One important factor that has kept the county small is that 87 percent of it is publicly owned - protected as national and state forests, preserves, and parks - so beyond the grasp of developers. Those assets make the area attractive to hikers, bird-watchers, campers, and anyone who likes boat trips to see the area's ample wildlife: alligators and dolphins, manatees, osprey, and bald eagles.
Periodically a Florida black bear ambles into town to check things out.
In the early 1500s, French and Spanish explorers discovered a thriving Native-American culture here that lived off the bounty of the forests and the rivers. By the early 1800s this was the third-busiest port on the Gulf of Mexico, according to "At the Water's Edge: A Pictorial and Narrative History of Apalachicola and Franklin County," by William Warren Rogers and Lee Willis III (Donning, 1997).
As many as 130 steamboats would go up the Apalachicola River to retrieve the inland cotton crop from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida and transport it down the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola rivers. Tons of cotton bales were loaded onto schooners that moved them to textile centers in the Northeast and Europe. Later, Rogers and Willis write, timber became a staple of the local economy, particularly the coveted cypress.
Throughout its long history, however, this town near the crook of the Florida Panhandle has had to reinvent itself to survive and prosper. In modern times Apalachicola changed again, not so much by calculation or design as by sheer grit and happenstance and the good fortune of its location and natural resources.
Today the town's economy focuses on tourism, history, and commercial and sport fishing, some of the best in the country. About 90 percent of the oysters harvested in Florida - 10 percent of the national total - come from the rich and carefully monitored beds of Apalachicola Bay, which spans 30 miles. Connoisseurs covet them for their unique, sweet taste.
The town also has become a destination for fine dining Panhandle style, which has made it a regionally popular weekend getaway year-round, even in what can be chilly winters.
