09/02/2026
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The sun had barely cleared the dense wall of tupelo and cypress trees on the Liberty County bank when Albert Edward Cayson stepped onto the timber deck of his ferry.
It was a crisp morning in the early 1920s, and the Apalachicola River—wide, amber-colored, and deceptively swift—churned against the hull of his flat-bottomed barge.
To the casual observer, the river was a beautiful wilderness. To Albert, it was the economic pulse of Northwest Florida, and he was its gatekeeper.
Born in 1889, Albert was a true son of the Panhandle. His father, Charles Edward Cayson, had been the first of the clan born in Calhoun County just after the Civil War. In 1900, when Albert was just eleven years old, his family had packed their belongings and moved right to the water's edge. By 1916, they legally secured the riverfront land, anchoring the Cayson name to the geography of Blountstown forever.
Operating Cayson’s Ferry was not a job for the faint of heart. The Apalachicola was prone to dramatic mood swings. Spring rains up in Georgia and Alabama could transform the river overnight, sending massive logs and debris careening downstream like battering rams. Albert had to know every eddy, sandbar, and current.
Using a system of heavy cables and sheer physical leverage, Albert and his crew guided the heavy wooden ferry back and forth along an east-west path, bridging the gap between Calhoun County on the west and Bristol in Liberty County on the east. On any given afternoon, the ferry was a mirror of Florida frontier life. Albert would secure the nervous horses of a pioneer family's covered wagon next to a high-sided crate of squealing free-range hogs. Minutes later, on the return trip, he might guide a local timber baron's mule team or a load of hand-tapped pine resin from a nearby turpentine camp.
As the 1920s roared on, the cargo began to change. The rhythmic clatter of wagon wheels was slowly replaced by the sputter and backfire of early automobiles. When the first Ford Model T cars arrived in the Panhandle, it was Albert’s ferry that gave them passage. He reinforced his barge to handle the weight of these strange mechanical beasts, positioning his ferry directly along the path of what would become Florida's vital State Road 20 corridor.
Albert’s reliability on the river earned him immense respect on dry land. He was a natural leader—sharp, ambitious, and intensely civic-minded. Recognizing the shift toward motorized transport, he secured a position as the regional distributor for the Standard Oil Company, supplying the very fuel that fueled the cars using his ferry.
His neighbors noticed his knack for business and governance. Albert was soon elected to the Blountstown City Council, served as a Calhoun County Deputy Sheriff, and eventually became the Mayor of Blountstown. He possessed a rare political charm; over his lifetime, Albert ran in 13 separate public campaigns and was never defeated once.
By the dawn of the 1930s, Albert’s eye for opportunity turned toward the fertile, grassy pine-woods stretching away from the river. In 1929, he founded A.E. Cayson and Sons, aggressively buying up thousands of acres of land on both sides of the river he had spent his life crossing.
Through these expansive real estate deals, Albert unconsciously bridged the modern era with ancient history. Among the massive timber tracts and riverfront acreage he acquired was a peculiar, towering earthen plateau nestled in a bend of the river, roughly three miles southeast of town. To the cowboys herding Albert’s cattle, it was a high ridge to graze the stock above the flood line. To history, it was a sacred relic—a massive, centuries-old Mississippian temple mound. Unwittingly, the Caysons had purchased the prehistoric heart of the Apalachicola valley, securing a site that archaeologists would later formally name the Cayson Mound and Village Site.
What started as a modest livestock operation on this historic land grew into the largest Polled Hereford ranch in the entire state of Florida. But the very progress Albert championed eventually spelled the end for his beloved ferry service. By the mid-1930s, the state of Florida began pouring concrete and raising steel trusses across the Apalachicola. Around 1937, the historic Blountstown Bridge swung open to traffic. The era of the slow, cable-guided river barge was over.
Albert peacefully decommissioned the ferry, turning his full attention to his massive cattle ranch and public service until his passing in 1953. His son, Albert Gerald "Bug" Cayson, would take the reins of the family empire, keeping the Cayson name at the forefront of Blountstown commerce for decades to come.
Today, cars speed over the high-span concrete bridge on State Road 20, crossing the Apalachicola River in a matter of seconds. Most drivers never look down at the banks below, unaware that beneath the shadow of the modern highway lies the quiet water where Albert Cayson once stood on a wooden deck, hand on the cable, patiently guiding the history of Calhoun County from one shore to the other.
