Apalachicola: an authentic Florida prize    

         

The Forgotten Coast runs between Port St. Joe in Gulf County and St. Marks in Wakulla. No place in the three-county region numbers even 4,000 people. Franklin County, the regional heart, has no mall, no movie theater, no billboard clutter and one traffic light - and that one only blinks.

Oysters are king. The seafood industry is worth $15 million dockside and probably three times that when factoring in fuel, equipment, maintenance, ice, supplies, research, and tourism drawn by the bay.

The economy is unusually intermeshed. The Apalachicola Riverkeeper works to keep adequate freshwater flows into Apalachicola Bay that in turn nurtures the estuary. Its oysters, shrimp and finfish show up fresh on the menus of waterfront restaurants where oystering families also work, so that locals who go to dinner know locals who wait tables.

A national historic district includes a reputed 900 structures, many built in the late 19th century of enduring black cypress and heart pine that combine with brick buildings along the riverfront put up after the downtown fire of 1900. Town character attracts newcomers who prize authenticity and who work to protect the oystering way of life.

The town re-starts

Restoration of the 105-year-old Gibson Inn in 1985 helped re-start the town. The annual Florida Seafood Festival draws 20,000 a year in winter. Artists move in, among them interior designer Lynn Wilson, who restored the Coombs House, now one of a half-dozen bed-and-breakfasts; cookbook author Jane Doerfer; Dixie Partington who with her mother and late father Rex re-built the Dixie Theatre for stage production, and Richard Bickel, whose black and white portraits rage against injustice while deeply respecting the town's saltwater workforce.

Apalach is 100 miles from I-10; 80 and 75 respectively from airports in Panama City and Tallahassee. Distance precisely helps keep Apalach Florida's most beautiful and most authentic small town -- Key West with large lots. In another aspect of town character, east-west streets in all districts share a class-muting alphabet of east-west street names, "Avenue A" through "D" house the Silk Stocking District; "E" is Highway 98 through town, and "F" through "M" worker districts.

Idyll notwithstanding, oystering is hard work. Freshwater flow disputes among Georgia, Alabama and Florida trouble the brackish bay. Though they rarely strike, hurricanes west along the Panhandle scare everybody off. The Gulf Oil spill was briefly worse.

A different threat comes from land developers preparing for the next boom, Progress Energy installed new high-power lines down Avenue F after no officeholders at any level were willing to negotiate installing the lines underground. No surprise that the poles were installed along Avenue F. There's anxiety about toll roads going through the great forest reserves.

The estuary so far remains fecund. Last year was almost record setting for visitors.