MUSEUM & CULTURE
Washington County Historical Society Museum
Washington County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
The county museum in downtown Chipley, at the Bill Lee Train Depot beside the Farmers Market.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The society was formed in July 1985 by local people who wanted the county's record kept, and the museum opened to the public on October 15, 1996. It spent its first years in the old ice plant at the junction of Highway 90 and Highway 77, and moved to the depot building in 2010. What is inside is the ordinary life of a north Florida county rather than anything grand. School yearbooks run back to 1942. There is a telephone company switchboard with the operators' memorabilia around it, furnishings and fittings pulled out of the old courthouse, farm implements, bottles, Native American artifacts, and displays on the turpentine industry that once employed much of this county. Military exhibits and material on Colonel W. D. Chipley, the railroad man the town is named for, sit alongside. The E. W. Carswell Research Library holds the genealogy records, which is why people from out of state come. The museum opens every Friday from ten in the morning until two
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