By 1780, Colonel Daniel McGirtt moved into the Jones Plantation and served with rebel troops in Georgia against the British.

After some skirmishes, he later changed sides and joined the British, plundering the rebel troops and stealing Georgian cattle.

The British governor, eventually had him court martialed and jailed at Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine, but he escaped.

The final construction boom occurred during the 1920s and Ortega has remained a neighborhood filled with wealthy businessmen and old families.

[5] The peninsula containing the Ortega neighborhood was originally an island until a land bridge was constructed at the southern end; this is now part of Roosevelt Boulevard, a section of U.S. Route 17.

Ortega Terrace towards the southern interior of the peninsula has large, stone and brick houses with a mix of styles.

Designed by architect Mellon Greely,[6] the development was planned to be a Mediterranean-inspired community with a railroad station, a resort hotel, a yacht basin, and canals like those of Venice, Italy.

According to a long-time resident, a man who had lived there since the 1930s, there were only 32 houses in the area then and no street markers, and Ortega Boulevard was a brick road that ran all the way to Green Cove Springs.

Prominent New York businessman William Astor helped start the Florida Yacht Club and was an active member there (there is still a room in the present 1928 clubhouse named for him).

[8] Timuquana's greens were designed by the country's most prominent golf architect, Donald Ross and later upgraded and maintained by Robert Trent Jones.