Florida History: Take a 'spellbinding' adventure to Apalachicola
Date Posted: January 17, 2022
Source: The News-Press

Staff Pick: This is one of the news stories our staff is reading this week.

If you love Florida history, you must visit Apalachicola. Every place in Florida is rich in history, but in Apalach (as its residents fondly refer to it), the past doesn’t have to be imagined; it’s visible.

Situated at the mouth of the Apalachicola River and Apalachicola Bay on the Gulf of Mexico some seventy-five miles southwest of Tallahassee in the Florida panhandle, Apalach has a phenomenal nine hundred homes, commercial buildings, and sites on the national register of historic places. In fact, in 2008, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Apalachicola one of the Dozen Distinctive Destinations in the United States.

Apalachicola was laid out in the old Spanish colonial design, which featured a large central square or park, surrounded by five smaller squares/parks, with blocks and streets laid out on a grid between them. These six squares today, each with its own history, comprise the historic district and are the focus of the City Squares Walking Tour.

Another of the town’s self-guided tours is the History Walking Tour, featuring no fewer than thirty-seven sites and nationally registered historic buildings. The oldest is a former cotton warehouse built in 1837; it serves as City Hall today. The youngest building on this tour is the post office, built as a customs house in 1923. The structures built in the 86 years between 1837 and 1923 reflect the entire history of Apalachicola.

The city began as a trading post called Cottonton, established during the era of British occupation when it was in England’s colony of West Florida. (The Apalachicola River is the historic dividing line between the former British colonies of West Florida and East Florida.)

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