Highway 90 Drive-in in DeFuniak Springs Trail Drive-in in DeFuniak Springs Starlite Drive-in in Paxton/Laurel Hill If you have any information about these movie drive-ins, please write to DianeMerkel@cox.net.
Author: DianeMerkel
Thompson Cemetery
Santa Rosa Beach Destin Log – July 18, 1984 The Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation would like to find the map referenced in this article: If you have information about the map or know where John Andrew Fleury is now, please contact Diane Merkel at DianeMerkel@cox.net.
The Ferries and Bridges Linking Freeport and Point Washington
Note: The following article was compiled from numerous articles published over the years. Please leave a comment or send an email to WaltonCountyHeritage@cox.net if you can correct or clarify this brief history. Thank you! A ferry was established in 1921 that linked Point Washington with the northern communities of Walton County. The ferry dock in […]
Graduates of Walton High School
Class Number of Graduates 1907 4 1908 1 1909 None 1910 2 1911 10 1912 3 1913 4 1914 4 1915 7 1916 3 1917 10 1918 9 1919 19 1920 19 1921 17 1922 18 1923 14 1924 15 1925 10 1926 28 1927 20 1928 30 The first yearbook, The War Whoop, was […]
Walton County Post Offices
As of March 16, 1913 (This was before Okaloosa County was formed and before the eastern part of Santa Rosa peninsula left Washington County to become the southern part of Walton County.) Argyle Bearhead Bolton Bruce Crestview Darlington Dearland DeFuniak Dorcas Ealum Freeport Garden City Glendale Gordon Lakewood Laurel Hill Luanna Mosseyhead Niceville Paxton Portland […]
Whatever Happened to Fisher Monroe Douglas?
This advertisement (and similar ones) ran weekly in the Pensacola News Journal during the first quarter of 1906. No follow-up articles have been found, so the fates of the child and his kidnapper remain mysteries. A Hugh A. Douglass is buried in the Euchee Valley Cemetery, but the father of the kidnapped child spelled his […]
Why were teachers colleges called “normal schools”?
THANK FRANCE; the phrase is derived from “école normale,” which was used for institutions designed to instill standards of pedagogy and curriculum in teachers-to-be, says Debbie Schaefer-Jacobs, associate curator in the Division of Cultural and Community Life at the National Museum of American History. America’s first state-sponsored normal school opened in Massachusetts in 1839, at […]
Walton County Sheriffs
The following list is from Victor Silvestri’s excellent publication, Encyclopedia of Florida Sheriffs, which is available from the Walton County Heritage Museum Gift Shop. The two-volume set has biographies of every sheriff who served in Florida from 1821 until 2008. Four Walton County Sheriffs died while in office: J. Murdock Bell (1909-1916), Daniel “Dorie” Clayton […]
Alexander McSwain
State Representative for Walton County, 1891
Stuart Knox Gillis
Stuart Knox Gillis, seventh son and eleventh child of John and Christian McIntosh Gillis, was born at Knox Hill, Walton County, Florida on July 28, 1866. He, like his older brothers, attended school at the Old Knox Hill Academy. As did many of his Gillis kin, Knox Gillis taught school in his younger days before becoming a prominent […]