Chattahoochee: Arsenal, Prison, and the State's First Asylum

The town of Chattahoochee in Gadsden County has held three very different institutions on the same parcel of land over nearly two hundred years. The United States Army built the Chattahoochee Arsenal here in the eighteen thirties as a weapons depot serving the Seminole Wars. After the Civil War, the property became Florida's first state penitentiary in eighteen sixty-eight.

Then in eighteen seventy-six the Legislature converted it into the Florida Asylum for the Indigent Insane, the state's first psychiatric institution. The original officers quarters from the arsenal era still stand and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Florida State Hospital continues operating on the grounds today.