This rare photograph shows a paddlewheel riverboat pulling into Four Mile Landing in Walton County. Located just off Choctawhatchee Bay near present-day Freeport, the landing was an important Northwest Florida port and landmark. It was one of the key points to which farmers in Walton County carried their crops for shipment out to Pensacola and beyond.
During Brig. Gen. Alexander Asboth's 1864 raid on Marianna, the U.S. quartermaster steamer Lizzie Davis tied up at the landing while Asboth's Federal troops were making their way through Walton County.
On the morning of September 23, 1864, Asboth attacked a small Confederate camp at Eucheeanna, then the county seat of Walton County. Following the bloodless skirmish, he sent two companies of troops to escort his prisoners, lame horses, and a number of African American recruits liberated from local plantations to Four Mile Landing. There they were placed aboard the Lizzie Davis, which then steamed across Choctawhatchee Bay to Point Washington to await the return of the expedition.
For more on the Marianna raid and the Battle of Marianna, please visit www.battleofmarianna.net, or consider my book - The Battle of Marianna, Florida - now available at www.barnesandnoble.com, www.amazon.com or from Chipola River Book and Tea in downtown Marianna.
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