Point Washington Homes for Sale

Living in Point Washington

Walton County's adopted neighborhood plan for Point Washington calls it one of the oldest settlements in the county, circa 1880, and records that Historic Point Washington was established in 1880 as a mill town whose primary economy came from two operating sawmills. The adopted plan says in its own words that the area also includes Eden Gardens State Park, and the park covers 163 acres of the former Wesley homestead at 181 Eden Gardens Road. Read against the county's mapped overlay the relationship is partial rather than total: the plan area is about 112 acres, and the park ground inside it is the 10.68 acre parcel carrying the Wesley House address together with a 3.50 acre neighbor, so most of the park lies beyond the mapped line. Its focal point is the two-story Wesley House, built in 1897 for William H. and Katie Strickland Wesley from timber their families' lumber company logged regionally and milled at the Wesley Sawmill on Tucker Bayou. Guided tours run through the house, and the ornamental gardens, picnic grounds and fishing dock sit on the southern shore of the bayou. The community faces Choctawhatchee Bay and Tucker Bayou rather than the Gulf, at the point where the Intracoastal Waterway merges with the bay. County Road 395 runs south from here to Seagrove Beach and the Scenic Highway 30A corridor, and north the same road ends at Point Washington Landing, a county boat ramp with two docks on Tucker Bayou. The plan area runs about 112 acres across roughly 62 parcels, twenty of them carrying historic significance dating to the 1880s, most of them half-acre lots with single family homes, alongside two churches, a cemetery, three schools with preschool facilities and a few businesses. Development inside the boundary answers to the overlay rather than to the base code alone: nothing may exceed thirty-two feet in height, the Historic Point Washington Pattern Book prepared by University of Notre Dame School of Architecture classes is incorporated by reference as the design standard, and removing a protected live oak, southern magnolia or long leaf pine takes a clearing permit from the county. Point Washington State Forest covers 15,407 acres in Walton County and doubles as the Point Washington Wildlife Management Area, where the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission regulates hunting seasons and game limits. Its Eastern Lake Trail System, three double-track loops of 3.5, 6 and 11 miles open to hikers and off-road cyclists, is reached from a parking lot and trailhead on County Road 395. Public water access is at Point Washington Landing, at 1462 North County Highway 395, where a county boat ramp, two docks and a freshwater boat cleaning station open onto Tucker Bayou and Choctawhatchee Bay. Whether any individual parcel carries a dock or a riparian right is a question for that property's recorded documents and permits. The record here is documented rather than themed: the Florida Master Site File carries the remains of the Wesley Sawmill where it collapsed into Tucker Bayou, and the Magnolia Wreck, confirmed as the nineteenth century sailing ship that ran freight between Pensacola and Point Washington. Pilings from the Wesley Lumber Company dock system are still visible along the shoreline.

• Eden Gardens State Park, named by the adopted plan
• Point Washington Landing on Tucker Bayou
• Eastern Lake Trail System in the state forest
• County Road 395 to Seagrove Beach