This area along the southern shore of Wolf Bay was the original downtown of Orange Beach. Beginning in the 1870s, the two schooners of James C. Callaway anchored nearby in the deep-water Boat Basin and were used to import supplies and export products such as oranges, shingles, and turpentine sap, later servicing lighthouse beacons in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1909, D.R. Peteet bought 3,254 acres here, calling it Gulf Bay Tract, and built a shingle mill near the community's vital wharf. A school built here in 1910 was used on alternating Sundays by Baptist and Presbyterian congregations until 1953, when both built churches nearby, and the schoolhouse also served as a community meeting place. In 1954, the Home Demonstration Club began its annual Community Picnic on the school grounds, and by 1959 had raised enough money to buy land for the Community Center one mile east. Elsie E. Diehl was postmaster of the first Orange Beach Post Office in 1901 and at a second location in 1921. Just west of here, Hilda Callaway Dietz built the Orange Beach Hotel in 1923 and operated it until the war began in 1941, when the coast was essentially closed to tourists and fishing. Just east of here, Captain Dan Callaway's circa 1907 home and summer kitchen remain in use; the kitchen served as a store in the 1930s under Emmons Brown, with gas pumps for boats and the few cars in the area, and in 1937 it became the third post office with Minnie Lee Callaway Brown as postmaster. In 1971, Captain Dan's properties became the retirement home of David DeJarnette, known as the Father of Alabama Archaeology. The Orange Beach Hotel was demolished in 2015, and a new building of similar design was built in its place to operate as the Coastal Arts Center of Orange Beach.