Port St. Joe, Florida

Come with us as we drive east along scenic Highway 98 in northwest Florida.  We took advantage of the nice warm day and the clear blue skies to enjoy some of the the Lord's beautiful artwork.  We visited Mexico Beach in the last post, and now we are continuing on around to Port St. Joe and Apalachicola.

As you can see in the below map, the town of Port St. Joe is located on the southern tip of northwest Florida

In 1839, St. Joseph was selected as the site for drafting of the first Florida constitution.  That is why Port St. Joe is called Florida's Constitution City.

St. Joe was once a thriving town because of employment opportunities with the St. Joe Paper Mill.  The Mill was opened in the early 1930s.  The town was thriving until the 1970s when because of a wage dispute with the mill workers there was a nine month strike.  Then, increased environmental regulations caused prohibitive costs to the company, and they eventually closed.

You can see echoes of the past in the below photo of the "Port" movie theater.

There are plans to restore Port St. Joe to a thriving community.  The community efforts will be geared toward manufacturing in the northern end of the county, and tourism in the beach area.  Plus, there are efforts to build a thriving working industrial Port.

As we drove through the quaint downtown area we saw some cute shops which included this interesting looking antique shop.

I thought this was such a pretty beach-house.

 Just across the street from the above beach-house is this view in the below photo. What a pretty, peaceful view.

 It could not have been a more beautiful day.

It was nice to drive through the charming little historical town of Port St. Joe.

We are back on highway 98, again traveling east and within 30 minutes will arrive in the pretty coastal town of Apalachicola,  which is another historical beach-front town.  I hope you will be able to join us when we arrive in Apalachicola.