Tallahassee History Guide

Tallahassee became Florida's capital in 1824 because it sat midway between St. Augustine and Pensacola, the two towns legislators had been traveling between for alternating sessions (Florida Department of State).

The Florida Department of State describes that early arrangement as an unsatisfactory one: the trip between the two towns was hazardous and took almost twenty days. The Florida Historic Capitol Museum dates the decision itself to March 4, 1824, when Governor William Duval announced Tallahassee as the site for the new capital city (Florida Historic Capitol Museum). The first session at Tallahassee opened in November of 1824.

Three log cabins served as the first Capitol in Tallahassee, a two story masonry building of 40 by 26 feet followed in 1826, and the brick Capitol was completed in 1845 (Florida Department of State). That 1845 brick structure is still the core of the Historic Capitol on South Monroe Street. Architect Frank Millburn added the dome in the first expansion in 1902, and Henry Klutho's 1923 additions brought two new wings and a marble interior (Florida Historic Capitol Museum).

The old Capitol in Tallahassee came close to being lost: in 1978, the year after the 22 story executive office building was completed, Governor Reubin Askew and House Speaker Donald Tucker favored demolishing it (Florida Department of State). The Historic Capitol Museum says citizens' action saved it, and the restoration of 1978 to 1982 returned it to its 1902 look (Florida Historic Capitol Museum).

Deeper Tallahassee guides: the territorial capital 1824 guide covers the site selection, the founding and pioneer era guide covers the first years of the town, the attempts to move the capital guide covers the later ballot and legislative efforts, and the street names guide explains where Monroe, Adams, Calhoun and Gaines came from.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the Florida Department of State and Florida Historic Capitol Museum websites.

Before 1824 the Tallahassee area was home to Mississippian mound builders at Lake Jackson, the Apalachee capital of Anhaica where Hernando de Soto wintered, and the Spanish and Apalachee town of Mission San Luis (Division of Historical Resources).

Lake Jackson is the southernmost mound center of the Mississippian network, which from around 1000 to 1550 A.D. reached from Wisconsin in the north to Oklahoma in the west and Florida in the south (Division of Historical Resources). State archaeologists excavating a Lake Jackson mound in the 1970s recovered copper and shell items decorated in the Mississippian style, including a copper breastplate found by Calvin Jones in 1970.

From October 1539 through March 1540, Hernando de Soto and an expedition of more than 600 people occupied Anhaica, the Apalachee capital, inside present day Tallahassee (Division of Historical Resources). The Division of Historical Resources says material evidence of the camp stayed elusive until 1987, when its archaeologist B. Calvin Jones checked a construction site on Lafayette Street and found a fragment of an early variety of Spanish olive jar at what is now called the Martin site. The excavation confirmed an early 16th century Apalachee settlement with De Soto related artifacts.

Mission San Luis served as the capital of the western missions in La Florida from 1656 to 1704 and held more than 1,500 residents, including one of the most powerful Apalachee chiefs and the Spanish deputy governor (Division of Historical Resources). Today it is a living history site and National Historic Landmark on a 65 acre site on West Tennessee Street, less than 3 miles west of the Florida State Capitol complex, where visitors tour a large thatched Franciscan church, the Apalachee council house and the fort in a recreated landscape.

Deeper Tallahassee guides: the Anhaica and De Soto winter encampment guide covers 1539 and the 1987 discovery, the Mission San Luis landmark guide covers visiting the site, and the Lake Jackson Mounds landmark guide covers the mounds north of town.

Tallahassee was never captured in the Civil War: Confederate forces turned back a Union column at Natural Bridge on March 6, 1865, leaving it the only southern capital east of the Mississippi River held to the end (Museum of Florida History).

The Museum of Florida History says a combined Union army and naval force assembled in the Gulf off St. Mark's in March 1865 and landed almost 1,000 Union troops near the St. Mark's lighthouse; the first targets appear to have been the town and fort of St. Mark's, but the Confederates saw a clear danger to Tallahassee (Museum of Florida History). After a skirmish at the Newport bridge, Brigadier General John Newton made a night march north to Natural Bridge in hopes of crossing the river unopposed. The defenders, under Brigadier General William Miller, included Florida cavalry and artillery, militia, and a small group of cadets from the Florida Military Institute in Tallahassee. After failing to force the crossing, the Union troops broke off and returned to the coast.

Immediately after the war ended, Union Brigadier General Edward M. McCook used the Knott House on Park Avenue as his temporary headquarters when he occupied Tallahassee, and on May 20, 1865 he declared the Emancipation Proclamation in effect, announcing freedom for all enslaved persons in the greater Tallahassee region (Division of Historical Resources). The house itself dates from 1843 and was probably built by George Proctor, a free black builder.

Another Tallahassee building tells the next chapter: the 1841 Union Bank, considered Florida's oldest surviving bank building, became home to the National Freedman's Savings and Trust Company after Emancipation (Museum of Florida History).

Deeper Tallahassee guides: the Battle of Natural Bridge guide covers the March 1865 fight, and the Knott House Museum and Union Bank Building landmark guides cover the two buildings.

The Tallahassee bus boycott began after May 26, 1956, when FAMU students Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson sat in the "whites only" section of a city bus and refused to move, and it lasted primarily from May to December of 1956 (State Archives of Florida).

The bus driver pulled into a service station and called the police, and students at FAMU then organized a campus wide boycott of city buses (State Archives of Florida). Reverend C.K. Steele, pastor at Bethel Baptist Church, formed the Inter-Civic Council to manage the logistics of the boycott city wide, and African American riders who did not own cars got to work through carpools. The boycott had an immediate impact on bus fare revenues, and Cities Transit Company was forced to stop all buses for a month.

In November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's segregated busing laws were unconstitutional, and on December 24, 1956 Inter-Civic Council leaders tested whether the ruling would be enforced in Tallahassee by sitting in bus seats reserved for whites (State Archives of Florida). Governor LeRoy Collins suspended all bus service in Tallahassee on January 1, 1957, the city repealed its segregated seating ordinance on January 7, 1957 and enacted an "assigned seating" ordinance in its place, and by the summer of 1957 Tallahassee city buses were integrated.

Deeper Tallahassee guides: the 1956 bus boycott guide follows the campaign from the May 1956 bus ride to the repeal of segregated seating, and the FAMU history guide in the schools section covers the university whose students started it.

Smokey Hollow was an African American neighborhood that grew up in Tallahassee after the Civil War and was destroyed in the 1960s, and much of its ground is now Cascades Park (City of Tallahassee).

The City of Tallahassee describes Smokey Hollow as home to an emerging black middle class, and the Smokey Hollow Commemoration inside Cascades Park stands in remembrance of it (City of Tallahassee). The same 24 acre park holds the Prime Meridian Marker, first set in 1824, which is the starting point for every land survey in Florida and was the original southeast corner of the town's first boundary.

One building from the neighborhood's edge still stands: the Riley House, built circa 1890 on the fringe of Smokey Hollow and owned by John Gilmore Riley, who rose to prominence as an educator and civic leader (Riley Museum). It now operates as the John G. Riley Center and Museum for African American History and Culture, at the corner of Meridian and Jefferson Streets at the bottom of a downtown hill.

Deeper Tallahassee guides: the Smokey Hollow guide covers the neighborhood and its clearance for the Capitol Center, and the John G. Riley House landmark guide covers visiting the museum.

Each Tallahassee history guide answers one question, from the 1825 Lafayette land grant to the 2024 bicentennial, and the table below points to the right one.

Two Tallahassee land stories reach back to the territorial years. In 1825 the United States granted the Marquis de Lafayette about 36 square miles in what was then Middle Florida for his help in the American Revolution; he never visited, and in 1834 the Croom family bought 2,400 acres of the grant (Goodwood Museum). Old City Cemetery was established in 1829 by the Territorial Legislative Council, acquired by Tallahassee in 1840 and laid out in squares and lots in 1841 (City of Tallahassee).

The bicentennial guide covers the 2024 anniversary year, when the Florida Historic Capitol Museum's Becoming Florida's Capital exhibition ran from March 1, 2024 to January 5, 2025 alongside the City of Tallahassee and Leon County commemorations (Florida Historic Capitol Museum). The higher education economy guide in the industries section covers the universities in the local economy.

A practical note for Tallahassee history visitors: the Knott House Museum at 301 East Park Avenue is currently closed while the state preserves the interior and builds new exhibits, so for now the May 20 emancipation story is told on the Division of Historical Resources page (Division of Historical Resources).