CRUDDS PAGE ..
Chumuckla.com
Chumuckla Reprobates Utopian Debate and Discussion Society
SATURDAYS
0800-1000
(usually at Vic's house - Martin Road)
Sometimes we meet at Jay Historical
or other places.
Sponsored By CHUMUCKLA.COM
5-10 is a usual group for coffee
Some of our regulars --
Vic Campbell, Jim Campbell, Richard Youtes, Winston Burnham, Wayne Pannell, James Kilcrease, Diane VanLeer, Dick Miller, Stuart Pooley, Tommy Nichols, John Koch….
Community Center
Near the SCHOOL
Some of the old timers often have great networks you might tap into. We learned Mr. Pennington and Richard Griner found out both were interested in coming up with a SONG ABOUT CHUMUCKLA. They met and enjoyed some music a couple of years back. The memory of Jim Pennington's song lives on. He passed away in 2023.
The usual folks and anybody else is very welcome.
Richard Collins, of Chumuckla, was the driving force to achieve this wonderful asset for the citizens of our region. In 1995 he was still a relatively recent Air Force retiree and was looking for a way to serve the people. Over a number of community meetings he found talk of the old railroad bed running North through Milton to be fascinating. He discovered documents regarding grants with the Federal Government and began a quest to find the funding to transform this unused rail bed into a “Rails to Trails” tourism asset.
In 1995 Richard Collins attended a Meeting of Greenway Corridor Connections in Clearwater Florida. Enticing information from maps by Fred Ayer, Director of the Office of Greenways and Trails, encouraged action. These were maps by Gene Ingles, a cartographer out of St Petersburg ,who had a company called Mapquest. The company is still a major player in online maps. The Chumuckla School is now in possession of a laminated color map of Santa Rosa County, prepared by Gene Ingles and presented in 2020. In 2021 and 2022 the Park was enhanced by over a dozen rest points with benches and with 4 stations for bike repair.
THE LAND BEFORE
The widow Dessie received funding from the Brock family in Pine Log Florida. Their son, Thomas, who was a teacher, died of pneumonia before many years of marriage passed. So, they funded an education to provide Dessie a livelihood. In a letter dated October 1917, Dessie wrote to an admirer in Chumuckla to describe some of the rain issues and the use of the rails to avoid the mud. She would, in late 1918, marry the admirer who was to become the writer's Grandfather.
Jim Campbell and Dessie Lee Howell (Brock) Campbell celebrated the birth of their children in the 1920's in Pace, Florida. From there, another logging rail ran North into the pine forests to transport raw materials for the Pace Lumber Mill, where Jim was a millwright. They lived in a manager's style company house that stood behind what is now Alyssa's Emporium of shops.
The muddy road adventures faded from memory but the letter survived in a box discovered by Kittye Campbell Norris some 35 years since the death of Dessie. That railroad ran from the Bagdad Land and Lumber Company, north through Milton and several logging camps (including Roeville) up to Munson. All these main rails had branches that fed logs of Yellow Pine out of the entire landscape.
That Bagdad Land and Lumber Rail is now the base of the Blackwater Heritage Trail. But, before it became the scenic trail it is today, it served another roll. To meet the demand for Naval Aviators in WWII, Whiting Field was established.
The rail was then rebuilt from an unused base to handle larger cars and freight. It became the main route to deliver aviation gasoline and supplies to Whiting Field. It was a roll the rail accomplished well for decades, until more efficient deliveries by truck became practical. Then, the rail again fell to disuse. It lay unattended and bare of any traffic. The vigor of Florida vegetation was fast erasing all traces of the once critical lifeline to aviation excellence.
