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3. Money BayouCounty Route 30A
Money Bayou was named for a rumored buried treasure. Local historian Wayne Childers tells this story: in the 1930s Captain Nick Comforter, Cy C. Williams, conductor on the Apalachicola Northern Railroad and a number of men from the railroad shop went to search for treasure based on old chart Nick Comforter found showing the wreck of one of Jean LaFitte’s ships in 1819. They pulled strings from three pine trees with symbols carved on them and dug where the strings crossed. Eventually the men hired a dragline. Several times they were supposed to have reached the chest but each time it slipped away. Another crew tried to recover the treasure but again once they reached it, the treasure slipped back. Childers reports that one of the workers said “the haints don’t want this moved,” and that was the end of attempts to reach the treasure.
The Jenkins family lived in the area and was photographed on Money Bayou in 1930. Stanley S. Sheip of Franklin County bought the property and built cottages here in the 1940s. He sold it to Alfred and Ruby Andreason, a couple from New Jersey, in 1945. In 1946 the Andreasons opened the Money Bayou Restaurant, the only restaurant between Apalachicola and Port St. Joe. Business at Money Bayou slowed with the construction of Highway 98 to the north and the Andreasons decided to sell their beachfront property. Whites wouldn’t pay them the price they wanted and so perhaps out of spite they decided to sell it to a group of prominent local blacks at a lower price. Damon Peters, Jr., recalls the spring night after midnight in 1951 when he, his father Damon Peters, Sr., his uncle Nathan Peters, Sr., Dr. Francis Michael Hall, and Raymond A. Driesbach purchased the 30 acres of beachfront property with cottages and a restaurant from Alfred and Ruby Andreason for $30,000. Dr. Hall brought his portion of the purchase price ($6000) in a shoebox while the others had borrowed their portions from the bank. Fearing reprisals for selling to blacks, the Andreasons left town before daybreak. Money Bayou was the first black-owned beach resort in Florida. The Money Bayou Subdivision was incorporated in 1953. The resort was advertised in Ebony and people came from far and near. Click on the photos below to view memorabilia and pictures from the 1940s and 1950s
For the first time black families were able to come together at the beach, to relax and to celebrate without intimidation from whites. Families would come by the busload on the weekends and on holidays hundreds of people came. The Money Bayou Beauty Contest was so popular that it was featured in Ebony.
Billy Dixson summarizes Money Bayou its heyday in the 1950s and 60s as “entertainment to keep families together.” It was a community where resources were pooled and shared and all adults took responsibility for the children.
Listen to Billy Dixson's recollections of Money Bayou: Maxine and Chester Gant, who bought the first lot in the subdivision for $500 and still live in the house they built on that land today, remember the bands and the dances at the Money Bayou Club. The club was open 24 hours a day every day and “the hottest bands around” would come on the weekends and people would dance most of the night. “Honey, some people never saw the water,” recounts Mrs. Gant. Sometimes she and Chester would stop right on the highway, smoke cigars, and dance to the music on the car radio. They would slip off from school and come to Money Bayou to picnic careful to return just as school was letting out. Click on the photos below to view pictures of Maxine and Chester Gant
Miss Shaperight and her band stayed in the cottages and Mrs. Gant remembers “that was the first time I’d seen anybody with so few clothes on.” Other performers who came to Money Bayou included Joe Tex, Sam and Dave, “Moms” Mabley, and Gene Franklin. In the late 1980s the Money Bayou Corporation sold the property to a group of doctors from California, The cottages and club were torn down and vacation homes built. Gone were the glorious days when people danced all night and families shared crabs from the communal pot. Click on the photos below to view scenes at Money Bayou in the 21st century:
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