How the ‘World's Luckiest Fishing Village' was born

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article first appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News in 1992.

A piece of Destin's heritage is repeated every day.

At points throughout Destin an angler will cast a line into the water to catch a fish. It's a simple act that brought Destin's first European settlers to the safe harbor at East Pass 150 years ago and has kept people coming ever since.

Before the first Spanish sailors found Destin in the 1500s, Indians flourished along Destin's Choctawhatchee Bay shoreline. It's common to find pieces of broken Indian pottery along the bay. In fact, some residents believe there once was an Indian burial mound near East Pass that rivals the Fort Walton Beach mound.

Historians say the first Europeans to explore Destin were Spanish soldiers and seamen.

In September 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez came ashore at East Pass where he was greeted by Indians, Leonard Hutchinson wrote in “History of the Playground Area.” Narvaez had been exploring the Gulf Coast of Florida. By the time he reached East Pass his force had been nearly destroyed by Indian attacks near Apalachicola and the Spaniards were trying to reach the safety of Mexico.

But by the end of the first day with the East Pass Indians, relations had soured and a battle forced the Spaniards to flee back to the safety of their three barges in the Gulf, Hutchinson wrote, quoting Spanish naval archives.

Spanish naval Capt. Diego Maldonao is thought to have visited East Pass in 1539 in search of a good harbor for Spanish treasure ships. And in June 1693 Don Francisco Milan Tapia, while sailing along the Gulf shore, described an opening in the line of dunes wide and deep enough to sail his ship into.

But it wasn't Spaniards that settled Destin. It was a New England fisherman who became the community's founder and namesake.

Leonard Destin was born on Aug. 31, 1813 to George Destin and Fanny Rogers. In the 1830s family members sailed south from Connecticut for new fishing grounds. Off Cape Canaveral, the elder Destin and one of Leonard's brothers were drowned during a storm.

Leonard Destin continued around Florida finally settling at the inlet called East Pass. Destin married South Carolina-native Martha McCullum, who was 22 years his junior, and they set about raising a family.

In the meantime most what was now called Destin became designated by the federal government in 1842 as the Moreno Point Military Reservation.

With the onset of the Civil War, the Destins became refugees and East Pass the site of a skirmish between Union and Confederate soldiers.

In the summer of 1861 a Union gun boat, USS Water Witch, was stationed outside of East Pass, Hutchison wrote in his book, citing war records. When members of the Confederate Walton Guards received word Yankee soldiers had landed at East Pass, a detachment was sent to Destin and landed at Joe's Bayou.

From the bayou the Confederates marched toward the Gulf and fired on Union soldiers. The Yankees fled back to the Water Witch, and neither side reported any casualties.

The Walton Guards didn't like the idea of New England-born Destin being in a position to help Union troops at the mouth of Choctawhatchee Bay. In a report dated Aug. 26, 1861, Walton Guards commander William McPherson wrote that the Destin family had been moved to Freeport.

The Destin family stayed exiled in Freeport until the war in Northwest Florida ended.

Once back at East Pass, Destin continued his livelihood of fishing.

Among Destin's crewmen was a boy from across the bay at Boggy Bayou, William T. Marler.

The 13-year-old Marler moved to Destin in 1879 and within five years was joined by his parents and siblings.

If Leonard Destin was the village father, then “Uncle Billy” Marler was the village manager. Along with being post master in 1899, Marler is credited with being a store owner, undertaker, buoy tender and a Santa Claus of sorts.

In the early 1900s other forbearers of Destin's “old families” arrived including fisherman John Melvin and boat builder John Maltezo.

In these days life in Destin wasn't easy. Fishing boats were all wind or oar powered and no government agency dug channels.

Most of the fishing in the Gulf was done with seine nets, hand-woven webs of cotton cord that could be up to 1,200 feet long, explained Jean Melvin, curator of the Destin Fishing Museum.

The boat captains would spend their winters repairing nets and water proofing them by dipping the nets in oil and then curing the nets in saltwater.

When the spring fishing season arrived, the captains would be joined by crews of around seven men who lived across the bay, Melvin said. During the fishing season crews would stay in “bunk shanties” above the docks.

A few adventurous captains installed automobile engines in their boats to speed the crafts along. But the actual task of loading 5,000 or so pounds of fish from a seine net was still done by men scooping out the fish nets on the ends of polls.

What food the sea didn't provide was often grown in yards. Along the shore of the bay it was common to see corn fields.

Destin historian Vivian Mettee said the fields were fertilized in the winter with fish carcasses and in the spring the seeds were planted. Also cattle could be found grazing on Holiday Isle.

Mettee's compilation of recollections about Destin's growth was published as “.. and the Roots Run Deep.'' The book is now in its third printing.

Destin underwent its biggest physical change in 1926 when a hurricane closed East Pass.

After Prohibition started in 1920 some Destin boat captains earned money by smuggling illegal liquor from offshore ships. “So far as I know, none of the men ... that handled the illegal liquor through East Pass during the Prohibition days were ever apprehended,'' boat Capt. Homer Jones told Mettee. Jones added that he had never smuggled any liquor.

Before the hurricane, the pass had been where Old Pass Lagoon is now located, its mouth to the Gulf was roughly where Sandpiper Cove is. But with the pass blocked, Destin residents dug a trench from the overflowing bay to the Gulf. The trench became what is today called East Pass.

One result of the new pass was that Choctawhatchee Bay became much saltier than before, slowly changing the bay's fish and plant life. Even in the 1940s, some Okaloosa County officials were asking Congress to close the new pass and reopen the old pass.

In 1934 U.S. Highway 98 linked Destin with Fort Walton Beach. The opening of the highway made Destin something of a tourist destination and sparked the creation of the charter boat fleet.

Boat captains began converting their seine boats into passenger carrying charter boats, adding such luxuries as an enclosed cabin.

At the same time the first land development in Destin started. The federal government had owned most of the Destin peninsular and in the mid-'30s the government sold off most its Destin holdings. The families of Destin bought their homesteads for $15 an acre. Most of the interior land was purchased by the Vernon Land and Lumber Co., long-time resident Albert Fox told Mettee.

It was the timber industry that bought Coleman L. and Mattie Kelly to Destin in 1935. Kelly oversaw a turpentine still operation near the Walton County line and in 1937 bought land near the foot of the Destin Bridge where the family opened a store and restaurant. Kelly went on to become the community's largest landowner and his heirs still own most of Destin's undeveloped land.

In August 1940 the Destin Library was organized with residents' donated books and in 1944 the forerunner of the Destin Community Center Board was organized. The first Destin Fishing Rodeo was held in 1949.

By 1955, Destin had about 20 hotels and “tourist courts” with such names as Dreams' End Motel and the Spy Glass Inn. The same year's telephone book listed just two charter boat services, Kelly's Gateway Boat Service and Capt. Dave Marler's Florida Girl.

The Destin Fire Department had its start in 1962 when the Community Center provided some of its land for a fire station. A year later Destin Water Users was formed. The Chamber of Commerce was incorporated in 1966.

In 1975 Holiday Isle's development through a complex series of government leases to local businessmen was the subject of several investigations. The New York Times and ``60 Minutes'' examined U.S. Rep. Bob Sikes' involvement with a firm that controlled much of the isle property. Later Congress reprimanded Sikes and the congressman retired from office in 1979.

Throughout the '70s and '80s there had been campaigns to make Destin a city rather than part of unincorporated Okaloosa County and all had failed. Finally on Nov. 6, 1984 the incorporation proposal passed and the “World's Luckiest Fishing Village'' became a city.

And it has grown ever since.