Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Caryville, FL

Caryville is a small incorporated town in northwestern Washington County, Florida, sitting on the banks of the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle.

The community was first settled in 1871 under the name Half Moon Bluff, and it was renamed Caryville in 1884 after R.M. Cary, a stockholder and official of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad.

Caryville was the first community in Washington County to have electric lights, in 1903, and the Town of Caryville was officially incorporated in 1913.

After Caryville's municipal charter lapsed in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the town was not officially reincorporated until 1965.

Caryville grew up as a booming sawmill town on the Choctawhatchee River and the railroad, and its population peaked at 1,022 residents in the 1930 census.

In July 1994, the Choctawhatchee River flooded to a record level of 29 feet and submerged most of Caryville, and a federal FEMA buyout afterward led many residents to leave town.

The 2020 census counted just 301 people and 93 households in Caryville, down from 411 people in 2010.

Once a thriving mill town, Caryville today has no schools or churches, and only a few businesses still operate in the town.

Caryville is part of the Panama City–Panama City Beach metropolitan area and keeps Central Time, like the rest of the western Florida Panhandle.

Caryville was the hometown of Robert L. Carter, a U.S. District Court judge and civil rights activist, and of Major League Baseball player Bob Thorpe.