Driving through Fleming Island, Florida

Fleming Island is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Clay County, Florida, United States. It is located 21 miles (34 km) southwest of downtown Jacksonville, on the western side of the St. Johns River, off US 17. As of the 2010 census the Fleming Island CDP had a population of 27,126. Fleming Island's ZIP code became 32003 in 2004, giving it a different code from Orange Park, the incorporated town to the north.
Fleming Island (which is a peninsula) was an area of Florida settled by Irish immigrant, George Fleming (1760-1821), who received a 1,000-acre land grant from the Spanish governor of East Florida for his military service.George Fleming built a plantation in 1790 and it was named Hibernia Plantation (in what is now Hibernia, Florida), after the Latin word for Ireland. When he died in 1821, the plantation was left to his son, Col. Lewis Michael Fleming (1798-1862).

In 1942, when the area was undeveloped, the U.S. Navy constructed four asphalt runways on the site and established a Naval Outlying Field designated as NOLF Fleming Island, an auxiliary airfield to Naval Air Station Jacksonville. The Navy abandoned the auxiliary airfield in the 1960s, its runways too short to accommodate the jet aircraft then in operation at nearby NAS Jacksonville and NAS Cecil Field, and in the late 1990s the decaying runways were demolished to make way for current residential development.