Gretna, FL

Gretna grew out of a Humphrey Company settlement founded in 1897 along the railroad country of Gadsden County. W.P. Humphrey, his son Duncan, and son-in-law J.W. Mahaffey built a turpentine still, and the surrounding town filled in with a cotton gin, sawmill, blacksmith shop, stores, churches, and a hotel. The town was platted in 1905 and incorporated in 1909, giving Gretna a civic grid that still follows U.S. 90 through Main Street. Its history is distinctly Black Florida history: the town's institutions grew around work, worship, schooling, and the businesses that served an African American community in the north Florida agricultural belt.

ATTRTim Ross / Public domain

The old Gretna Schoolhouse is the clearest surviving piece of that story. Built in 1908 with money from the Board of Public Instruction and local patrons, it later served as a health clinic, town hall, community center, and a place for church activities. Today Gretna sits in the Tallahassee metro orbit, with Quincy five miles southeast and Chattahoochee to the northwest, while U.S. 90 still links the town's Main Street to both. Gretna's signature is a schoolhouse that kept changing jobs as the community changed around it, carrying the town's Black civic history into the present.