Remembering Suwannee: The Branford Shrine Club

Eric Musgrove  Contributor  Pictured with this article is a photograph taken in the 1900s of the Branford Railroad Depot, now the Branford Shrine Club, behind the steamboat: City of Hawkinsville. It is almost certainly the oldest remaining building in the Town of Branford. The depot was originally built circa 1880 along the riverbank for the numerous steamboats that were piloted on the Suwannee River between the end of the Civil War and about 1910. In 1882, the Live Oak and Rowland’s Bluff Railroad was completed through the area as a branch of the larger Savannah, Florida and Western Railroad, giving the community of Branford (then called Rowland’s Bluff) railroad access to the rest