Nothing now remains of this once important town except a few ruins among which is that of an old graveyard upon whose few remaining stones can still be read the names of a few of the brave founders of the vanished City—among them that of Josiah Blakely. All of the former inhabitants have passed on with the exception of an ancient blind negro, an ex-slave, supported by charity, who still lives on the site of the once prosperous city and tells tales of things that happened before the Civil War.
Over this road from Florida there marched, near the end of the Civil War, an army of Blue, driving before it the remnants of an army of Grey. The Grey army took refuge behind the redoubts of the old Spanish Fort and worked strenuously extending the defences until miles of earthworks were thrown up, one row supporting the other across the hills and barring the path of the pursuing foe. Here was fought, on a small scale, one of the bloodiest battles of the war, and fought after the war had ended elsewhere. The armies in this remote wilderness, not being in touch with the outside world, had not learned that the war had ended.
On this battle-field can still be found shells, shell fragments, bullets, buttons, old rusty swords, muskets, bayonets, and other metalic remnants left by the combatants—the more perishable substances having, long ago, disappeared.
In after years a telegraph line was built from Mobile across the swamps, rivers and marshes to the highland at what was once Blakely and on down the road to Pensacola. From this line of wires the road came to be known as the Wired Road and for many years as the Old Wired Road and now we go back to the days of the first white settlers for a name and it becomes a part of the “OLD SPANISH TRAIL.”