Carrabelle, FL

For us, driving in Florida usually looks like this…

Large freeways surrounded by tall trees on both sides. It just doesn’t seem like we are near the water or beaches. So, our plan for this trip was to get off the main roads and drive some backroads along the panhandle. This decision led us to the small town of Carrabelle.

Carrabelle has a beautiful pier and a couple of quirky sights that we just had to go see in person.

The first, Carrabelle Bottlehouse was a few blocks off the main road in a small neighborhood, but pretty easy to find. There is a lighthouse, also made out of bottles, sitting in front of the bottlehouse.

All information about the bottlehouse and lighthouse came from documentation inside the bottlehouse written by the owners, Leon & Frances Wiesener.

“Leon Wiesener, artist and former Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee, retired and moved to Carrabelle with his wife, Frances, in 2000. One morning in 2012 he awoke, kissed his wife and said,”

“I’m going to build a bottle house.”

“Completed in 2012, the bottle house is a pentagonal structure built of over 6,000 glass bottles. Many were donated by our friends and acquaintances living or visiting in Carrabelle. Others came from weekly trips to the recycling centers in the area.”

“The windows came from our home as we replaced them with more modern ones.”

“Light streaming through the walls on a sunny day brings out the true beauty of the creation. At night, the house is lighted from dusk until 10:00 PM.”

From the inside you can see the necks from all the bottles. It was quite an impressive sight. I took two pictures trying to capture the bottles. The first is looking along the side of a wall facing the front door.

The second picture is looking down one of the walls with my feet on the floor at the bottom of the picture.

“The lighthouse, standing 15 feet tall, was a much less complex undertaking completed during the first three months of 2013. Green, clear, blue and brown beer bottles were used in the construction. At night the lighthouse is aglow from the interior and a “lighthouse” beacon revolves from dusk to 10:00 PM.”

“The structures are located at 604 Southeast Avenue F in Carrabelle. The land is privately owned, but is open to the public all the time. There is no admission fee.”

Carrabelle is also home to the World’s Smallest Police Station. There is an interesting story behind how this phone booth came to be an official police station.

“In 1947, Albin Westberg became Police Chief and the only day policeman in Carrabelle. He and his night officers had to protect the citizens, answer calls, pump water for the tugboats at the City Dock, catch speeders on US 98 (old 319) and tend to all prisoners in the jail at City Hall. They needed help. In 1953 the phone company installed a phone in a call box bolted to the wall of the building on the northeast corner of Tallahassee Street and the Highway. The officers could answer the calls while out walking the beat. Then they began to have problems with folks making unauthorized long distance calls on the police phone. The vandals loved to mess it up, too.

Johnnie Mirabella, St. Joe Telephone and Telegraph’s lone Carrabelle employee at the time, first tried moving the call box to another building, but the illegal calls continued. He also notice the policeman would get drenched while answering phone calls in the rain. So when his company decided to replace a worn out phone booth with a new one, he decided to solve both problems at once by putting the police phone in the old booth.”

“On March 10, 1963, Mirabella with the help of Deputy Sheriff Wilburn “Curley Messer, moved the phone booth to its current site on U.S. 98 under the chinaberry tree. The Chief hired a man to do the lettering to mark it as the City of Carrabelle Police Station. It worked well and increased the efficiency of the two man police force. They could park the patrol car in the shade, do required paperwork, listen for the phone while watching for speeders and other suspicious characters. The booth did protect the officers from the elements, but some people still snuck into it to make long distance calls. Eventually the dial was removed from the phone, making it impossible for folks to call out. It continued to serve the police of Carrabelle for decades.

Sarah Purcell, the host of the television show “Real People,” was visiting her father and discovered it. She had to feature it on the show in 1991 where they dubbed it as the “World’s Smallest Police Station.” Later that year Johnny Carson had a lively interview with then Carrabelle Police Chief Jessi Gordon Smith. on the “Tonight Show.” It has been featured on other television shows, “That’s Amazing,” “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” “The Today Show” and in the movie “Tate’s Hell.”

The World’s Smallest Police Station is located across the street from the building which holds the Carrabelle Visitor’s Center and Carrabelle Chamber of Commerce.

While in Carrabelle we stayed at the Ho-Hum RV Park, a small RV park with a funny name, it’s own beach and a pier. The sunrises were beautiful.