‘FLORIDA’S INLAND GRAVEYARD OF SHIPS’

UPPER APALACHICOLA’S UNBELIEVABLE MARITIME DESTINATION

Written by: Dale Cox

The wrecks of so many paddlewheel steamboats line the banks of the upper two miles of the Apalachicola River that maritime aficionados call the stretch “Florida’s Inland Graveyard of Ships.”

And with good reason.

Maritime archaeologists and historians say that traces of more than a dozen of the beautiful old vessels can still be seen along the Apalachicola between today’s cities of Chattahoochee and Sneads in northwest Florida.

WHAT CAUSED SO MANY TO WRECK THERE?

The confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers—where the Apalachicola is formed—and a sharp bend immediately below, created a navigational hazard that combined with any mishap of machinery or the crews to cause the boats to pile up on the banks. The result was the death of many wellknown “floating palaces”—and scores of people as well.

The best known of the fading beauties is the most recent. The Barbara Hunt began life in 1929 as a paddlewheel towboat on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. She pushed barges up and down the mighty waters of the American Midwest with engines that produced only 137-horsepower— less than many Florida pleasure craft today—for 11 years. The Columbus Towing Company bought the Barbara Hunt in 1938 and brought her south to the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint River system.

Old Before Her Time

Railroads and modern highways destroyed the economic viability of commercial steamboat traffic on Florida waterways, however, before the Barbara Hunt ever turned her bow north up the Apalachicola. Investors launched a massive publicity campaign, touting the advantages of using the boat to push fuel barges up the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee rivers to the terminals of Columbus, Georgia. Crowds gathered on bridges and along the riverbanks to experience the novelty of the sternwheel boat passing, a sight that many never expected to see again. But commercial interests turned deaf ears to the plan.

The Barbara Hunt was tied to the Jackson County shore and abandoned just below the U.S. Highway 90 bridge opposite Chattahoochee, Florida. She sank there in 1940. When the river is low, you can still walk her deck and see the remains of the paddlewheel.

Like all archaeological sites in the Apalachicola River, the wreck of the Barbara Hunt is protected by federal law and artifact collecting is strictly prohibited.

Best And Easiest Place To See

The best and easiest place to see the “Inland Graveyard of Ships” is on the opposite side of the river at Chattahoochee’s River Landing Park. Plus, many of the wrecks there are much older!

River Landing Park was the site of an important steamboat port during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hundreds of different paddlewheel boats stopped here on their trips up and down the Apalachicola to take on or let off passengers and cargo. In fact, this site was a port long before steam travel arrived on the river.

The city of Chattahoochee preserves several Native American mounds at the park that were part of a major prehistoric trading and ceremonial center. The site is just one mile below the original junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, which provided American Indians with water transportation routes connecting Florida’s Gulf Coast with the mountains of North Georgia.

A prominent chiefdom started building these mounds during the Woodland era nearly 2,000 years ago, developing the site as a trade center. The mounds complex was completed during the Mississippian era, a period that lasted until the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in Florida during the 1500s.

Spanish friars described crossing the Apalachicola in dugout canoes at this site in 1693 on a road that we remember today as the “Old Spanish Trail.” The notorious adventurer and pirate William Augustus Bowles later predicted that a great city would grow here due to the availability of important water transportation.

The use of the Apalachicola River for water transportation played a critical role in a battle fought at the site on November 30, 1817. Seminole, Miccosukee, Yuchi and Maroon (Black Seminole) warriors retaliated for a U.S. attack on the nearby Lower Creek village of Fowltown by attacking an oar-propelled keelboat carrying 40 U.S. soldiers, seven women and four children. The engagement ended in the first major Native American victory of the Seminole Wars. The steamboat Fanny arrived on the Apalachicola River just 10 years after the smoke and blood of the battle. Over the 113 years that followed before the Barbara Hunt sank opposite Chattahoochee, more than 200 steamers made the treacherous voyage up and down the river. They ranged in size from the small sternwheeler Jackson, completed in 1860 and designed to work part of the year on the even more dangerous Chipola River, to the massive Confederate warship CSS Chattahoochee.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY

Among the wrecks visible today at River Landing Park are those of the J.W. Hires, a sternwheel riverboat built in 1898 at Columbus, Georgia; the Sandy, a sternwheel towboat built in 1920 in Tampa, Florida; the Ruth-Jeanette (also