Arnold and Newlin: John and Mary Mason on Dog Island 1960

John and Mary Mason visit Arnie and Newlin in Florida. They all visit Dog Island, located in the Gulf of Mexico, off Florida's panhandle), where in 1959 Arnie and Newlin had bought a lot on the island for $5000 to be able to build a beach house close to Newlin's family, and John and Mary bought an adjacent lot. Both lots had beautiful high dunes facing the Gulf and a sandy road behind them with St. George Sound beyond. To reach Dog Island one took a county-run ferry from Carrabelle, which got discontinued for a while in the 1970s. After the ferry service stopped, the family had to get there with a motor boat towed by car from Gainesville to Carrabelle.

John and Mary Mason, Dog island, Florida, circa 1960

Newlin and Arnie on Dog Island, circa 1960

Google Maps shows Dog Island and Carrabelle; the gray dot is roughly where the two lots lay

Around 1975 Arnie took out a loan to start building a house on the lot but quickly lost interest after he had a heart attack and was very fearful of being too far from a hospital emergency room.

Over the decades hurricanes flattened the dunes and eroded the Gulf side of the lots, depositing the sand on the Sound side. Newlin was able to buy back some 15 feet on the road side for another $5000 to maintain her property as a buildable lot, but by the 1990s another 50 feet lay underwater in the Gulf and she determine the property was largely worthless. Every few years the Franklin County tax collector would try to reclaim back taxes but Newlin refused to pay for valueless land. She tried to give it away to Florida State University, but they wanted her to pay the closing costs and she would not do that either. Newlin and the Masons attempted to see the two lots together as a single parcel but there were no buyers.

Oddly, the island has had the same shape on maps for over 400 years, after first being charted by the French and named Isle des Chiens (Ile des Chiens in modern French) in 1536. I guess it just shifts a bit toward or away from the mainland due to storms.

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first post in Flashbacks  How the Nevis family came to California

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943