View of the Apalachicola River near Fort Gadsden, Florida.
The Apalachicola River is a river, approximately 112 mi (180 km) long in the U.S. stateFlorida. The river's large watershed, known as the ACF River Basin for short, drains an area of approximately 19,500 sq mi (50,505 km ) into the Gulf of Mexico. The distance to its farthest headstream in northwest Georgia is approximately 500 mi (800 km).
It is formed on the state line between Florida and Georgia, near the town of Chattahoochee, Florida, approximately 60 mi northwest of Panama City, by the confluence of the Flint and Chatahoochee rivers. The actual confluence is submerged in the Lake Seminole reservoir formed by the Jim Woodruff Dam. It flows generally south through the forests of the Florida Panhandle, past Bristol. In northern Gulf County, it receives the Chipola River from the west. It flows into Apalachicola Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, at Apalachicola. The lower 30 mi (48 km) of the river is surrounded by extensive swamps and wetlands except at the coast. The channel of the river is dreged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide navigation.
Except for the area around its mouth, the river provides the boundary between the Eastern and Central time zones in the United States.
Apalachicola is still the home port for a variety of seafood workers, including oyster harvesters and shrimpers.
Botanist Alvan Wentworth Chapman (1809-1899) settled in Apalachicola in 1846.
In 1849, Apalachicola physician Dr. John Gorrie (1802-1855) discovered the cold-air process of refrigeration and patented an ice-machine in 1850, as the result of experiments to lower the temperatures of fever patients, laying the groundwork for modern refrigeration and air-conditioning.
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