Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Fort White, FL

Fort White is a town in southern Columbia County named after a military fort built in 1836 during the Second Seminole War to protect the Cow Creek settlement.

The original fort stood about four miles west of the present town on the Santa Fe River and was abandoned on June 26, 1842, because of illness among the troops.

The town of Fort White was incorporated in 1884 and boomed after the railroad arrived in 1888, on phosphate mining, turpentine, cotton and citrus.

Before 1900, Fort White had grown to nearly 2,000 people and was the second-largest community in Columbia County.

The boom collapsed when severe freezes in the winters of 1896 and 1897 destroyed the local citrus industry, phosphate mining ceased by 1910, and the boll weevil ended cotton farming before World War I.

The 2020 census counted 618 residents in Fort White, up from 567 in 2010, when the town had 151 households.

Fort White is the closest town to Ichetucknee Springs State Park, where visitors tube and snorkel the crystal-clear, spring-fed Ichetucknee River.

The Old Fort White School, built in 1915 with an auditorium added in 1936, survives from the town's boom era — its last high school class graduated in 1969.