The Old Store on the Wakulla River

St. Marks was the only settlement along this coast at the time of the American Revolution and became economically important after the war. In 1784, Panton, Leslie & Company established a store on the west bank of the Wakulla River, where tens of thousands of deer skins, hides, furs, and beeswax moved to ocean-going vessels as English products came inland. During the Second Spanish period, beginning in 1783, the company was the only British firm allowed to continue trade with the Indians, and with Panton's close ties to Alexander McGillivray, Grand Chief of the Creek Nation, it virtually controlled that trade. In 1785 William Augustus Bowles tried and failed to seize the trading post, then in early 1800, calling himself Director General of the Muskogee Indians, he led an attack that looted the post and captured the fort at San Marcos, where the Muscogee flag flew for five weeks before Spanish troops drove him out. As Indians changed their way of life to trade more skins for English goods and guns, their debt to the company grew large, and in 1804 the John Forbes Company, formerly Panton, Leslie & Company, accepted 1.2 million acres between the Apalachicola and St. Marks Rivers to settle it. Ownership disputes over this Forbes Purchase lasted for years, and present-day plats still show its survey lines; the location of the St. Marks-Tallahassee railroad terminal at Port Leon, now a ghost town, was chosen in part because it lay east of the St. Marks River and avoided controversy over ownership. Today the Wakulla River provides recreation for people and habitat for manatees and other wildlife.

St. Marks, Florida · United States