Riverside motel was an abandoned motel located in Yulee, Nassau County, Florida. It was opened in 1954 and owned by the Knud and Nellie Olfort. Nellie Olfort went missing in 1993 and her husband’s actions thereafter were suspicious due to his unwillingness to help in the search or allow people onto his large property. Knud died in 1997 and the property was given over to Nellie’s sister, Lena Christian.It wasn’t until September 11, 1999, when the Navy was performing diving exercises in the St. Mary’s River when Nellie’s car was found at the bottom, her skeletal remains still strapped to her car seat.
The two abandoned buildings made up the motel are in an “L” shape, with the office was sitting in the middle of the land. The building that was closest to the road showed the most damage, with most of the flooring in at least the first half of the rooms being broken up and sunken into the ground, leaving all of the furniture also half sunken into the Earth below. As of 2020, all buildings on the property were demolished.
This place has managed to stay mostly safe from the hands of vandals, with only a few signs of any serious or obviously intentional damage; everything else was the product of natural decay. There were several things inside, such as the furniture, decor, and other miscellaneous items that hinted at it being vacated sometime in the 80’s, however, all of the locals could only give the time frame as “a long time – decades.”
Next door to the Riverside Motel is the old St Mary’s Liquors, which is really two businesses in one. Divided in the middle, one side was the bar and liquor store where they would also play movies, and the other side was a souvenir shop. The building is actually much larger on the inside than it appears to be from the outside, so one can only imagine that they had a lot of stuff to see in there. Now, all that is left is the large, old sign that used to hang on the wall in the liquor store and an ancient typewriter in the souvenir shop side. A few random items, such as a very old tape recorder and a broom propped up against the counter still sit there, waiting for someone who will never come back.
