Abe Springs Bluff served as Calhoun County's second county seat from 1849 to 1880. About 4/10 mile west of here, at a remote location overlooking the Chipola River, a one-story wood frame courthouse housed county courts and offices for more than three decades, including the turbulent period surrounding the Civil War. Earlier, Saint Joseph had been the original county seat from the creation of Calhoun County in 1838 until the coastal boom town was destroyed by a yellow fever epidemic and a hurricane in the early 1840s, leaving the county for a time without a seat of government. From 1845 to 1847, the Florida Legislature tried unsuccessfully to re-establish a county seat. In 1848, Calhoun County residents voted on proposed locations, and the following January Abe Springs Bluff, a more centrally located inland site, was officially declared the county seat. Unlike its ill-fated predecessor, Abe Springs Bluff never became a true community, only a courthouse site. In 1880 the courthouse was destroyed by fire, and the county seat was moved to the new community of Blountstown on the Apalachicola River.