The History of Calhoun County

Chipola, Ocheesee and the Cotton Years

A WPA history of the county says the first settlement in what is now Calhoun County was called Chipola. Ocheesee Bluff, on the Apalachicola River, was where the earliest military road between Pensacola and St. Augustine crossed it. In 1829 the real estate promoters Perry and Mill laid out a town and sold its lots. In 1832 the territorial legislature formed Fayette County and made Ocheesee its seat. Lawmakers did away with Fayette County in 1834, and Ocheesee stayed small.

From 1840 to 1860, growing cotton paid very well for the county's farmers. The county history calls Jason Gregory its most outstanding planter. Gregory bought up nearly every lot in Ocheesee. In the late 1850s, as many as 30 steamboats worked the Apalachicola River between Georgia and Alabama and the town of Apalachicola.

Sources: Florida Memory: History of Calhoun County (WPA typescript with 1937 cover letter); Calhoun County, Florida: History of Calhoun County

St. Joseph Falls and the Seat Moves to Abe Springs Bluff

Yellow fever killed most of St. Joseph's people in 1841, the WPA history says. It says a hurricane and a tidal wave in 1843 finished the town. An FNAI timeline instead says a hurricane wiped out St. Joseph in 1850. The state marker at Abe Springs Bluff places both the fever and the storm in the early 1840s.

For a while after that, the county had no seat of government. State lawmakers tried without success to name a new seat between 1845 and 1847. In 1848 the county's voters chose among the proposed sites. The next January, Abe Springs Bluff, a more central site away from the coast, was officially named the county seat.

Abe Springs Bluff never became a real town, the marker says, and was only a courthouse site. Its one-story wooden courthouse stood on a lonely spot above the Chipola River. The WPA history says this courthouse burned in 1862, and most of the county's records were lost.

Sources: Florida Memory: History of Calhoun County (WPA typescript with 1937 cover letter); Florida Natural Areas Inventory (ARROW): History, Calhoun County; Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources: Abe Springs Bluff Courthouse (historical marker)

New Blountstown and the 1904 Courthouse

River floods drove some people to move to higher ground. A new section called New Blountstown began to grow as the century turned. Blountstown was chartered as a city in May 1903. Its first mayor, Francis Marion Yon, laid out its streets, alleys, blocks and lots.

In 1904 a much bigger courthouse of brick, two stories tall, was built a little over a mile northwest of the first one. Frank Lockwood and Benjamin Bosworth were its architects. FNAI's history calls it one of just two courthouses in the Romanesque Revival style still standing in Florida. The WPA history says an addition was built in 1914.

All of the county's offices worked out of the building until 1973. That year a new, modern courthouse was dedicated as the seat of government. The first Blountstown courthouse, at the Bluff, became a private home and was torn down in the mid-1940s.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources: "Old Blountstown" Courthouse (historical marker); Calhoun County, Florida: History of Calhoun County; Florida Natural Areas Inventory (ARROW): History, Calhoun County; Florida Memory: History of Calhoun County (WPA typescript with 1937 cover letter)

The M&B Railroad, 1909 to 1972

The Marianna and Blountstown Railroad ran for 63 years, from 1909 to 1972, and tied the county to the nation's rail lines and trade. Its line was 29 miles long, and the county says it was Florida's shortest railroad while it ran. Until 1938 the tracks went on another 16 miles south to Scotts Ferry.

Until 1929, when few people yet traveled by car, the M&B also carried passengers. Millions of board feet of longleaf pine lumber went out from local sawmills on the line. Mail, factory goods and building materials rode the line too.

Steam locomotive No. 444 was still at work in 1947, when the M&B's first diesel engine came. Today the engine rests on the exact spot where the M&B roadbed ran. The chamber of commerce says a railroad museum displays manifests, tickets, old typewriters and telegraphs from the line.

Sources: Calhoun County, Florida: History of Calhoun County; Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce: Tourism

Two Native Sons and Governor Fuller Warren

The county's history says two of its native sons won high offices in state government. One was Rivers Buford, who was Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court for several terms. The other was Fuller Warren, a Blountstown native born October 3, 1905. His 1973 obituary says he was picking cotton at eight years old, paid 75 cents a week along with a place to sleep and meals.

At 21 he served in the 1927 session of the Florida House of Representatives. He represented Calhoun County there, a University of Florida guide to his papers says. In World War II he was a gunnery officer in the Navy and crossed the Atlantic 20 times.

He served as governor of Florida from January 4, 1949, until January 6, 1953. During his term, ranchers were barred from letting their cattle wander on Florida's highways. Warren's death came on September 23, 1973, in Miami.

Sources: Calhoun County, Florida: History of Calhoun County; Florida Department of State: Fuller Warren; Walton County Heritage Association: Fuller Warren obituary (News-Herald, September 25, 1973); University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries: A Guide to the Fuller Warren Papers