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2. Miss Steppie
The engine block of the Miss Steppie can be seen at low tide from the boat basin at Frank Pate Park. The wooden hull still lies buried and preserved under the sand. We know a great deal about the Miss Steppie thanks to the careful research of Herman Jones.
In 1904 Terrell Higdon (T.H.) Stone built the first house, a simple log cabin, on the shore of St. Joseph Bay. The land along the bay had come into the hands of the Stone family of Iola through the purchase of delinquent tax deeds. The area was covered with timber, and the Stones began a profitable turpentine operation. T.H. Stone purchased the Miss Steppie in Apalachicola and used her to transport barrels of turpentine from his still near the end of present-day 7th Street to the processing plant in Pensacola. Several times Stone steered the boat through the Gulf on the 300 mile round trip to Pensacola, but after he ran aground at St. Joseph Point, he turned the boat over to Captain Nick Comforter of Apalachicola.
The Miss Steppie was built by a man named Kirvin and named for Miss Steppie Rice (Steptoe Irene) born in 1873 into a prominent Apalachicola family and one of the belles of the Gay 90s. She married cypress timber businessman Richard G. Porter in 1900. She was an English teacher at Chapman High for many years, and mother-in-law to Louise Porter, author of The Lives of St. Joseph. When the first Apalachicola Northern train came to Port St. Joe on May 7, 1910, Miss Steppie’s days transporting naval stores were numbered. Mules and wagons could transport the turpentine and rosin to the train less than 1 mile away. Besides hauling naval stores, the Miss Steppie also provided excursions around the bay. Miss Steppie lay moored in a small channel behind his Mr. Stone’s still. Captain Dave Maddox recounted to Herman Jones that one day a man approached Mr. Stone with an offer to buy the boat; but Mr. Stone was insulted and said “it could lie there and rot” before he would accept such a sum. One day a squall caused the boat to trip her anchor and to go aground where she now lies.
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