Following the Civil War, steamboat traffic on the Apalachicola River grew as passengers, agricultural products, and manufactured goods moved between the Gulf of Mexico and upstream points in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. A river port was established, and a 26-block area was laid out for the new community of Blountstown, named for the Seminole chief who had ruled much of the nearby territory during the early 19th century. In 1880, after the Calhoun County courthouse at Abe Springs Bluff burned, the county seat was moved to Blountstown, then a growing community of about 100 inhabitants, and a two-story wood-frame courthouse was built on the courthouse square at this site. Homes, businesses, and a hotel rose nearby, but few of the planned streets were ever built. Periodic river flooding led some residents to seek higher ground, and New Blountstown began to develop around the turn of the century. In 1904, after streets had been laid out and many buildings erected in New Blountstown, a much larger two-story brick courthouse was built just over a mile northwest on the town's principal east-west thoroughfare. After the courthouse at The Bluff no longer housed county courts and offices, it was used as a private residence until its demolition in the mid-1940s.