The strange story of Tallahassee, Florida’s ‘middle of nowhere’ capital

Even on a Sunday, amid weekend traffic, the drive from Orlando to Tallahassee feels quite an odyssey. It is only a matter of 250 miles, but Interstate 10, in particular, seems to stretch on forever – to the point that I briefly wonder if I have missed my turning, gone far beyond the Florida Panhandle, and am halfway through the highway’s 2,460-mile trek to Santa Monica and the California shore. By the time I slip into town, the sun is setting, and it seems as if days, rather than hours, have passed, since I left Mickey Mouse behind.

It is not entirely fair to say that Florida’s capital is in the middle of nowhere. It is 25 miles south of Amsterdam – a hamlet just over the “border” in neighbouring Georgia. It is 20 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, at Apalachee Bay; 50 miles from the thick treeline of Apalachicola National Forest; 105 miles from the seafront resorts of Panama City Beach.

But it is certainly fair to say that it isn’t very big. It is only the eighth most populous city in the USA’s third most populous state, adding just 202,000 inhabitants to the state’s overall head-count of 23 million – 70,000 of whom are university students. Florida does size with aplomb – the hotels of Fort Lauderdale, the rollercoasters of Orlando, the mansions and bank accounts of West Palm Beach. But Tallahassee, its administrative hub, is small.

And if it is not quite in the middle of nowhere, then it is definitely in the middle of something. Specifically, the journey between its sibling Florida cities of Pensacola (197 miles to the west, out towards the Alabama state line) and St Augustine (202 miles to the east, on the Atlantic coast). This equidistance is all part of Tallahassee’s story, and the main reason why – in its modern form – it came into existence exactly two centuries ago.

It is a tale entwined with Florida’s own. What is now “the Sunshine State” became part of the burgeoning USA – initially as the “Florida Territory” – on March 30 1822, having been handed over to America three years earlier (via the Adams-Onis Treaty) by a Spain which could no longer afford its upkeep.

At the time, the region was very different to the destination which now welcomes around 1.5 million British holidaymakers every year. “City life”, as it was, was predominantly limited to those two earliest settlements carved out by Spanish conquistadors – Pensacola in 1559 (and again, after catastrophic hurricane damage in 1698); St Augustine in 1565.

Both cities wished to play pivotal roles in the running of the new Florida. Neither wanted to cede ground or initiative to the other. The first session of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida was held in Pensacola on July 22 1822 – at considerable inconvenience to the representatives of St Augustine, who were forced to sail around the whole Florida peninsula, a trip that took 59 days, in order to attend. The second session – convened in St Augustine – required a similarly hazardous expedition of the Pensacolans.

This, clearly, could not continue. Alternatives were discussed. And agreement was reached. Anhaica, the principal town of Florida’s Apalachee people, stood midway between the two, and was an ideal compromise. Or, at least, it would have been had it not been razed by Andrew Jackson, the future seventh US president, in 1818 – one of a series of brutal body-blows rained down upon the region’s indigenous population in the 19th century. With a certain bleak irony, the capital which rose amid the almost still smoking ruins bore a local name: “Tallahassee” is a Muskogean word, translating loosely as “old fields”. On March 4 1824, territorial governor William Duval decreed it to be the new Florida capital. The third session of the legislative council was held in a crude log cabin.

Glance at the map of the state, and you might ask a reasonable question: why deliberately place its capital so far to the north? The answer is that, in 1824, in terms of the main knots of population, Florida meant northern Florida. Orlando would not exist (and only then, as the village of Jernigan) until 1843, the first traces of Miami would not arrive until 1858 – and development would not really mushroom until Henry Flagler completed his railway down the Atlantic coast in 1912. For the most part, the south of the peninsula was swampy, sparsely inhabited and – as far as “New World” settlers were concerned – highly dangerous. The Third Seminole War of 1855-58 took place in and around the Everglades, as the indigenous Floridians who had not been displaced by Jackson – or forcibly transported to Oklahoma – fought hard to protect what remained of their ancestral lands.

Tallahassee did not flourish immediately. On paying it a visit in 1827, the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson was appalled, describing it as “a grotesque place of land speculators and desperados”. But when full US statehood arrived in March 1845 – Florida joining the club as its 27th member – so did a capitol building worthy of the role.

It still is – although, initially, walking east through town, I struggle to spot it, so dwarfed is it by its successor. Unusually, Florida has two capitols, one standing next to the other. The modern version – a 25-storey, 345ft (105m) tower of no obvious beauty, inaugurated in 1977 – blocks the sight-lines to its historic predecessor from certain angles. It would have blocked it out entirely had a flutter of nostalgic soft-heartedness, rare in a country ever prepared to tear down the old and erect something new, not deterred the bulldozers.

The decision to hold an open day on March 30 1978, allowing Floridians to wander their original capitol, attracted 2,000 visitors and numerous letters demanding its preservation. Three months later, the then-Florida governor Reubin Askew – who was in favour of demolition – signed off on the legal protections that enshrined the structure as a museum.

Posterity has proved this the correct course of action. An elegant piece of architecture in the neoclassical tradition of American capitols, the old state house wears its heritage with grace. In the lobby, a black-and-white photo captures it in those initial moments in 1845, a picket fence in front – there to keep out, not people, but the cattle eager to graze on its lawn. Above, the interior of the dome is a blur of colour – courtesy of 12 panels of stained glass that, though replicas of their 1902 ancestors, are convincingly Art Nouveau.

Much of the building is freeze-framed as it was that year. The 122 years in question fall away as I walk through it. You can practically hear the hard clap of a gavel in the former Supreme Court, where the seats for six judges wait empty; almost hear the strains of insistent debate in the Senate chamber and the onetime House of Representatives. The governor’s office, meanwhile, recalls its 18th incumbent, William Jennings, who sat behind the very desk on display here between 1901 and 1903. His tenure would have been shorter had his secretary not foiled an assassination attempt on December 17 1902, wrestling to the ground the gunman who barged into the room a week before Christmas.

The museum does not shy away from difficult facts. Another room displays, as artefact, the naked racism of segregated America – a bathroom door (from 1949) bearing the sign “White Ladies”. Political tension is on show too, via one of the ballot boxes from the Florida recount which decided the hair’s-breadth 2000 presidential election between George W Bush and Al Gore. The building is also happy to admit that its location, a pragmatic choice in 1824, has become increasingly controversial in the 200 subsequent years. “[It is] resolved that the Ocala Women’s Club favours most urgently the removal of the capital of Florida to a more central location in the state,” reads a protest letter dated April 30 1921 (Ocala, 80 miles north-west of Orlando having, conveniently, just such a central location). Tallahassee was repelling this notion as “recently” as 1967, when the senator Lee Weissenborn led calls for relocation, ahead of the new capitol’s construction. That ship has surely sailed – though Tallahassee remains a small town with a big purpose.

There is only a gentle buzz at Madison Social, an inviting bar-restaurant which looks onto the playing fields of the Florida State campus; craft beer specialist the Proof Brewing Company has a distinctly local vibe – so much so that its signature ale, EightFive-O, takes its inspiration from the city phone code. And Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park, up on the northern outskirts, has a leafy calm far removed from standard urban life, couples strolling under cypress trees in a space shaped as a dream retirement home by the titular New York financier in 1923. Perhaps, even here, you are not quite in the middle of nowhere – but amid a burble of birdsong, you start to realise that you can’t be far from it.

Essentials

Tallahassee has its own airport. You cannot fly in directly from the UK, but there are convenient connections to Miami and Fort Lauderdale – as well as Atlanta in Georgia.

Hotel Indigo (826 West Gaines Street; 001 850 210 0008; ihg.com). Doubles from £167.

Florida Historic Capitol Museum is free to enter (flhistoriccapitol.gov).

For further information, see visittallahassee.com; tallahasseeleoncounty200.com; visitflorida.com; visittheusa.co.uk

Go with the experts

Realistically, for British tourists, Tallahassee is likely to be part of a longer road-trip. It is a two-day element of the 14-night “Discover the Real Florida” itinerary sold by Bon Voyage (0800 316 3012; bon-voyage.co.uk) – from £2,125 per person, including flights.