Tusten-WHO-gee?

I have mentioned (far too often, probably) that I grew up in Columbia County, Florida. For those of you who might not know, Lake City is Columbia’s county seat, and by far the largest town in the county. (Granted, the city has a population of around 12,000, so “largest” is, of course, relative. As did many folks who grew up in the vicinity of Lake City, I knew that the town had once been called Alligator, named after the Seminole chief of the Seminole village which was once located where Lake City is now. The story goes that either the wife or the daughter (I’ve heard both) of the mayor of the town of Alligator was too embarrassed to live in a town named, well, Alligator, and she convinced him to change the name to Lake City. I’ve always thought Alligator made a far more interesting name than Lake City, to be honest.

There’s a road in Columbia County officially numbered County Road 131. All my life nearly everyone has referred to it not as 131, but as Tustenuggee. I remember asking my mother why it was called Tustenuggee, and being told that it was named after Chief Alligator, and that it was a Seminole word. I always assumed it meant alligator. I never learned much more about the early origins of the town of Alligator or its predecessor, the Seminole village, but this tidbit of local knowledge had certainly always stuck with me.

After I posted about the Columbia County stretch of Old Bellamy Road back in December 2015, one of my old school friends messaged me to suggest that the next time I was in the vicinity, I should check out the Tustenuggee United Methodist Church, located at the southern end of Tustenuggee (not far from Old Bellamy Road). She mentioned that not only was the church itself quite old, but that it had a very interesting cemetery – including the graves of Chief Tustenuggee and his braves. I am a sucker for old and interesting looking cemeteries, and the idea that a Seminole chief would be buried in a Methodist cemetery was just strange enough to motivate me to head back into Columbia County to take a look.

The Tustenuggee United Methodist Church itself was founded in 1845, although the current church structure was built in 1896 after the previous structure was destroyed by a storm. The brand new roof and white vinyl siding belie the age of the historic building; it’s hard to look at it and believe that it’s been around since 1896.

However, what is clearly not in doubt is the age of the cemetery. The oldest gravestone that I photographed dated from 1867, although there were quite a few stones that were broken or unreadable, as well as graves that were marked with nothing more than an outline of stones or moldering bricks.

And then there was Chief Tustenuggee. I know I’d been told that I’d find his grave there, but I must admit that when I stumbled upon a stone which read In Memoriam Chief Tustenuggee And His Warriors, surrounded by nine metal placards reading Indian Braves Of Chief Tustenuggee, I may have uttered some words quite inappropriate for a cemetery.

But… who was Seminole Chief Tustenuggee, and was he really buried at a Methodist church in southern Columbia County? Well, it seems that these are both questions to which there are no agreed-upon answers. I certainly haven’t been able to answer these questions to any degree of certainty, but here’s what I’ve been able to learn:

There likely were multiple Seminole leaders in Florida who went by the name Halpatter Tustenuggee (Hvlpvtv Tvstvnvke). It apparently translates to Alligator War Leader or Alligator Chief. As such, Tustenuggee may very well be less of a name and more of a title, meaning that any leader might have assumed such a title. As alligators remain prevalent in the state even to this day, one might be persuaded that Halpatter (or Hvlpvtv) could have been a common Seminole name. It’s easy to see how there could have been multiple Halpatter Tustenuggees in the state over the years.

There was a Halpatter Tustenuggee who was the leader of the Hvlpvtv Tvlofv, or Alligator Village, located where Lake City stands today. (The village may have been named after him, or he may have been named after the village.) There may have been more than one Halpatter Tustenuggee involved in the Second Seminole War. One led an army of Seminoles and escaped former slaves in the 1830s in one of the largest massacres of white settlers in the state. This may or may not have been the same Halpatter Tustenuggee who led troops at the Battle of Okeechobee during the Second Seminole War. As one of the driving forces behind the Second Seminole War was the planned relocation of the Seminoles west to Oklahoma, it seems likely that the Halpatter Tustenuggee who tried to persuade his fellow tribesmen to relocate westward – and who, himself, is allegedly buried in Oklahoma – is definitely another figure entirely. There may be more.

I've seen this image labeled as Chief Alligator many times in my life...
But which one is he?

Many locals disagree about whether or not Tustenuggee and/or any “indian braves” are actually buried in the cemetery. Some believe that he/they were indeed buried there, while others believe it is simply a memorial. Some locals believe that the area upon which the cemetery of the Tustenuggee United Methodist Church is located was once a Seminole burial ground, in which case there may have been a Tustenuggee or two buried there over the years prior to the establishment of the Methodist church.

Related Links:

Tustenuggee Methodist Church (Florida Memory)

Typescript by John Mahon Containing Information on Seminole Chiefs

Account of the Attack by Halpatter Tustenuggee, or Alligator

Alligator Warrior Festival

Two Different Alligator/Halpatter-Tustenuggee?

Separate but Equally Desolate

During the last century, integration of schools across the country led to the shuttering of many smaller, segregated neighborhood schools, as counties consolidated education into larger, integrated locations. In theory, integration was supposed to begin in the mid-1950s, following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. the Board of Education ruling. However, as the ruling contained the rather oxymoronic instructions that desegregation was to proceed ‘with all deliberate speed’ areas within the deep south continued with racially segregated education for subsequent decades. As such, all-black schools were constructed in Florida, even in the post-Brown environment. It’s hard to find information on which schools existed where in Florida in the mid-twentieth century, especially for an armchair historian operating mainly with Google and word of mouth; however, I have located the desolate and dilapidated remains of two in Columbia County from that era – one for black students, and one for white.

Fort White Bethlehem School

I first learned about the existence of the Fort White Bethlehem School from comments I received on facebook after posting about the Columbia County stretch of the Old Bellamy Road – the modern remnants of which end just to the east of the town of Fort White. Several folks commented to mention that there had once been an all-black school in the area, located at the intersection of Legree and CR18. From what people have told me, the school was in operation as late as the mid-1960s, and was closed only when Columbia County finally desegregated its school system. The building that remains today was built in the 1950s. 

This was as close to the Fort White Bethlehem School as I could get.

Shooting with the zoom lens a bit :-)

There is a second structure located behind the main school structure, which also appears to be part of the school.

A closer look at the rear building, shot through my zoom lens. This construction resembles that of many of the wings at various Columbia County schools, and is clearly a later addition.

This shot is of the interior of an unidentified all-black school in Columbia County (from here). It may not be of the Fort White Bethlehem School, although it is of that era.

A Rosenwald School (schools built for African American students paid for by one of the owners of the Sears-Roebuck Company, Julius Rosenwald) named the Bethlehem School was built in Columbia County in 1927. The remaining structure of the Fort White Bethlehem School is clearly 1950s-era. I do not know whether or not the 1950s school was located in the same location as the Rosenwald Bethlehem School. However, not too far from the remains of the 1950s Fort White Bethlehem School is the modern-day Bethlehem park and community center, and a Bethlehem Church road leading (not surprisingly) to the predominantly African-American Bethlehem United Methodist Church. This leads me to believe that the Rosenwald Bethlehem School would have been in that area, if not in the same location.

Rosenwald Bethlehem School in Columbia County, 1927 [source]

The remains of the 1950s Fort White Bethlehem School are easily seen from CR18 if you know where to look, although they are privately owned and securely fenced off to discourage exploration. 

[A HUGE thank-you goes to Chad Cray for finding out the name of the school for me, and for telling me about Rosenwald schools!]

Murray Hill School

In contrast, Murray Hill School was an all-white school, locate to the north of Lake City along Hw 441. I learned of its existence after posting a picture of the remains of a convenience store and gas station built in the 1930s alongside 441 to a Lake City facebook group. Several people commented that they used to walk to the store after school let out at Murray Hill School. Several comments later, and I knew exactly where the school was located – at the intersection of Murray Hill road and 441 – although I was unable to learn when it was built or its years of operation.

Murray Hill School

Murray Hill School

Convenience store and gas station built in the 1930s by the John Raleigh Hall family. Students from the Murray Hill School used to walk to this store after school.

The remains of the Murray Hill School, too, are easily seen from the road (441), although this building is also privately owned and securely fenced.

Hotel Blanche

I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in Columbia City, a tiny crossroads in south-central Columbia County. I was actually born in the town of Lake City (the county seat of Columbia County) and had a Lake City mailing address for the first eighteen years of my life. Columbia City was (and still is) just a crossroads with a flashing light and a convenience store or two. If my family wanted to buy pretty much anything, that involved driving twenty or so minutes into Lake City. I’m now in my late thirties (shhhh!) and I’ve lived away from Columbia County longer than I lived in it. Still, I’m old enough – and I lived there long enough – to (vaguely) remember downtown Lake City as the center of commerce for the community. I remember being a little kid, going downtown with my parents to shop at McCrory’s, Rowands, and JC Penney. I’m also old enough to remember one of old buildings burning down, JC Penney relocating out to the brand new mall in what would later become ‘the strip’ several miles from downtown, and the final death knell for commerce in downtown: the opening of the Lake City Walmart (also on the strip). Downtown wasn’t really a place one went anymore after that. A few businesses hung on through the years, gradually closing their doors as owners retired, moved locations, or simply couldn’t make a profit. While a handful of the old businesses do remain to this day, downtown Lake City is nothing like it was when I was a small child.

However, while I am old enough to remember, however vaguely, an active commercial district in downtown Lake City, what I am not old enough to remember is an open Hotel Blanche, as it ceased operation in 1967, quite a few years before I was born. The original part of the Blanche was built in 1902 by architect Frank Milburn and builder Henry Otis. It was expanded to include a north and a south wing in the mid-1920s, in order to accommodate demand. Located at the northern end of the state, and centered along both railroad lines and the burgeoning highway 441 – one of the major north-south highways prior to the construction of the Interstates – Lake City earned its nickname ‘the gateway to Florida,’ and the Blanche was where the wealthy stayed when they arrived in the state, hosting notable visitors from Al Capone to Johnny Cash over the years.

Hotel Blanche, 1902

Layout of the hotel according to the 1906 Sanborn Map

Source: Columbia County Historical Museum

The hotel in 1943

With train travel replaced by private cars and the construction of I-75 (which bypassed the Blanche by several miles), demand for rooms at the Blanche declined; it ceased operating as a hotel by 1967. My memories of the Blanche are of it being an increasingly dilapidated structure at the heart of downtown, often home to various businesses on the ground floor, but never anything particularly permanent. There was a thrift store we used to go to on the ground floor for a while – I always liked trying to imagine it as part of the old hotel – but other than that, I don’t think I’ve ever been inside any of the hotel. Despite this fact, the slowly disintegrating Hotel Blanche has always been the centerpiece of downtown Lake City in my mind.

The colorful posters in the shop windows have been placed in all the empty storefronts to mitigate the feelings of emptiness and desolation.

The center of the original hotel structure, external balconies long since removed.


The rear of the north wing

Center rear. The central structure comprised the dining room (front) and the kitchen (rear).

Rear of the northern part of the original 1902 structure.

The base of the kitchen's chimney.

To the left, windows into the old dining room

The connection between the original south side and the south wing

Aerial view from Google

Despite growing up in Columbia County, I never heard any rumors of the Blanche being haunted. I’m not one who believes in ghost stories, but I’ve always loved hearing them. I’d like to think that if there were rumors of the Blanche being a haunted structure, I’d at least have heard them. Perhaps I was too young, or perhaps I was too disconnected from the folks who continued to work in and around the building. Or perhaps the alleged haunting of the Blanche is merely a construct of the internet age. I say this because despite never having heard ghost stories pertaining to the hotel, there are mentions of it here and there across the web on various paranormal investigatory sites. One paranormal investigator apparently gave a presentation at the Blanche back in 2006, sponsored by the Columbia County Public Library – and later that evening explored the interior of the hotel seeking ghosts and other phenomena. He claimed the building is inhabited by quite a few restless spirits, and may or may not be the location of some sort of, um, portal. You can read the account here. It’s quite interesting to say the least. The paranormal investigator also took the following photos during the evening exploration:

Photos from PSIResearcher

It turns out that there’s a chance the old Hotel Blanche might not remain a Desolation Florida landmark. Now, numerous plans for revitalizing downtown Lake City have been proposed, debated, and even approved over the years – although many such plans never amounted to more than just talk. While many of the old storefronts in historic downtown Lake City are now home to local businesses, just as many (maybe more) currently sit empty. Downtown has not been revitalized. However, this past fall, plans to spend $14 million to refurbish the Hotel Blanche were approved by local government. You can read about this here and here. As you might imagine, the idea of spending $14 million of taxpayer’s dollars is rather controversial. Allegedly, construction will begin this coming March, although to be honest, I’ll believe it when I see it. 

Links about the Blanche:

National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Hotel Blanche (wikipedia)

The Hotel Blanche, Lake City, Florida

City Council Unanimous for Hotel Redevelopment

Lake City's Last Chance Hotel

Al Capone at the Blanche Hotel (historical fiction)

Abandoned Railroad: Fort White

I have had an obsession with abandoned railroads for just about as long as I can remember. You may have noticed that even though this blog is fairly young, I’ve written about railroads a good bit already. As a child growing up in Columbia City, I used to be convinced that I could hear the ghostly echo of the train running between Lake City and Fort White, which used to run through Columbia City – even though those tracks had been pulled up before I was even born.

During Fort White’s boom years in the late 1800s to early 1900s, trains connected Fort White to Lake City and Live Oak to the north and northwest, and to High Springs and Gainesville to the south. During that time, the population of the community swelled to roughly 2000, and was supported by the mining of phosphate, the collection of turpentine, and the growth of cotton and oranges. The trains bustled in and out of town, carting away the goods which funded the community. However, as with many booms, this one went bust. The phosphate mines depleted, extreme freezes killed off the orange orchards, and boll weevils destroyed the cotton. People moved away, the rail lines fell silent, and eventually the rails were removed. Parts of the rail line were converted to a rails-to-trails path, the O’Leno to Ichetucknee trail, although other sections remain overgrown and wild.

The old Fort White train station has an interesting post-rail history. After the railway line became inactive, the physical train station was sold to a farmer in the nearby town of Branford, who moved it to his property and used it as a barn in which to store hay. A picture of the station in its hay-storing capacity can be seen here. Twenty years later, in 2002, the farmer sold it back to the city of Fort White and it was returned to its original location. An image of the station after it had been returned to its original location but before its restoration can be seen here. It has since been refurbished, and is now used by the Fort White Chamber of Commerce. Additionally, a short stretch of track with a caboose (which had resided at the Kindergarten Center in Lake City for many years) have been installed.

I like to browse real estate listings. Last January, I discovered that roughly two acres of woodland bordering a stretch of the old Fort White to High Springs segment of abandoned railroad were for sale for an absurdly cheap price – slightly more than $3k. The catch? The property was landlocked, AKA inaccessible by car and without a minor bit of on-foot trespassing. Apparently at some point (during the housing boom, no doubt) someone had planned to subdivide the area, and had sold plots to various people, with plans drafted for access roads to reach said plots. But as that boom, too, went bust, the area was never subdivided, and the planned roads to access the various properties were never built. A bit of trespassing would be required any time anyone wished to access this land, which had been foreclosed on and was bank owned.

The property in question; the diagonal bit of land is the former railroad bed.

I was convinced that if I made an absurdly low offer, the bank would accept. I mean, who else would want to own a piece of inaccessible woodland along an abandoned railroad? I convinced my mother and her boyfriend to accompany me to the property. We had to park at the end of dirt road and walk through some woods of dubious ownership before reaching the abandoned railroad bed. We then had to trudge down the bed for a good ten minutes before we got to the actual lot in question. It was glorious overgrown woodland, and I imagined erecting a faux train station along the old line – and a million other fantastical ideas – before my mom talked me out of it. Alas.

Don't mind us, we're just looking at real estate.

At some points the railroad bed was quite overgrown.
(That's my mom, btw.)

Other parts were much easier to walk.


Me, at the property in question.

The property is no longer for sale; it was purchased last February by people who, alas, are not me. Perhaps its new owners, too, have bizarre fantasies of ghost trains.