Panhandle Pioneer Settlement

We were invited to meet friends at the Panhandle Pioneer Settlement in Blountstown, Florida. We had never been and will now recommend it as a place well worth visiting. A number of restored buildings have been relocated to the site and now serve as a living history park.

Some of the restorations are more period-correct than others.

The Methodist church was built as recently as1940 and was  once in the community of Red Oak.

A sign related that all of the furnishings, save the piano, are original. The first thing I noticed as we stepped inside was that it smelled like my grandmother's house.

The altar cross is beautifully hand carved.

I can remember when paper fans were a part of a Sunday service. The ones in this church had plastic handles; ours were wood, very similar to tongue depressors. As with these, the backsides were printed advertisements, often for funeral homes or hardware stores.

The little cemetery had actual graves, covered with cockle shells. I do not remember seeing this practice before.

An effort had been made to create little gardens around the property.

 Many of the buildings were locked, but we saw enough. We always enjoy looking at old hand tools.

This picture below was taken from inside the jailhouse. It was a single room and built by two men that ironically ended up  being the first ever to be incarcerated within its walls. They were arrested for horse trading without a license and spent 24 hours before being released.

There were several more buildings that I did not get photographed, including a blacksmith shop, a post office/store, a doctor's office and a cobbler shop.

Our last few minutes there were spent rocking on the spacious porch of the main building that contains a meeting room. It was oh-so-pleasant!