Before It was Jackson’s Trail: The Creek Road Through Walton County

Long before Andrew Jackson marched through Northwest Florida, the road was already there.

It had no pavement, bridges, or road signs. It did not bear Jackson’s name. Instead, it was part of an Indigenous network of trails used by Native people who knew the rivers, creeks, springs, forests, and lakes of the Florida Panhandle generations before Walton County existed.

One of those routes became known as the Red Ground Trail. It extended from the Creek country of present-day Alabama southward through what is now Walton County toward Escambia Bay and Pensacola. Along the way stood familiar landmarks that remain on our landscape today—including a large body of water near the Florida-Alabama line once known as Big Pond, today's Lake Jackson. Walton County Heritage Association

Farther south, another Native trail passed beside a small, nearly circular lake—the place around which the community of DeFuniak Springs would eventually grow.

By 1818, however, the world surrounding those old trails was changing rapidly.

An American army was coming.

And with it came a complicated story involving Andrew Jackson, Creek warriors fighting on opposing sides, Chief William McIntosh, Spanish Florida, and the expansion of the United States into lands it did not yet possess.

Before Walton County

To understand Jackson's Trail, we must first forget the modern map.

There was no Walton County in 1818.

There was no State of Florida.

The territory that would become Walton County was part of Spanish Florida. The United States ended at the border, although that border was increasingly difficult to enforce.

Native communities throughout the Southeast were also experiencing enormous upheaval. The Muscogee, or Creek, people were not a single political group acting with one mind. The Creek Confederacy contained numerous towns and factions with different interests and alliances.

Those divisions became particularly destructive during the Creek War of 1813–1814.

Some Creeks, commonly called Red Sticks, resisted increasing American influence and encroachment. Other Creek leaders allied themselves with the United States.

One of the most important—and controversial—of those allied leaders was William McIntosh.

William McIntosh and a Divided Creek Nation

William McIntosh, also known as Tustunnuggee Hutkee, or “White Warrior,” was a prominent Lower Creek leader from Coweta. His mother was a Muscogee woman of the Wind Clan and his father was Scottish. During the Creek War, McIntosh allied himself with the United States and fought alongside Andrew Jackson against other Creeks, including at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. National Park Service

That history is important because it prevents us from oversimplifying what happened next.

The conflicts that swept across Northwest Florida were not simply battles of “Americans versus Indians.” Native people fought on both sides.

When violence erupted again along the border of Spanish Florida in 1817, McIntosh once more allied himself with the United States. The conflict became known as the First Seminole War.

McIntosh commanded Creek warriors fighting alongside American forces against Seminoles, Red Stick Creeks and their allies. National Park Service

We can hear McIntosh's own voice in surviving correspondence.

In a letter dated March 23, 1818, McIntosh reported military operations against opposing Creeks and explained his plans as his warriors moved toward the Chattahoochee River and awaited further decisions about joining Jackson's campaign. Digital Library of Georgia

Less than a month later, on April 13, McIntosh wrote again after a fierce engagement with forces associated with Red Stick leader Peter McQueen. McIntosh reported that his men had killed 37 opponents and captured men, women, children, cattle, horses, hogs, and corn. He then wrote that he had joined Jackson and that their forces would proceed toward the Suwannee. Digital Library of Georgia

It is difficult history.

Creeks were pursuing and fighting other Creeks.

Families were captured.

Native towns and food supplies were destroyed.

And all of it was taking place within the larger struggle over who would control Florida.

Jackson Enters Spanish Florida

General Andrew Jackson entered Spanish Florida in March 1818.

His campaign carried American troops and allied Creek warriors through Native communities across northern Florida. Jackson eventually occupied the Spanish post of St. Marks and continued his campaign before turning west toward Pensacola.

That westward movement brought Jackson through what is now Walton County.

In May 1818, Jackson and his men stopped beside the large lake near today's Paxton and Florala. Early territorial records later called the body of water Jackson's Pond. Today we know it as Lake Jackson. Historical and archaeological research identifies the road followed through this area as the route later called Jackson's Trail or the Geneva-Pensacola Road. Local historical sources identify the older Creek route as the Red Ground Trail. Walton County Heritage Association

But calling it Jackson's Trail can obscure an important part of its history.

Jackson did not create the road.

His army was traveling through an Indigenous landscape along routes that Native people had already established.

Big Pond

Long before the name Lake Jackson appeared on a map, local historical tradition identifies the lake as Big Pond.

For Creek travelers, the large natural lake provided water and a convenient stopping place along the Red Ground Trail. WCHA's history of the Paxton area describes it as a gathering and staging location for travelers, traders, and hunters moving along the route. Walton County Heritage Association

Its location made sense.

A traveler moving through an era without modern roads depended upon knowledge of water, terrain, river crossings, food sources, and places suitable for camping.

The trail was therefore much more than a line through the woods.

It connected people.

It carried trade and information.

It connected hunting grounds and communities.

And eventually, the same geography that made the route useful to Native people made it useful to American soldiers and settlers.

The name changed.

The road remained.

Little Pond and the Future DeFuniak Springs

Farther south was another body of water that would eventually become one of Walton County's most recognizable landmarks.

Lake DeFuniak.

John Love McKinnon's 1911 History of Walton County preserves an early account of an Indian trail passing through the area during the period of Walton County's first American settlement.

McKinnon described Neill McLendon's journey to visit Euchee chief Sam Story around 1820. Following Story's directions, McLendon traveled an Indian trail through the wilderness toward Bruce Creek.

That trail took him directly through the place where DeFuniak Springs would later stand and beside the small round lake.

The community did not exist yet.

To the traveler following the Native path, it was simply a landmark in the wilderness.

Local tradition has also associated the lakes and springs of this region with Native beliefs and healing practices. Those traditions deserve preservation, but they also require some caution. Documentary evidence clearly establishes Native travel through the area and an Indian trail beside what became Lake DeFuniak. Specific claims concerning ceremonial or healing uses of the lake are harder to establish from surviving contemporary records.

That distinction does not diminish the Native history of the place.

Instead, it helps us distinguish what the documentary record establishes from what has been preserved through local tradition.

A Trail Becomes an American Road

What happened to the Red Ground Trail illustrates a pattern repeated throughout American history.

Native trails became military roads.

Military roads became settlement roads.

Settlement roads became transportation corridors.

And later generations often remembered the newer name while forgetting the people who established the route in the first place.

The road through northern Walton County appeared on early nineteenth-century surveys under names including Jackson's Trail and the Geneva-Pensacola Road. Walton County

Jackson's association with the route was certainly historically significant. His 1818 campaign through Spanish Florida contributed to an international crisis between the United States and Spain and occurred during the events preceding Spain's eventual cession of Florida to the United States.

But the road's history did not begin when Jackson's soldiers walked across it.

Its older name reminds us of that.

Red Ground Trail.

What Happened to William McIntosh?

McIntosh's alliance with the United States continued after the First Seminole War, but his story ended tragically.

As American pressure for Creek land increased, McIntosh supported additional land cessions.

In 1825, he and a small group of other Creek leaders signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, ceding Creek lands in Georgia despite Creek National Council opposition. The National Council had forbidden further unauthorized land sales.

McIntosh's actions were considered a violation of Creek law.

Later that year, Creek lawmen attacked his plantation and killed him. National Park Service

His life therefore reveals the extraordinary complexity of this period.

McIntosh was Creek.

He fought alongside Americans.

He fought other Creeks.

He became one of the most powerful Creek leaders of his generation.

And ultimately, he was killed by fellow Creeks over his role in transferring Creek land to the United States.

Reducing him simply to either an American ally or a Native victim would miss much of that history.

Why Is This Part of the Road to Revolution?

At first glance, an event in 1818 may seem far removed from the American Revolution.

In Walton County, however, the connection is important.

When thirteen British colonies declared independence in 1776, Florida was not one of them.

Florida remained outside the new United States after the Revolution. The land that would eventually become Walton County passed from British control back to Spain and remained Spanish territory for decades.

That meant the consequences of the Revolution arrived here differently.

The new United States expanded.

Its settlers pushed toward new lands.

Its military crossed borders.

Native nations were increasingly pressured to surrender territory.

And Spanish control of Florida became progressively more difficult to maintain.

Jackson's march through what became Walton County in 1818 was part of that larger transformation.

Three years later, in 1821, Florida formally passed from Spain to the United States.

In 1824, Walton County was created.

Within only a few years, a Native trail through Spanish territory had become a road through an American county.

The Road Beneath the Road

Today, we can drive through Walton County in minutes across distances that once required hours or days of travel.

Lake Jackson still sits near our northern boundary.

Lake DeFuniak still lies almost perfectly round in the center of DeFuniak Springs.

The communities surrounding them have changed beyond anything a traveler on the Red Ground Trail could have imagined.

But the landscape remembers.

Before there was Paxton, there was Big Pond.

Before there was DeFuniak Springs, an Indian trail passed beside the little round lake.

Before Walton County existed, Native people traveled these routes to trade, hunt, communicate, visit other communities, and move through a landscape they understood intimately.

Then soldiers followed.

Settlers followed them.

Maps were drawn.

Names changed.

And eventually an ancient trail became remembered as Jackson's Trail.

Perhaps the most important thing for us to remember today is that Andrew Jackson's footprints were not the first ones on that road.

Sources and Further Reading

The Walton County Heritage Association's history of the Red Ground Trail and Paxton area preserves local research concerning Big Pond, the Creek trail system, and the later Jackson association. Walton County Heritage Association

A cultural-resource assessment prepared using historic Walton County plats documents Jackson's May 1818 presence at Jackson's Pond and identifies early map references to “Jackson's Trail” and the “Geneva Pensacola Road,” while noting the local identification of the earlier route as the Red Ground Trail. Walton County

The National Park Service provides biographical information about William McIntosh and his participation in the Creek War and First Seminole War. National Park Service

The Digital Library of Georgia preserves extraordinary primary sources written by McIntosh himself, including his March 23 and April 13, 1818 letters describing military operations during the First Seminole War. Digital Library of Georgia

John Love McKinnon's History of Walton County (1911) preserves early Walton County traditions concerning Sam Story, Neill McLendon, Native trails, and the country surrounding what became DeFuniak Springs.