Side 1: Following the Civil War, a growing number of steamboats plied the waters of the Apalachicola River, busily transporting passengers, agricultural products and manufactured goods between the Gulf of Mexico and upstream locations in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. A river port had been established and a 26-block area was mapped out for the new community of Blountstown, named for the Seminole chief who had ruled much of the nearby territory during the early 19th Century. In 1880, after the Calhoun County courthouse at Abe Springs Bluff burned, the county seat was moved here to Blountstown -- then a growing community of 100 or so inhabitants. On this site, a two-story wood frame courthouse was constructed on the designated courthouse square.
Side 2: Homes, businesses and a hotel were constructed nearby, but few of the mapped streets ever were built. Periodic river flooding caused some residents to seek higher ground -- and "New Blountstown" began to develop around the turn of the century. In 1904, after streets had been laid out and many buildings built in "New Blountstown," a much larger two-story brick courthouse was constructed just over a mile northwest of here on the town's principal east-west thoroughfare. After the courthouse here at "The Bluff" no longer housed county courts and offices, the structure was used as a private residence until it was demolished in the mid-1940s.
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.