Spring Travel Part Ten: Port St. Joe, Florida

This is part ten of a continuing series on some of my favorite spring travel destinations in the South.

The beaches of Northwest Florida draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, most of them swarming to places like Panama City, Destin and Pensacola Beach. But to the east of these places is a lesser known destination that is one of the most beautiful spots in the South.

Port St. Joe and spectacular St. Joseph Bay are rich in history and natural beauty and offer some of the most unspoiled coastal areas to be found in Florida. Cape San Blas, a peninsula that extends far out into the Gulf of Mexico, is noted for its beautiful unspoiled beaches. Port St. Joe itself is a charming city on the bay that is the site of Florida's famed "lost city" of St. Joseph.

To learn more about this fascinating area of Northwest Florida, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/portstjoe.html.

Florida's "Lost City" of St. Joseph

I mentioned a couple of days ago that our new Port St. Joe, Florida section is now at www.exploresouthernhistory.com.

This pages explore several fascinating historic sites in and around Port St. Joe, one of the most interesting of which is the site of the "Lost City" of St. Joseph.

Founded in 1835 on the beautiful shore of St. Joseph Bay, the city of St. Joseph quickly became the largest community in Florida. More than 12,000 people moved to the city within two years, making it larger than Tallahassee, Pensacola, St. Augustine and other communities of the time. In 1838-1839, the city was selected as the site of Florida's Constitutional Convention and it was here that the territory's first constitution was drafted.

In 1841, however, St. Joseph was ravaged by a yellow fever epidemic. In a matter of weeks, the population fell to only 400 people. A major hurricane in 1844 destroyed much of what was left and in time the site was reclaimed by the lush coastal forest.

To learn more about St. Joseph, visit our Port St. Joe section at www.exploresouthernhistory.com. You will see the heading on the home page when you arrive at the site.

New Port St. Joe, Florida pages are now online

Our new section on the historic sites of Port St. Joe and St. Joseph Bay, Florida, is now online. Although we will be expanding the section over coming days, pages now up include the story of St. Joseph, Florida's "lost city." Other pages detail Fort Creveceour, the Constitutional Convention State Museum and the historic Old St. Joseph Cemetery.

Port St. Joe now stands on the site once occupied by the historic city of St. Joseph. Home to 12,000 people during the late 1830s, St. Joseph was then Florida's largest city. The site of the 1838-1839 Constitutional Convention and home to Florida's first railroad, St. Joseph was virtually wiped out by a yellow fever epidemic and hurricane.

To learn more of this fascinating story and to explore the historic sites of Port St. Joe, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com. You will see the heading on the main page.