Before it was known as a vacation destination or a military hub, Okaloosa County’s early business leaders wanted it to be known as a maritime superpower on the Gulf Coast.
The idea, under the auspices of J.M. Hodgskin and revealed with great aplomb by the Okaloosa News-Journal on June 26, 1931, was to build a thriving port city sheltered from hurricanes and storms in Port Dixie.
But where’s Port Dixie?
Well, it never happened – but that doesn’t mean it didn’t leave evidence of the effort behind.
What is now the area of unincorporated Shalimar, between the city limits and what’s now Eglin Air Force Base’s range, was to become this mecca of markets in the Central Gulf Coast. But – it failed, due in part to what A History of Okaloosa County by Henry Allen Dobson called, “A grandiose scheme which had the ingredients of a great hoax.”
The plan was to build up housing in the area and open a 52,000-acre club and hunting preserve, along with a rail line between the Port and Andalusia, Alabama, “Which shall be the best dividend-paying railroad in the United States,” according to a write-up. The startup city would also have included the other trappings of a master-planned community in the middle of the action: a real estate company, a port, a downtown, and a nightclub. The plan was to build the new economic metropolis in six phases – starting with a $17 million first phase. The Port would serve as a hub for shipping entering the United States, particularly from the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. “Port Dixie is destined to become the greatest industrial manufacturing city in the South; perhaps in the United States,” Hodgkin said, “This is God’s selected spot. Ours is a progressive plan. The law of progress cannot be held back. The law of omnipotence cannot be checked.”
General Albert Clayton Dalton, a veteran of campaigns against the Sioux and the Spanish-American War, was to take the helm of the company and lead it to success, as he’d led the U.S. Shipping Board.
As you can guess by taking a quick look at Google Maps, the project did not happen. Three factors outside of the Port Dixie planners’ control failed to materialize. First, the Federal and state governments passed on dredging the East Pass near Destin. They didn’t see the effort required to deepen the passage as a judicious use of taxpayer dollars. Second, the intended rail spur from Defuniak Springs to Port Dixie failed to materialize. Finally, the malaise of the Great Depression weighed heavily on capital, making it difficult to move large-scale projects forward.
But something did come of it. The busted development didn’t become everything in the vision, but a decade after the attempt, the influx of military personnel, thanks to the newly established Air Force Base, needed homes. Clifford Meigs, now the owner of the land where Port Dixie was to materialize, built more than 100 homes for them to live. in in
