In the 1950s retired lawyer and Republican candidate for governor Elvy Edison Callaway opened his Garden of Eden Park along the highway in the Florida Panhandle town of Bristol. Callaway believed that God had created man in the delta of the Apalachicola river, which split into four rivers, just as the Bible describes four rivers leading out of Eden.

The area was also the habitat of a rare tree known as the “Torreya yew,” (Torreya taxifolia) an unusual evergreen which can grow up to sixty feet tall, and earned the nickname “stinking yew” for the strong smell of its fruit when crushed. Callaway believed the Torreya was the “gopher wood” that the Bible says Noah used to build his Ark.

In his roadside kiosk, he displayed a Torreya log which he said was a remnant of the Ark. Visitors could pay $1.10 for admission into a wild unspoiled land of dramatic cliffs, rivers, and wildlife, and all proceeds from his “non-profit shrine” were to go to a local Florida retirement home. 

Today Callaway’s kiosk is long gone, but you can still hike the “Garden of Eden Trail” in the nearby Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve, run by the Nature Conservancy. The hike is considered one of Florida’s most challenging hiking trails due to the ravines and rough terrain.

In addition to creating a colony focused on economic production, the Co-Workers’ Fraternity was also concerned with spiritual, philosophical, and religious study.

Photos of Eastpoint in the early 1900’s from the Brown Family Collection in the (State Archives of Florida)

According to the Carrabelle Police Department’s website, the World’s Smallest Police Station came into being on March 10, 1963. The city had been having problems with tourists making unauthorized long distance phone calls on its police phone and with the policeman getting drenched when answering calls in the rain. So when the telephone company decided to replace its worn out phone booth in front of Burda’s Pharmacy with a new one, both problems were solved at once by putting the police phone in the old booth.

The old booth was moved to its current location, and while it did protect the officers from the elements, some people still snuck into it and made long distance calls. Eventually the dial was removed from the phone, making it impossible for tourists to make calls.

It has been featured on television shows “Real People”, “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”, “The Today Show”, “Johnny Carson”. Life has not always been easy for the St. Joseph Telephone and Telegraph Company phone booth since its retirement. Vandals have ripped phones out of the booth and shot holes through the glass. It has been knocked over by a pickup truck and another time by Hurricane Kate. A tourist once asked a gas station attendant to help him load it into his vehicle so he could take it back to Tennessee.

The original is now on display in the hallway of the current department between the World War II Museum, and the Police department.