Caryville: Sawmill Town on the Choctawhatchee

The town of Caryville sits at the edge of the Choctawhatchee River, and its whole story begins with two arrivals: the railroad and the sawmill. When the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad crossed the river in eighteen eighty-two, a lumber company followed almost immediately. The Sanford Lumber Company employed four hundred workers by nineteen oh three, making Caryville the economic engine of Washington County.

The town was named for R. M. Cary, the railroad company's secretary.

And in nineteen oh three, Caryville claimed another distinction: it became the first community in Washington County to receive electric power. It was incorporated in nineteen thirteen. Today the population is about three hundred, but the old pattern is still legible in the layout: a river crossing, a rail line, and the ghost of a sawmill economy.