Apalachicola Historic District in Franklin County, Florida

Photograph: Market Street Nutrition, Apalachicola, Florida.jpg by The Bushranger · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Franklin County attraction

Apalachicola Historic District

Franklin County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

Six hundred and fifty-two historic buildings in a town that was once the third busiest port on the Gulf.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Apalachicola Historic District is bounded by the Apalachicola River, the bay, and 17th and Jefferson Streets, and holds 652 historic buildings, with construction dates starting in 1836. It went on the National Register of Historic Places on November 21, 1980. The architecture runs to mid-nineteenth-century revival, late Victorian and later revival styles. The town was first called Cottonton, because that is what it traded, then West Point, then Apalachicola from 1831. Before the Civil War it was the third busiest port on the Gulf of Mexico, behind only New Orleans and Mobile, shipping cotton that came down the river from inland. Timber followed, then seafood, and Greek immigrants built a sponge trade here in the late 1800s. A local doctor, John Gorrie, worked out the cold-air process of refrigeration and patented an ice machine in 1850, which is where modern air conditioning starts. About 2,500 people live here now. A shrimp fleet still works out of the harbor, restored antebellum houses stand a street back from working seafood businesses, and the whole place can be walked in an afternoon

GETTING THERE

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