Winter in Port St. Joe

We are loving it here in Port St. Joe where we can ride our bikes everywhere and not worry about the traffic. We can walk to the grocery, well, Piggley Wiggley which is the only choice. Larry has found a rifle/pistol range within biking distance and the fresh shrimp are fabulous. Most days are in the 60's but nights are chilly (40's) and every few days brings another front.

OK I promised some history and I must start by apologizing for including incorrect information in the January 21, 2010 entry. The FL Constitution was not signed here in 1838. Rather the convention convened in St. Joseph (now Port St. Joe) in December of that year and the Constitution for the Territory of Florida was signed in 1839; however Florida did not become a State until 1845, by which time St. Joseph had virtually disappeared.

The community owes its rapid growth, as well as its untimely demise, to the fact that it is a natural deep-water port. By the time that Spain sold Florida to the United States in 1821 the area known at St. Joseph Bay was already recognized for the deep bay that provided for a natural port. By 1832 people had already began settling in the area and in 1836 the town of St. Joseph was established.

If you are blessed by nature with a great sea port the next thing you will need is transportation to move goods to and from. Thus it was that in 1839 one of the first steam railroads in the Country, the St. Joseph & Iola, was completed. The primary cargo was cotton that was shipped by rail from Georgia and Alabama to St. Joseph and then loaded on ships bound for Europe.

The town was thriving and movers and shakers of the time were attracted by the mild climate and beautiful beaches. Politicians (especially those from Jacksonville and St. Augustine), not trusting the upstart outpost in Tallahassee, decided on the more neutral location of St. Joseph in which to gather and write Territorial Constitution in late 1838.

The little town continued to prosper. Then in July 1841 a ship entered the Port bearing, along with its cargo, the dreaded Yellow Fever. By August of that year somewhere between 62% and 75% of the population of the town had died; most of the rest had fled. The town dried up overnight, even some of the buildings were taken down and moved elsewhere. We were surprised to see that even the cemetery has no marked graves remaining, although there is a stone that mentions notable people that are believed to be buried there. It is thought that so many were dying that it was impossible to keep up with the burials and it is known that many were buried in mass graves as there were few people to dig the required number of graves.

A few years later in 1844 a hurricane arrived that, in the words of one local historian, “buried beneath the sands of the sea, or swept to the four winds of heaven, all that remained of the proud young city of St. Joseph”. The area however continued to be a favorite of sportsmen and eventually their families leading to the rebirth of the town renamed Port St. Joe which was incorporated in 1913.

Again, thanks to the port, there was rapid growth which gave birth to a lucrative lumber industry. In the 1920’s Alfred DuPont began accumulating property which ultimately led to the creation of the St. Joe Paper Company. In 1936 the St. Joe Paper Company began construction of a paper mill that remained in production until it was forced to close 1999. Today the town of Port St. Joe is small and sleepy, tourists are not too common during the winter and development has been slow to take hold despite the beautiful beaches and mild winters. St. Joseph Bay has been rehabilitated in the years since the paper mill closed and is now some of the cleanest water along the coast, you may want to follow this link for more information http://www.floridadep.org/coastal/sites/stjoseph/description/history.htm