Quincy Historic District in Gadsden County, Florida

Photograph: Quincy FL Allison House02.JPG by Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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.

Gadsden County attraction

Quincy Historic District

Gadsden County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

A town of shade tobacco money and Coca-Cola stock, once reported the richest city per person in the United States.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Quincy was laid out in 1828, the same year Governor William Duval brought Cuban tobacco to Florida. What grew out of that was shade tobacco, the leaf used to wrap fine cigars, and only this part of Florida and the Connecticut River Valley could grow it well. Northern tobacco companies bought Gadsden County land heavily, and by 1907 newspapers were reporting that Quincy was the richest city per person in the United States. The second fortune was stranger. From the 1920s a local banker, Mark Welch Munroe, known as Mr. Pat, told townspeople to buy Coca-Cola stock and hold it, and lent them money to do it. A share bought in 1919 became worth a great deal through splits and dividends, and that money carried the town through the Depression and every recession after. The result is a small town with far more substantial houses than its size would explain: antebellum and Victorian architecture around a courthouse square, with the E. B. Shelfer House, the John Lee McFarlin House, the library and the soldiers cemetery all in the National Register. About 8,230 people live here now, and downtown is a Florida Main Street with shops, restaurants and live music

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

MOVING TO GADSDEN COUNTY?Fourteen services. One business each.

Attorneys, movers, insurance, title companies, roofers and nine more — one listed business per service in Gadsden County.

See local help in Gadsden County →

Keep comparing

Return to the Things to Do choices in Gadsden County.

Back to Gadsden County