Open house celebrates historic Lloyd Depot

Lazaro AlemanECB Publishing, Inc.

Depot Day was celebrated recently at the historic Lloyd Depot, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Gulf Wind Chapter, which is part of the National Railway Historic Society (NRHS) and whose principal project is the restoration of the Lloyd site.Held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 20, the open house featured sundry photos, exhibits, artifacts and other memorabilia from the heyday of the railroad era, along with a free lunch and celebratory cake.Displayed inside the 165-year-old building, which is considered one of only two surviving Antebellum depots in the state and Florida's oldest remaining brick depot – as well as Lloyd's second oldest structure – were various old-fashioned objects, including a 1920s baggage cart, 1920s two-wheel barrel, Fairbanks Morse platform and beam scale, and a large-scale model train set, complete with locomotives, water tower, miniature depot and surrounding countryside.All the while, Gulf Wind Chapter volunteers engaged with visitors and talked about the depot's history and its significance to the economic and social welfare of the area in its day.Operative until 1966, when the Seaboard Air Line Railroad closed the depot, the building was spared demolition by the Jefferson CountyHistorical Association (JCHA), which took it over in 1968 for the sake of preservation. The JCHA, in turn, transferred the building to the Wind Gulf Wind Chapter, which has since been restoring it.According to local historians Rhea Bond Miller and Carol Miller, when the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad decided to lay track and build the present-day depot, Lloyd existed only on paper, with a single building marking the location."The gamble was not as harebrained as it may appear," the Millers write. "In the surrounding region were settlers and settlements dating back before the United States’ acquisition of Florida. To the north were tracts held by Spanish land grants to the Willie family; they were joined by the Hollingsworths not long after. To the southeast, Bailey's Mill was grinding farmers’ corn before the earliest maps were drawn; by the 1850s, it had its own post office. Around Ulmer's Store and Springfield Church were similar settlements. In between these small communities stretched fields, and the cotton growers needed a means to get their product to market."Prior to the railroad's coming, according to the Millers, the area's cotton growers faced formidable problems in transporting their products. The process involved ox-drawn wagons hauling the bales via "Plank Road" to St. Marks, where the cotton was reloaded on shallow-draft ships and "conveyed to the ‘Spanish Hole,’ there to be transferred by crane to heavier, deeper draft vessels."Which difficulties led to the digging of a canal by slave labor, i.e., the Slave Canal, in an unsuccessful attempt to access St. Marks via the Wacissa River and so avoid the difficult and tortuous land-to-water route.Consequently, the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad's announced plan in 1852 to build a track through the area understandably elated the affected landowners."Perhaps by concerted agreement," write the Millers, "five local landowners – William Abbot, L.B. Roach, Henry Walker, Adam Wirick and partners Walter and Sarah Lloyd – offered the railroad free right-of-way through their acres; the Lloyds added as a further incentive the gift of 3¼ acres on which to build a depot."Possibly, the Millers speculate, Walter Lloyd also showed the railroad people his plans for a surrounding community. Whatever the circumstances, the Lloyd depot was completed in 1858, and almost simultaneously, the village of Lloyd came into being."Seven stores in time served the village and outlying areas," the Millers write. "Services – a doctor, sometimes a dentist, barbershop, cafes, a school and two churches. Most notably, in 1878 the Whitfield Hotel opened…at the request of railroad officials who wanted to provide passengers with a suitable place to dine."The hotel thrived and in time gained a reputation for fine dining, thanks to the efforts of three generations of women who ran it. In the 1930s, however, the Whitfield Hotel ceased being viable when the railroad added dining cars to its trains.Then came the boll weevil, which devastated the cotton industry, giving rise successively to the production and shipment of watermelon seeds, turpentine and finally timber."The trains carried not just good but passengers, some noteworthy," the Millers write. "In 1864, after the Battle of Olustee, a trainload of wounded Confederate soldiers being transported to hospitals further west unloaded some (in Lloyd). Local women tended to them until they were sufficiently recovered to make their own way home…Later, William Jennings Bryan was a Whitfield guest while campaigning for the presidency; Margaret Axson, later Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, came and went in fulfilling her duties as governess to the children at nearby El Destino Plantation; reportedly a party going to El Destino much later included Jacqueline Bouvier, later Jackie Kennedy."