Alachua, FL USDA Benefits

Alachua (/əˈlætʃueɪ/ ⓘ ə-LATCH-oo-ay) is the second-largest city in Alachua County, Florida and the third-largest in North Central Florida. According to the 2020 census, the city’s population was 10,574. Alachua has one of the largest bio and life sciences sectors in Florida and is the site for the Santa Fe College Perry Center for Emerging Technologies.

Evidence of habitation by pre-historic Paleo-Indians exists in several documented locations within the San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park. In the historic era, the primary town for the Potano tribe that lived throughout North Central Florida also was within San Felasco. This town became the site of the first Spanish doctrina (mission with a resident priest) in the Florida interior in 1606, Mission San Francisco de Potano, and it was the last to be abandoned by the Spanish in the early 1700s due to raids instigated by the British. Nearby to the north along the Santa Fe River was another mission, Santa Fe de Toloca, which was part of the mission chain stretching from St. Augustine to Pensacola.

The area slightly northeast of the current City of Alachua was among the first settled by Americans in Florida in the early 19th Century. Many participants in the Patriot War that attempted to force the annexation of Florida to the United States from the Spanish resided there, including the Dell family. The exact date of first settlement is unknown, but the community first known as Dell’s Courthouse then later renamed as Newnansville is, along with Micanopy, the oldest distinctly American settlement in the State. The Methodist church that started with the Dell family continues to this day and is the oldest in the State, First United Methodist Church of Alachua.

Newnansville became the second county seat of Alachua County and one of the central locations for activity during the Second Seminole War, with the inclusion of Fort Gilleland within its borders. The influx of settlers seeking refuge within the city temporarily increased the population between 1,500 to 2,000, making it one of the largest cities in the State.

When the first cross-state railroad, the Florida Railroad, bypassed Newnansville in the early 1850s, members of the County Commission voted by a slim margin to relocate the county seat along the rail line in a centrally-located, new city to be called Gainesville. Newnansville began to lose influence and, when the Savannah, Florida, and Western Railroad bypassed the city by about 1.5 miles to the southwest in the early 1880s, citizens began to relocate along the new rail line (eventually abandoning Newnansville and turning it into a ghost town) and established the City of Alachua. Alachua was founded in 1884, with its post office opening in 1887. It was incorporated as a city on 12th of April 1905, at which time it had a population of 526 people. A third rail line passed through the new city, and a booming cotton industry helped support the building of several lavish Queen Anne-style homes and brick businesses along Main Street at the turn of the century.