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Richard Bull Memorial Park
Welcome to the Atlantic Beach Turtle Crawl! If this is the first turtle you’ve found, there are 23 others scattered throughout our park system, in places of historic significance, and even in some unexpected locations. If you’re up for a scavenger hunt to find every turtle on our Turtle Crawl, you can find a map HERE.
This turtle has a flat shell, long neck, and strange snorkel-like nose. Softshell Turtles like to bury themselves in the sediment with only their long nose above the water, waiting for prey to come by so, they can ambush them. The Florida Softshell Turtle is the fastest in Florida, reaching a top speed of 15 mph in water and 3 mph on land. This turtle is “fast” because its shell is cartilaginous carapace covered in leathery skin making it lighter and more agile than its more well known hardshell relatives.
The land now considered Richard Bull Memorial Park was purchased from the Florida East Coast Railway in the 1930's and became the site of the first Town Park and Town Hall after the Town of Atlantic Beach was incorporated in 1926. On May 24, 1944, the park was dedicated in memory of Richard Bull Sr., a pilot in the United States Navy who was killed over the Pacific Ocean during World War II while conducting a reconnaissance flight of an enemy carrier on February 5, 1942. Mr. Bull was later posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on behalf of President Franklin Roosevelt. Richard’s father, Harcourt Bull Sr., was a pillar in the early Atlantic Beach community and was appointed as the first mayor of Atlantic Beach by Florida Governor John Martin in 1926. Harcourt Bull Sr. died as a result of injuries from an automobile accident in 1943, but the Bull family’s influence on
Atlantic Beach continued with Florence Bull, Harcourt’s widow, maintaining various Bull corporations in the city and with George Bull Sr., Richard’s brother, developing much of Atlantic Beach including the Selva Marina Subdivisions, Selva Marina Gardens, and Sevilla Condominiums.