Named for a nearby cypress swamp, Gum Pond stood along the Albany to Thomasville section of the Florida Stage Coach Road from the 1840s to the 1880s. This crossroads community included the Byrd Crawford Inn, a stage relay station, Turpin’s General Store, a blacksmith shop, a post office, and a voting precinct, while neighboring plantations had gristmills and sawmills that helped complete the settlement. Mt. Enon Baptist Church, one mile north and the last remnant of the nineteenth-century community, met the spiritual, cultural, and educational needs of the surrounding plantations. The church was constituted in 1856, and its current building was built in 1888. General Joseph Wheeler’s troops once stopped here while returning Federal prisoners to Andersonville. The church also housed Ravenwood, the first academy in Mitchell County. After the coming of the railroad in 1869, Gum Pond declined, and many residents moved west to establish the town of Baconton.