A Short History of Carrabelle, Florida
Carrabelle, Florida has been know to human habitants for at least 12,000 years. Because sea levels have risen in the latest geological age by 60-100 meters, archeological evidence of the Paleo-Indian, who inhabited a coastline as much as fifty miles south of the Dog Island beach, have never been discovered because they are now well covered with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Although the casual visitor would never realize it, Carrabelle is built on an island (St. James Island). The river network of the New, Crooked, Ochlocknee, and Carrabelle rivers effectively create a large island that shares the mainland ecology.

Modern history begins in the 1500’s with Spanish exploration when the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez records camping in the area of St. Vincent Island in 1528. The Carrabelle area didn’t appear on a map until 1683 when Admiral Alonso Solana’s map of Florida records two Indian villages on the banks of “Rio Chachave.”

For the next hundred years or so the Carrabelle area became the playground of pirates and the hunting grounds of Spanish slave traders who kidnapped local Indians to be sold into bondage in the sugar fields of Cuba and the Caribbean. In 1677 and again in 1682 pirates raided the fort at San Marcos (St. Marks) sacking it, stealing vessels, and holding captives for ransom.

During this time Britain and Spain vied for colonial control of the area now known as the Florida Panhandle. The French established a settlement in the area of present day Port St. Joe in 1718 which was quickly abandoned after Spanish protest. In 1819, under the terms of the Anis-Otis Treaty, Spain ceded Florida to the United States for less than 14 cents an acre and Andrew Jackson became the first territorial governor of Florida. The area Carrabelle now occupies was part of the controversial Forbes Purchase.

Panton, Leslie, and Co. was a trading company founded by expatriate Britain's based in Pensacola that ran a string of trading posts (credited by some sources as America’s first chain store operation) throughout the Panhandle region. Through sharp business practices they managed to indebt the local Indian population to the company for large amounts of money, which was satisfied by the Indians giving the company title to more than a million acres of land from the Apalachicola river east to St. Marks and north past present day Tallahassee and into Georgia. John Forbes, partner and associate of Panton and Leslie, purchased the company shortly before Spain ceded the territory and then sold his interest to a group headed by Colin Mitchell. When Florida became US territory in 1821 (at time when Apalachicola’s incorporated name was Cottonton), a court battle began that would take years to resolve. Finally, in 1835, in the last opinion handed down by the Supreme Court with Chief Justice John Marshall presiding, the Forbes Purchase was upheld as valid and legal.

During this time the city of Apalachicola was booming, despite the fact that nobody could acquire clear title to the land their homes and businesses were built on. With the court’s decision in 1835, residents of Apalachicola were legally little more than squatters, and St. Joseph was established twenty five miles west in protest. On the eastern side of the Apalachicola river, however, the court’s decision made it possible for land to be acquired for the first time as the US government set about clearing the area of Native American residents. In 1837 the last of the local Indian population was removed to Oklahoma, forced on the death march that is remembered today as the “Trail of Tears.”

In 1838 a lighthouse was erected on Dog Island to mark the West Pass of St. George Island for ocean going vessels coming to the Port of Apalachicola to deliver goods and take on cargos of plantation grown cotton for the fabric mills of Europe. The West Pass was as close as the large vessels could get to the port itself due to the shallow waters of St. George Sound and Apalachicola Bay. Transfer of goods was done by lighters, a small open boat that could be poled the 16 miles from the docks to the pass. Cargo was lightered to and from the waiting ships. In 1840 the population of Apalachicola was around 1,700 persons. For the next twenty five years Apalachicola grew into the third largest shipping port on the Gulf, but the Civil War blockade of the city and the coming of railroads into the plantation towns upriver sent Apalachicola’s economy into a tail spin.

It was during this time that the area between St. Marks and Apalachicola was first settled by Europeans. In 1845 Florida became a state, and by 1855 settlers were beginning to move into the area. Among the first recorded settlers was the family of McCagor Pickett. In 1861 Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.

As a response to the Union blockade at Apalachicola C. S. A. Captain H. T. Blocker of the Beauregard Rangers was stationed just a few miles from the present day area of Carrabelle at Camp Gladden. Spotting a Union ship carrying troops, Captain Blocker lay in ambush on Carr's Hill (now Coombs Hill) attacking the Federals who, surprised, were said to have jumped into the river and swampland, or swam alongside the Union vessel for protection from the withering fire unleashed by the Confederates. It was reported that the Confederate force killed or wounded 17 of 21 Union troops engaged in the action without a single wounding or casualty on the Confederate side. Later they burned the stairway and damaged the lens of the Dog Island lighthouse to prevent its use in the Union Blockade of Apalachicola.

On March 6, 1865 the Battle of Natural Bridge resulted in the last major casualties of the Civil War in Florida. The Union Forces of Major General John Newton engaged the Confederate forces of Major General Sam Jones. The Union was making a push to subdue the area and to take Tallahassee, then as now the capital of Florida. In an attempt to get past the St. Marks River, Union forces made their way to Natural Bridge in what is now southern Leon county. Protected by breastworks and entrenched the rag-tag Confederate forces were able to repulse the Union army, preserving Tallahassee as the only Confederate state capital not occupied by Union forces in the Civil War.

In the late 1860’s and early 1870’s a new economic boom came to Franklin Country as timbering and the production of naval stores such as turpentine began to provide an economic viability to an economy in shambles. It was this economic viability that drew the attention of Oliver Hudson Kelley who arrived with his family and associates in 1877. Kelley, a native of Massachusetts, was already a man who had made his mark on the world as a founder of the National Grange, a society dedicated to the protection of democracy and farmer’s well being. By the time he arrived in Florida he had already pioneered in Minnesota before founding the Grange in 1867.

In an excerpt from the official web site of The Grange, nationalgrange.org, Kelley is mentioned as the first of seven founders:

On December 4, 1867 in a small Washington, D.C. building that housed the office of William Saunders, Superintendent of Propagating Gardens in the Department of Agriculture, the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, more commonly known as the Grange, was born. Here, sitting around a plain wooden table, a group of seven earnest men, planned what was destined to become a vital force in preserving and expanding American democracy. They were all men of vision-they had faith in God, in their fellow man and the future. The Seven Founders of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry were:
Oliver H. Kelley • William Saunders
Aaron B. Grosh • William M. Ireland
John R. Thompson • Francis McDowell
John Trimble (Assisted by Caroline Hall)

That last name on the list, assistant to John Trimble, is an important link because it was Miss Caroline Hall (also named as Carolyn Arrabelle Hall in other sources), herself a national officer in the Grange, for whom the town was named. A niece to O.H. Kelley, she was a mainstay at Kelley’s Island Hotel (the area’s first year round hotel) where Kelley lived with his wife and four daughters. Carrie Hall, as she was called locally, was known as the “Belle of the town,” presumably for her beauty, business acumen, and her skill at baking. Whether it was her spirit or a simple corruption of her name by adding the first letter of her first name to her middle name, or a combination of the two, Kelley succeeded establishing a town and a Post Office in 1878. The original name given in the Post Office records is Rio Carrabelle. As Spanish influences receded, the name was later shortened to Carrabelle. By 1890 the population of Carrabelle was in excess of 482 persons according to the US Census.

O.H. Kelley became a one man Chamber of Commerce, promoting the area in most florid terms. An article appeared in the Tallahassee Weekly Floridian on January 25, 1881 penned by Kelley. Portions are excerpted here:

Rio Carrabelle, Fla., Jan 20, 1881; Editor Floridian; We are enjoying a refreshing season of moist weather – rather more moist than is agreeable, but far preferable to the heavy snows and excessive cold of the Northern States. However, we keep pegging away at our work, and continue to progress… Parlin & Brayton’s mill is turning out about thirty thousand fee per day (of lumber)….. That’s one of the advantages we have in building our town. We have a harbor acceptable to the largest craft that navigates the Gulf, and ships from all parts of the world can anchor here in perfect safety…. Our next move will be for a railroad to connect this harbor with Thomasville, and thence North…. Our hotel is progressing, and by the end of another week eighteen of the proposed fifty-four rooms will be ready for use. A number of comfortable cottages will be erected during the winter. Then visitors can be sure of finding good accommodations…… Since my last letter we have established a Sunday school, which has outgrown all the available room, hence another need of the school-house…… I presume we shall bye and bye have a cozy club house, where visitors can enjoy a quiet game of billiards, or any other game fancy may dictate – possibly draw poker. You see, we have free and easy notions, and mean that all who come here shall have the privilege of enjoyment according to their own notions….. We now have two stores, and a third is being built, which will have a meat market in connection, then with out fish and oysters, we can set good table – one of the essentials if we wish to encourage visitors…..

By the 1880’s the shoreline between Eastpoint and Carrabelle was dotted with sawmills and turpentine distillation plants. Carrabelle’s importance as a port grew in this era. With expanding markets in South America and Europe, O.H. Kelley and a group of investors chartered the Carrabelle and Thomasville Railroad Company. Their plan was to build a rail link from Dog Island Harbor (near the present day site of Carrabelle) inland to Thomasville, Georgia where it would link with lines to Eastern ports and Northern cities.

In 1883 the Florida legislature ignored Kelley’s group and chartered the Thomasville, Tallahassee & Gulf Railroad, headed by a group of mostly Northern investors. Unfortunately, the late 1800’s was a time of economic upheaval in this country which delayed the building of the rail link. The charter was extended in 1885, and again in 1887, but only twelve miles of track were laid before the railroad was sold in 1902, when it became the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Railway Company.

In 1891 a railroad was chartered under the name Carrabelle, Tallahassee, and Georgia Railroad and soon thereafter a rail link was established to Tallahassee. O.H. Kelley, founder and mayor of Carrabelle left the area in the 1890’s to return to his native Washington, D.C. where he managed his holdings in the Carrabelle area from a distance until his death in 1913.

In 1899 a disastrous hurricane struck the Florida panhandle, centering its might on tiny Carrabelle. Only nine houses remained standing when the storm passed. More than 400,000 feet of lumber and 50,000 barrels of rosin were swept off the docks, and about 15 ships were lifted onto Dog and St. George islands, left high and dry. In all some 40 vessels were destroyed by the storm. Two hundred families were left homeless, and the cars of the passenger train 100 yards off the tracks near Lanark.

During the early part of the twentieth century a large hotel was operated near the present day location of Lanark Village. Drawn by mineral springs, lavish parties, and sailing, passengers boarded the GF&A railroad which operated special trains during the season on a spur line that allowed passengers to disembark right at the steps of the hotel. In 1940 the Lanark Grand Hotel burned to the ground. A second, smaller and less lavish hotel was built just in time to serve as quarters for soldiers stationed at Camp Carrabelle.

On September 10, 1942 Camp Carrabelle was commissioned as a training base for amphibious assault forces used in World War II. By January of 1943 the base was renamed Camp Gordon Johnston, and all out operations began. It was here that Army troops were trained for beach assaults such as the ones that helped the Allied efforts in North Africa and later Normandy. Thousands of men were put through a grueling and difficult course, largely in secret. The camp was also used to house German prisoners of war. The Camp Gordon Johnston Museum is located in downtown Carrabelle.

From the earliest times the place called Carrabelle has been known as an exceptional spot to go fishing. The same is true today. With five major rivers within an hour’s drive, just about every fishing experience an angler might hope to find (with the singular exception of ice-fishing) is within easy reach. More than one hundred years later, O.H. Kelley’s assessment of the area is as true today as it was then:

We are here on the Gulf which abounds in salt-water fish in almost endless variety, from the red snapper, pompano, Spanish mackerel and bluefish down to the trout, not to omit the immense beds of oysters. Entering our harbor at this point is the Carrabelle River, navigable for steam tugs a distance of 80 miles; emptying into that is the Crooked River, a tide-water bayou, that connects with the Ochlocknee River; on all these streams black bass, bream and some shad are found…. I could give you some sworn statements as to the number of trout our “lone fisherman” has taken with hook and line in a single day; but fear you would mark it as an outrageous “fish story.” I prefer to let others come and report their success. I will assure you the fish and oysters are here.

O.H. Kelley Carrabelle, Franklin Co., Florida, September, 1883
From the October 4, 1883 issue of Forest and Stream