mandarin Road.
- Thursday, November 19, 7 p.m. The Mandarin Museum's Third Thursday Lecture is "Hidden History of Jacksonville" with author Ron Whittington.
- Friday, December 4. The Mandarin Community Club Christmas Tree Lighting at 12447 Mandarin Road, which is also the main night for citrus pickup.
- Saturday, December 5, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. On the first Saturday of every month, the historic buildings at Walter Jones Historical Park open, along with the 1911 Mandarin Store & Post Office at 12471 Mandarin Road.
- Sunday, December 6. Last day to pick up citrus orders at the Club. Boxes not collected are donated to the food bank.
- Week of December 21. Shipped gift boxes arrive.
The Club also lists a Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony at 1 p.m. in November.
The tree lighting began in 2020, during the pandemic, when Club volunteers put up a towering Fraser fir. Florida NewsLine's coverage of last year's event calls it Jacksonville's largest live-cut tree lighting. The tree is topped with a mandarin orange made by artist Brenda Mauney Councill, who has roots in Mandarin. In 2024 the City of Jacksonville's Neighborhoods Department gave the event a Neighborhood Champion Award.
The same coverage describes the 2025 event. Gates opened at 5 p.m. and the tree was lit at 6:30. Smooth Vibes and Theatre Troupe 1776 played, and Santa and Mrs. Claus were inside the clubhouse. Guests brought nonperishable food for the Mandarin Food Bank and new toys for Toys for Tots, and the museum gave guided tours of the 1911 Store & Post Office. That was last year's program. The Club's 2026 calendar lists December 4 as the date.
The Mandarin Museum's display of the Tiffany window shows the porch view of oaks, moss and river that the Stowes enjoyed during their Mandarin winters.
Do you know the stretch of Mandarin Road between the Community Club and Walter Jones Historical Park, or just the San Jose Boulevard side of the neighborhood? I'm glad to talk through what makes Mandarin's older riverside streets different from the rest of the area. Grab your citrus on December 4, then reach out to Daly N Braxton and Schedule Your Consultation.
