I was a little excited when I saw that I was nearly in Chattahoochee. Such a word, so filled with implications of lost souls or the worst of criminal minds. A hospital with little healing and many dark stories, a prison without parole. It also was a teasing jab to throw at another as in “…gonna send bof of ya to Chattahoochee if’n ya keep that up!,” she said shaking her finger at the two teenage boys and laughing.
Passing through the downtown with one and two story store fronts of brick, c. 1940s, I came to the edge of town and there remembered the real thrill of the place…it’s the hill. In the space of a mile US-90 drops nearly 200 ft. The east side of the Apalachicola River has a cliff and Chattahoochee sits on the top. The west side of the river is a near flat plain that stretches out into the horizon.
At the bottom of the descent is the bridge that spans the river. It is the successor to the Victory Bridge opened in the late 1920s and closed a half century later. Its ruined remains stand just to the south of the new bridge, a giant stone remnant of another time and the bearer of millions of cars for so many years zipping across the river. It sits silent, a collector of dried leaves and a playground for squirrels. After its pinnacle in Chattahoochee, US-90 drops into the slight rolling hills of the Upper Panhandle and for the remainder of my trip never again reaches that height until I am on the ridge east of Rehoboth.
I left US-90 in Marianna, just before the railroad underpass, forking off on SR-73 for the short cut to US-231 and the final miles across the state line and into the Wiregrass.