Muscogee, Florida facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Muscogee, Florida
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Saw mill, Muscogee, Florida, ca. 1903
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 Muscogee, Florida
Location in Florida
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| Country |  United States |
| State |  Florida |
| County | Escambia |
| Elevation | 33 ft (10 m) |
| Time zone | UTC-6 (Central (CST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-5 (CDT) |
| GNIS feature ID | 295473 |
Muscogee is a ghost town located about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Pensacola, Florida, in Escambia County. It sits along the Perdido River. A ghost town is a place where most people have left, and it's no longer a busy community.
Muscogee was named after the Muscogee Lumber Company. This company was started by lumbermen from Georgia. They founded the town in 1857 to cut down trees from the huge pine forests nearby.
Contents
A Town Built on Timber
The Early Lumber Business
The first lumber company and the one that followed it cut down almost all the trees in the area. This process is called clearcutting. Once the forests were gone, there was no more lumber to harvest. This meant the lumber business in Muscogee came to an end.
Growth of the Lumber Industry
In 1889, a new company called Southern States Land and Lumber Company bought the original business. They brought pine trees to their mills from both Florida and Alabama. They used rivers, oxcarts, and even trains to move the logs.
The company had five locomotives (train engines) and 70 train cars. They built about 50 miles (80 km) of special logging railroads. They also used a tugboat on the Perdido River to move large groups of logs called log booms.
Peak Production and Community Life
At its busiest time, the logging camps and four lumber mills employed over 1,000 men. Muscogee had its own stores, including a Southern States commissary. There were also schools for the children of the families living there.
In one year, the company sent out 60 million feet of lumber. A lot of this lumber went to the eastern United States. The rest was sold to countries in Central and South America, the West Indies, Europe, and Africa. Business people visiting Muscogee could stay at the town's hotel or boarding houses. The town was also served by two railroads: the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Pensacola, Alabama, and Tennessee Railroad.
The End of Muscogee
Leaving the Lumber Business
By 1925, the Southern States company started to sell off its properties. They closed down the mills. In 1928, they sold the entire town and about 2,300 acres (930 ha) of land around it. A man named B.C. Davis bought it. He was a landowner and worked with turpentine from DeFuniak Springs.
A Town Becomes a Ghost Town
At that time, Muscogee had a population of 300 to 400 people. But as the lumber work ended, people gradually started to move away. They went to other places where they could find jobs and build a future. This is how Muscogee became a ghost town.
Notable Person
- Jackie Cochran, a famous aviator (airplane pilot), was born in Muscogee in 1906.
