HISTORY & HERITAGE
Bellamy Bridge Heritage Trail
Jackson County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
A half-mile trail off State Road 162 west of the Chipola River, leading to an iron bridge and a ghost story that is not true.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The bridge was built in 1914 and is the oldest structure of its type in Florida. The story told about it is that Elizabeth Jane Bellamy died on her wedding night when her dress caught fire, and that she walks here still. The records say otherwise. She married Samuel Bellamy on July 15, 1834, in North Carolina, three years before the legend puts the wedding, and she died of fever on May 11, 1837, at eighteen years old, with her son Alexander dying a week later; both were buried in a grove near where the bridge now stands. The burning dress came from a novel, Ernest Linwood by Caroline Lee Hentz, which describes an enslaved woman badly burned and is set in Columbus, Georgia. Hentz spent her last days in Marianna, and readers joined her fictional Bellamy plantation to the real family. The trail is free and open daily, at 4057 Highway 162
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