Cedar Key's Little Known Civil War Battlefield

S.R. 24 Bridge at Number Four

Tens of thousands of visitors make their way to the charming island community of Cedar Key on Florida's Gulf Coast each year, but few realize they are passing over a noteworthy Civil War battlefield as the bridge comes into view.

An important port community and the Gulf terminal of Florida's only Atlantic to Gulf railroad, the Cedar Keys were first held by the Confederates when the Civil War erupted in 1861. By 1862, however, they had withdrawn from the cluster of islands and before long Union forces occupied Seahorse and Depot Keys. The latter is now the site of the main town of Cedar Key.

View of Battlefield from Fishing Pier

One of the few significant Civil War battles along this stretch of the Florida Gulf Coast took place where Florida Highway 24 approaches the bridge over Number Four Channel as it nears Cedar Key. This is the first long bridge you come to as you reach the coast and is just a short distance from historic downtown Cedar Key.

In 1864, this was the site of Station Four on the railroad. In February of that year, a large Union raiding force led by Major Edmund Weeks of the 2nd Florida U.S. Cavalry and made up of 386 soldiers from his own regiment as well as the 2nd U.S. Colored Troops. The Federals marched inland as far as Levyville between today's towns of Bronson and Chiefland, while a second column marched on Clay's Landing on the Suwannee River.



Capt. J.J. Dickson, C.S.A.

 Weeks and his men gathered supplies, cattle and liberated around 50 slaves before turning back for the coast. In the process, however, the aroused a hornet's nest in the form of the cavalry of Captain J.J. Dickson, the famed "Swamp Fox of Florida."  Dickison began to pursue the Union troops as they withdrew back up the railroad, skirmishing with the rear of their column.

At 7 a.m. on February 13, 1864, the "Swamp Fox" caught up with the main body of the Union raiding force at Station Four overlooking Number Four Channel. A fierce battle developed and the two sides surged back and forth. Both commanders ultimately declared victory, with Dickison falling back a short distance from the battlefield and holding a position there, while Weeks and his men withdrew across the railroad trestle to Cedar Key.

To learn more about the Battle of Station Four (also called the Battle of Number Four), please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/stationfour.

The Death of Florida's Princess, 1867

The Princess Murat

Madame Catherine Daingerfield Willis Murat, the French Princess who was also a great-grandniece of President George Washington, lived for much of her life near Tallahassee.

Her passing during the summer of 1867 was covered with great sadness in the state's leading newspapers

The following appeared in the Tallahassee Sentinel of August 8, 1867:

A SAD ANNOUNCEMENT. – Madame C.D. MURAT, relict of Prince Achille Murat, died at her Jefferson county plantation, on Tuesday morning last, after an illness of several months’ duration. Sad as this announcement is, it is not altogether unexpected to our readers. Few indulged the hope, latterly, that a vigorous constitution would survive the ravages of the terrible typhoid fever that has so long threatened to remove from the scene of her usefulness, in this community, the noble victim of the destroying angel. At an advanced age of sixty years, and over, one of the rarest gems that ever ornamented the society of the South – one of the purest minded and most unselfish of her sex – a blessing and an honor to the age in which she lived – has gone to reap the reward of her fervent piety and her wide-spread benevolence.

Belleview, Home of a Princess

The poor will sadly miss the charitable assistance of one of their “ministering angels” – the rich will search in vain for another such exemplar – whilst all classes will sincerely lament a death which, at her ripe age, seems untimely.


We leave to some abler pen the mournfully pleasant task of paying proper tribute to the memory of one whose whole life has been a blessing, and whose death is now mourned as a public calamity.

Princess Murat's home, Belleview, still stands. A beautifully restored part of the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science, it provides a unique look into the life of a real princess. The home is open daily for self-guided tours daily. To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/belleview.

Legacy of Dr. John Gorrie remembered in Apalachicola

Statue of Gorrie in U.S. Capitol

The hottest months of summer are a great time to remember the legacy of one of the most ingenius Floridians of them all: Dr. John Gorrie, inventor of the ice machine.

A native of South Carolina, Dr. Gorrie moved to Florida in the early 1830s, settling first at what is now Sneads in Jackson County and then moving on down to Apalachicola in 1833. The city was then one of the boomtowns of the Gulf Coast, as the development of steamboat travel brought cotton bales and other products pouring down the Apalachicola River to Apalachicola, where it was offloaded onto ocean-going schooners and ships for export to ports far and wide.

It was a time when a young man could move to a new city and become one of the leaders of society in short order. That is exactly what Dr. John Gorrie accomplished in Apalachicola. He served as a city councilman, treasurer, postmaster and eventually mayor of the thriving port.

Replica of the Ice Machine

Outbreaks of yellow fever and malaria, however, swept across the Gulf Coast during the 1830s and 1840s, killing untold numbers of people. Trained as a physician, Gorrie tried to do what he could to fight the sickness. Like many of his day, he believed that the fevers were caused by bad air that rose up from the marshes and swamps during the warm months. Unlike others, however, he noted that those sick with fever improved dramatically when there were sudden drops of the temperature.

Gorrie Grave & Museum

It was an observation that sparked genius and Dr. John Gorrie began working on a way to cool the rooms in which his patients suffered. By blowing air over ice, he created a primitive form of air conditioning. Obtaining ice in Apalachicola in the summer was difficult and expensive, so to solve the problem, Gorrie invented a machine that made ice!

So revolutionary was his invention that Southern investors did not believe it could possibly work, even after he demonstrated the machine in Apalachicola. Northern speculators, in turn, tried to kill off Gorrie's invention because it threatened their monopoly on the ice trade. Despite his groundbreaking invention, Dr. Gorrie died a disappointed man. In the end, his process was even stolen by another inventor who eventually adapted it into the refrigeration systems we use today.

Gorrie is now memorialized in statue form in the U.S. Capitol and his work is featured at the John Gorrie Museum State Park in Apalachicola.

To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/gorriemuseum.

Record Number of Threatened Birds spotted nesting in Collier County

Least Tern at Lake Jackson
Photo by Tim Ross

NAPLES – The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) today announced a record number of least terns, a threatened species, nesting on an isolated sandbar near Marco Island in Collier County.


Each spring, migratory least terns (Sterna antillarum) scout local coastal areas and select a location that best meets the nesting needs of the colonial birds returning from wintering grounds in Central or South America. Over the past few years, tides and currents have been suitable for the re-formation of an emergent sandbar within DEP’s Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. This sandbar, also known as “Second Chance,” now serves as habitat for the largest beach-nesting least tern colony in south Florida.

“At least 300 nests (with eggs) and about 100 more pairs with chicks are using the ‘Second Chance’ sandbar,” said FWC regional biologist Ricardo Zambrano. “About 800 birds (400 breeding pairs) is roughly the same number of birds that had used the sandbar the last time it was this large, nearly a decade ago."

Least terns lay their well-camouflaged eggs directly on the sand, and young are mobile within a few hours of hatching. Parent birds are the eggs’ and young’s only protection against the elements and predators.

A few acres in size, the elevated sandbar is located at the western edge of the Ten Thousand Islands. It has low vegetation to provide some shade for chicks and is free of land-based predators. The sand bar is monitored weekly by Reserve staff and volunteers and staff has posted with signs and string alerting boaters of the birds’ presence.

“The sandbar provides ideal nesting conditions for least terns,” said Gary Lytton, Rookery Bay Reserve manager. “Acting like a magnet, it is attracting birds from other locations and providing the greatest chance for nesting success in the region.”

Because it is isolated from the mainland the sandbar receives minimal human disturbance, which is crucial for the success of this species. Nesting least terns are easily disturbed by people (on foot or aboard approaching vessels) as well as dogs and other animals that may be perceived as predators. Boaters, anglers and wildlife enthusiasts are urged to avoid accessing, or even approaching, this important habitat until nesting season comes to a close, around mid-August.

Whenever you visit the beach, and especially during summer nesting season, do your part to share the shore with wildlife:

o Keep your distance from resting birds
o Use a high-powered spotting scope to get the best view from a reasonable distance
o Do not force birds to fly
o Respect posted areas
o Keep pets on a leash, on your boat, or leave them at home
o Don’t leave any litter behind
o Never deploy fireworks at or near an active nesting beach

Designated over 30 years ago, DEP’s Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve is located in Naples on the Southwest coast of Florida. The Reserve manages 110,000 acres and is engaged in education, research, training, and stewardship. The Environmental Learning Center serves as a regional education, research and training center with a 150-seat auditorium, classrooms, research labs and state-of-the-art visitor center with aquaria and interactive exhibits. For more information on Reserve, visit http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/sites/rookery/.

Reminders of War at Torreya State Park - Liberty County, Florida

Civil War Earthworks at Torreya State Park

Torreya State Park, located on the Apalachicola River in Liberty County, is best known for its stunning natural scenery and extremely rare trees and plants, but for those interested in Florida's Civil War history, it also holds a hidden treasure.

Located along the trail that leads down the slope from the beautifully restored antebellum Gregory House in the park can be found the earthwork remains of a Confederate fortification. Built to defend the river against invasion attempts by the Union Navy, the battery was one of a series of such fortifications along the river. It is, however, by far the best preserved.

150 years ago the Apalachicola River was a vital avenue of transportation. Paddlewheel steamboats churned up and down the river from Apalachicola, carrying cargo and people as far upriver as the cities of Columbus and Albany,Georgia, located far up its tributaries, the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers.  Apalachicola at the beginning of the Civil War was one of the most important port cities on the Gulf Coast and the river itself provided access to some of the most successful plantations and farms in the South.

Gun Emplacement at Torreya State Park

When Apalachicola was evacuated by the Confederates in 1862, army engineers began to design a series of fortifications to stop Union warships from coming up the river to devastate inland cities and farming districts.

The battery at Torreya State Park once mounted an array of heavy guns and featured artillery emplacements, rifle pits and heavily reinforced magazines. Despite (and possibly because of) the reclamation of the site by the forest in the years after the Civil War, the earthworks remain in remarkable condition today and provide a rare opportunity to step back in time to the days when Florida desperately tried to defend itself from Northern invasion.

To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/torreyabattery.