Originally called First Street and later Front Street, Bay Street was renamed in the mid-1950s by the Florence Garden Club. As the historic city center of Florence, Bay Street long held many of the city’s government and commerce functions, but after the bridge opened in 1936, businesses gradually moved uptown to the Highway 101 corridor and left the bay front during the 1950s. When the post office moved from Bay Street in 1970, downtown Florence became primarily a destination for fishermen and crabbers rather than the bustling center it had once been. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bay Street was transformed from a rundown bay front into what is now known as Old Town, and citizen-driven revitalization turned Old Town Florence into a tourism destination and brought new life to downtown. The Siuslaw River Bridge Interpretive Center, preserving one of the last open spaces in Historic Old Town Florence with an unobstructed view of the Siuslaw River Bridge, opened on June 28, 2013, on the former Barnett property after more than a decade of planning through a collaborative effort supported by federal, state, and local funds, including contributions from the Federal Highway Administration Scenic Byways Program, Federal and State Surface Transportation Program, Florence Urban Renewal Agency, and the City of Florence.