7. Gautier Hammock

County Road 30A

Gautier Hammock, 1930s

As you drive along 30A, the old coastal highway, toward Port St. Joe, you pass through lovely Gautier Hammock with its tall palm trees hugging the side of the curving road.

Peter Gautier, Jr.

Gautier Hammock was named for the Gautier family who had a plantation home here during the days of St. Joseph. Peter Gautier, Sr., was a Methodist minister and gave the opening prayer at the Constitution Convention held in St. Joseph. His son, Peter Gautier, Jr., published one of the first and most successful newspapers in Florida and served as Speaker of the Territorial House of Representatives. The Gautiers managed to escape the Yellow Fever epidemic. One September 21, 1841, an optimistic Gautier wrote, “We can again say, and with truth, that St. Joseph is now one of the healthiest places in Florida. Many families who had fled with the pestilence, have returned, and our population is now rapidly increasing.” A hurricane later that fall destroyed what was left of St. Joseph, and the Gautiers, along with other residents of St. Joseph, moved to Texas.

In 1893, John Maddox and his brother Dave moved their cattle from the Apalachicola area to the head of the St. Joseph Bay. They built a small house next to the old Peter Gautier home in Gautier Hammock and lived there until 1896. Dave Maddox, John Maddox’s grandson, recalls that the Maddoxes were happy to leave this beautiful hammock because the mosquitoes and other insects had made their lives miserable.

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