Macclenny: The Railroad Town That Stole the County Seat

Baker County was created in eighteen sixty-one, named for Confederate Senator James McNair Baker, with a settlement called Sanderson as its seat. Then the railroad arrived. The tracks of the Florida Atlantic and Gulf Coast Rail Road reached what would become Macclenny in August of eighteen fifty-nine, and a small railroad community began to grow up around the stop, at first called Darbyville for a man named Colonel John Darby who ran naval stores and a lumber yard nearby.

Within a decade and a half, Darbyville had outgrown the county seat. On February seventh, eighteen eighty-six, the seat was officially moved here. The town took its permanent name from Carr Bowers McClenny, a lumber businessman who married into the Darby family.

Today Macclenny is a city of about seven thousand and the county seat of Baker County.