The importance of expanding access to safe waters in communities of colour

This story about the Bruce Beach Revitalisation Project and the Davis Center at the Harlem Meer spotlights two honorees on our list of Bright Ideas in Travel 2025. Read the full list here.

The water that flows into Pensacola Bay tells a story older than the state itself. Centuries before Pensacola became one of the largest cities in the Florida panhandle, it was a colonial-era settlement. Its western border was marked by Washerwoman’s Creek, a freshwater spring named for the enslaved and Creole women who braved the marsh to wash clothes and gather drinking water. In the early 20th century, however, the stream was routed into underground pipes and paved over. The city developed and utilised the area instead for docking merchant and commercial ships. But even so, the creek never really disappeared. The water churned underfoot.

Now, a resurfaced stretch of Washerwoman’s Creek runs along the eastern edge of Bruce Beach Park, a revitalised waterfront in downtown Pensacola. The new 10-acre coastal park sits adjacent to the historically Black neighbourhoods of The Tanyard and Belmont-Devilliers, and opened to the public in November 2024. Its opening marked the completion of a larger restoration project carried out by the City of Pensacola in collaboration with the University of West Florida Historic Trust, a local construction company, and two New York City-based design and engineering firms. With a pedestrian bridge now running over a part of Washerwoman’s Creek, as well as new playground equipment, seating areas, trails, recently planted native vegetation, and a kayak launch, the $11.8 million (around £8.8 million) investment connects local communities to the water and to one another.

The project also spotlights the complexities of Bruce Beach’s past. Around the park, a series of signs detail the history of sites like Washerwoman’s Creek and Bruce’s Pool, which became an important centre of Black life in the mid-20th century. In the 1950s, when racist Jim Crow laws prohibited Black people from accessing most other public beaches and recreational spaces, Pensacola’s Black community flocked to the area as a social gathering space. Eventually, they raised enough money to build a pool that stayed open until 1975. Though pollution and perilously deep waters made the bay dangerous for swimming, Bruce Beach was, as one on-site sign puts it, “the place to be” for Black Pensacolians. It was both a respite from segregation and a vibrant social hub, where residents could enjoy amenities such as picnic shelters, volleyball courts, and the much-loved Bruce’s Pool.

Today’s Pensacola residents, including members of the city’s Black community, were instrumental in advocating for and working on the restoration project. Many of them wanted to recapture the joy that the city’s Black residents were able to find here even under Jim Crow, and preserve the rich history of the area. Pastor C. Marcel Davis, who served on the community advisory group for the restoration project, tells me that he’s spent years hearing from elders who remember the bliss (and the dangers) of “Bruce’s Beach,” as they most often refer to it, in the meaningful possessive—it was theirs. Bruce Pool was where multiple generations of Black Pensacolians first learned to swim, and where many sought refuge from the choppy waters of the Bay, where several children drowned in the 1960s. On-site at the restored park, interactive signage points to the location of the old pool, emphasising the efforts of Black Pensacolians who worked to make the waterfront both accessible and safe for everyone.