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9. Railroad Building301 1st St.
Built in the late 1950s, this building replaced the old wooden building built in 1910 and was the depot and offices for the Apalachicola Northern Railroad Company. In 2006 the building housed the offices of the St. Joe Company. Port St. Joe redevelopment plans call for the demolition of the building in order to make room for a new city center and to provide better linkage between North Port St. Joe and the rest of the town.
The Apalachicola Northern Railroad Company was incorporated in 1903 by Henry C. Haarstick, Albert T. Perkins, and Daniel N. Kirby of St. Louis, Missouri. Construction of the line began at River Junction (now Chattahoochee on March 21, 1905), and the 49.5 miles to Apalachicola were completed in 1907. May 10, 1910, the railroad reached Port St. Joe. Click on the photos below to view other pictures of the early railroad building
In the Special Centennial Edition of the Port St. Joe Sentinel, December 8, 1938, conductor Steve McPhaul recalls the first excursion train: “I requested, and had the honor, if any, of pulling the first locomotive whistle cord that made the first Railway engine’s whistle echo throughout the lonely woods that was to be the busy Port St. Joe of the future. The first excursion ran April 30, 1910, making three trips from Apalachicola to Port St. Joe. There were some four-hundred and fifty to five hundred passengers on that day as there was no other transportation here at the time. Autos being very rare—and no highways. We had four coaches and an express car and that night, on the last train in, we had practically all of the passengers on board who had come that day, so we had to let some of them in the flat cars. Before we had gone three miles it began to rain in torrents. In the dead of the night in the midst of the Piney-woods, there was a stampede for the coaches. It was the worst scramble I ever saw.”
The railroad was critical to the development of the town of Port St. Joe. It led to the building of docks and wharfs and encouraged sawmills, tobacco growing, sugar cane processing, ice plants, fisheries and oyster houses. The line was used to haul lumber and naval stores and other products and to transport passengers. Passenger service continued until 1951. Click on the photos below to view some trains of the Apalachicola Northern Railroad Company
The railroad company went into receivership three times and in 1933 came under ownership of the St. Joe Company, along with nearly the entire town of Port St. Joe. Until it closed in 1999, the St. Joe Paper Mill was the railroad's largest customer. In 2006, Arizona Chemical Company was its largest customer and the train only runs about fives times each month. Click on the photos below to view some memorabilia associated with the Apalachicola Northern Railroad Company
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