The 48th annual Northwest Florida Heritage Museum began with a shot – well, a blank. 

A rifleman with an old-school Civil War musket (or rifle, I didn’t check the bore) dressed in his Civil War regalia fired off a shot, and the runners in a 5K race kicked off the event by running around Tom’s Bayou from Perrine Park on Bayshore to Florida Park. 

Roughly 100 people participated in the run that was blessed by a cool breeze off the Choctawhatchee Bay. 

After the run and a morning beer from 3rd Planet, the rest of the day’s festivities began in Perrine Park. These included live music, a couple of dozen vendors, and tours through the museum. 

Heritage Museum Reveals Restored Carmichael Buggy

At 3PM, the Heritage Museum’s trustees cut a ribbon to officially reopen the Carmichael Buggy exhibit. The museum’s board of directors spent several years securing the funds for the restoration of the buggy, which was hooked up to a horse or mule in the early 1900s. 

“I remember the day we took [the buggy] out of here – it was very nerve-wracking,” said restorer Aaron Pittman, “The state of the buggy prior to it was one of those projects when it comes to restoring antiques that sometimes you just take a deep breath, you look at it and go ‘well, let’s see how it goes.”

The Buggy has significant damage from being left out in the elements for some time, including a lot of missing pieces and wood rot. 

“There was a lot of original wood, but then in a lot of places, you see what might be wood that was missing completely,” said Pittman, “We took days, weeks working filler and other stuff back in, but then stressing it to make it look like the original.” Pittman added, “for there to be so much missing and then to reconstruct it from the ground up was really, really cool.”

The restoration took approximately three months.