Poster Gazebo in Old St. Joseph Cemetery, Florida

"Gazebo in Old St. Joseph Cemetery, Florida" by Catherine Sherman. A weathered gazebo stands on the Old St. Joseph Cemetery in Port St. Joe, Florida. The cemetery is all that remains of the boom town of St. Joseph, There are some brick tombs and a few tombstones in the Old St. Joseph, or 'Yellow Fever', Cemetery. Most of the graves are unmarked. Soon after it was founded in 1835, St. Joseph, Florida, on the shores of St. Joseph Bay, became one of the largest and most prosperous towns in the state with its ship-friendly harbor. However, St. Joseph was abandoned less than eight years after it was founded. A brief period of prosperity was ended by a yellow fever epidemic in 1841, and the abandoned remnants of the town were destroyed by a storm surge in 1844. The lost town site is in Gulf County, Florida, near the city of Port St. Joe. Storms in 1837 and 1839 drove ships ashore and destroyed buildings. In 1841 it was a ship that brought yellow fever to St. Joseph. The disease killed many of the town's inhabitants, and caused most of the rest to flee. Robert R. Reid, fourth governor of the Territory of Florida, and other residents of Tallahassee, died that year of yellow fever that they reportedly contracted while in St. Joseph. Ironically many moved to St. Joseph because of claims that it had a healthy climate with cool ocean breezes. Of an estimated 5,000 inhabitants in early 1841, only some 500 remained in St. Joseph after the epidemic ended. A hurricane, "The Late Gale at St. Joseph" hit the town on September 14, 1841, destroying the wharf, but with the collapse of trade, no ships were in port. A forest fire later that year burned part of the town. The area remained sparsely inhabited for the rest of the 19th century. After a branch of the Apalachicola Northern Railroad reached St. Joseph Bay about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the site of Old St. Joseph in 1910, a new city, Port St. Joe, grew up at the port. The community was extensively damaged by Hurricane Michael on October 10, 2018, but has rebuilt.