The History of Washington County

Early Settlers, Preachers and Roche's Bluff

Early settlers came for the rich soil of the Coosada Old Fields, later called the Holmes Old Fields. Soon after Spain gave Florida to the United States, they set up a log schoolhouse and a Methodist mission near Moss Hill. Reports place a Methodist preacher near Econfina Creek by 1821. One early history speaks of Methodists working in Holmes Valley in 1823. The state marker says the first Methodist minister posted anywhere from the Apalachicola River west to Pensacola went to the Holmes Valley Mission.

Settlers reached the area around today's Vernon in the 1820s. Stephen J. Roche was among the earliest, and his trading post on Holmes Creek was called Roche's Bluff. When Indians threatened, settlers could take shelter in a blockhouse fort on a point of the ridge, about half a mile north of the road junction near the church.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Historical Markers: Moss Hill; National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Moss Hill Church; Florida Department of State, Historical Markers: Vernon, Florida

Vernon, the Crossroads on Holmes Creek, 1830 to 1856

In the early 1830s, two-horse stagecoaches began running along the ridge road past Moss Hill. The stages came by four times a week, linking the Holmes Valley settlements with Tallahassee by mail and passenger service. Vernon grew where a military road met Holmes Creek, and it became a meeting point for travel and trade between Tallahassee and Pensacola. Stagecoaches and small steamships brought people, mail and goods through the town. Stephen J. Roche later took part in the Constitutional Convention held at St. Joseph from 1838 to 1839.

On July 20, 1846, after a revival led by Rev. Lemuel Tippins of Alabama, the Holmes Valley Baptist Church was formed. It is now called Ebenezer Baptist Church. In 1850 Holmes Valley Baptists built a meeting house in the newly designated town of Vernon. A hurricane knocked it down in 1856.

In 1848 the Florida General Assembly told county officials to gather at the Moss Hill Meeting House and choose a plan for building a courthouse. Vernon became the county's first permanent seat of government in 1851.

Sources: National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Moss Hill Church; Florida Department of State, Historical Markers: Vernon, Florida

The Civil War and the Freedom Churches

During the Civil War, the church's National Register history says, nearly every family must have had someone away in military service. The Union army of Gen. Alexander Asboth, which raided Marianna late in 1864, stopped in Vernon. Falling Waters State Park still holds the remains of a gristmill from the 1860s, the Civil War era.

Enslaved people had belonged to both the Holmes Valley Baptist and Moss Hill Methodist churches. When the war ended and they were free, they started churches of their own. Two of them, Mt. Calvary Baptist and Sylvania A.M.E., stand in the valley within two or three miles of the churches they came from.

Sources: National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Moss Hill Church; Florida State Parks: Falling Waters State Park, Experiences and Amenities; Florida State Parks: Falling Waters State Park, History

Pine Log, Florida's First State Forest, 1936

In the mid-1930s, at President Roosevelt's request, Florida Governor David Sholtz set up a Conservation Committee to acquire state forests and parks. In 1936 the state bought 6,670 acres from the Henderson-Waits Lumber Company. The land became Pine Log State Forest, the first state forest the program obtained. The forest's management plan calls it Florida's first state forest.

A stand of slash pine known as the Blueberry Slash Pine Plantation was planted there in 1937. Another 240 acres came from private owners in 1938. The forest lies in northwestern Bay County and southwestern Washington County, along State Road 79.

Sources: Florida Department of Environmental Protection: Pine Log State Forest Management Plan, Item 16

A State Park at Falling Waters and a Church Saved, 1962 to 1983

The Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials acquired the land for Falling Waters State Park in 1962. A picnic shelter went up soon after the park was set up. The park says it also has the remains of the first oil well drilled anywhere in Florida.

The state park calls its waterfall the state's tallest. A stream spills into a round sinkhole 100 feet deep and 20 feet wide. The park's own pages give the drop as 70, 73 or 74 feet. No one knows where the water finally goes.

After World War II, Moss Hill Church's membership dwindled, and for decades up to 1981 the church was in danger. That changed in 1982, when the Moss Hill UMC Foundation was formed as a nonprofit to care for and preserve the building. The form nominating it for the National Register, prepared by E.W. Carswell and Larry S. Paarlberg, is dated August 26, 1983.

Sources: Florida State Parks: Falling Waters State Park, History; Florida State Parks: Falling Waters State Park, Experiences and Amenities; Florida State Parks: Geology of Falling Waters State Park; Florida State Parks: Falling Waters State Park; Florida State Parks: Experience the Waterfall; National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Moss Hill Church