Decatur County formed in 1823 after legislature separates it from Early County

Although Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, it was the Spaniards, the first explorers and settlers, who discovered the New World. Early in 1528, an expedition under Pamphilio de Narvaez landed somewhere at Tampa Bay, Fla., and proceeded north along the west coast. Narvaez reached the lake region north of Tallahassee in June 1528. On June 25, he reached a town called Apalache near the location of Tallahassee, or farther north in southwestern Georgia or near the vicinity of Chattahoochee, Fla. Here the Spaniards remained for 25 days and made excursions into the surrounding country. According to the narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, this place is thought to have been on Apalachee Bay. So possibly, men in armor visited the hills and pine woods of Decatur County before the more renowned DeSoto.

In 1935 Congress appointed a commission headed by the Honorable John R. Swanton of the Smithsonian Institution to make a study of all written evidence of this. They examined the direct identification of topographical features of the country traversed by the Spaniards and the sites of Indian tribes and towns. Dr. Swanton spent a day in Bainbridge and Decatur Co., looking at river crossings and Indian mounds. From this kind of evidence, the commission decided on the most probable route. In Fla., the landing was placed at or near Bradenton, and the trail or route near Tampa, Ocala, Gainesville, Lake City, Live Oak, Madison, and Tallahassee, where the winter of 1539-40 was spent.

On Wednesday, March 3, 1540, the expedition set out from the present Tallahassee vicinity and in one day, crossed the Gauca River (Ochlockonee) and two days later reached the Capachequi (Flint River) at or near the present Bainbridge. The record states that the stream was very swift. To cross it, they built a piragua (barge) and, to use the narrator’s words, “... they took the chains in which they were bringing the Indians, and with some ‘S’ hooks of iron fastened them together and made a chain of them all.” With a windlass of ropes and holding on to the chain, the crossing was affected, the horses being pulled along by long ropes, although some were half drowned. Modern cities and towns in Georgia