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About Shalimar, FL

Originally an area called Port Dixie, the town "sprang up out of the woods" in 1943-1944 as a community of 160 houses to be used as housing for military officers by developer Clifford H. Meigs. During the Civil War [sic- First World War], 130 Germans operated a "dye" plant at Port Dixie, "actually an explosives factory and probably a submarine base as well." Costly machinery was smashed when they fled and the records were thrown into Garnier's Bayou. "In February 1927 the Choctawhatchee and Northern Railroad was chartered 'To construct, acquire, maintain, lease, or operate a line of railroad or railroads from a point between Galliver and Crestview on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in Okaloosa County, to a point in said county on Choctawhatchee Bay, a distance of approximately twenty-eight miles.' On Garnier's Bayou near the present Eglin (Air Force Base) housing development of Shalimar, a $29,000,000 Port Dixie Harbor and Terminal Company was chartered to build wharves for liners, a rail line north, and a city of one square mile, with streets 100 feet wide." These ambitious plans would not see fruition. Badly needed new homes were constructed beginning in 1942 by Clifford Meigs and his associates to provide adequate facilities for commissioned officers assigned at the rapidly expanding Eglin Field, immediately north of what was initially referred to as "Shalimar Park".