Contractors Dig Up a Bit of History in Reid Avenue Work

When the contractors began digging up Reid Avenue I thought of what my father told me many years ago about the street. During that time, which was probably about 1915, there were no paved streets in St. Joe. There were very few cars and they would bog down in the sand bed streets.

The only industry during this period was a saw mill and the Apalachicola Northern Railroad. The railroad was exporting lumber over their dock which extended some 2,500 feet out into the bay.

In an attempt to improve the condition of Reid Avenue it was decided to use some of the bay bottom. A rail mounted steam crane was used to dig up the bay bottom near the dock and loads of clam, conch, and other shells were dumped into a gondola rail car. A temporary rail line was laid down the street and the material from the car was mixed in with the sand to stabilize the road bed. Products from St. Joseph Bay are the foundation under the lime rock and asphalt on Reid Avenue.

While watching the machine dig up Reid Avenue in 1997, I retrieved one of the clam shells, still intact, that was deposited there some 80 years ago.