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Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company

early railroad in Florida

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 27, 2025
Entity authorityQ6478504 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad was the first steam railroad in Florida and one of the first in the U.S., opening in 1836. With the collapse of the town of St. Joseph, the railroad was abandoned by 1842.

The Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal Company was chartered by Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida in 1835, and was renamed in 1836 to the Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company. Disputed land ownership had caused many residents of Apalachicola, the port at the mouth of the Apalachicola River, to start the new town of St. Joseph on St. Joseph Bay.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company” as early railroad in Florida. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lake, Wimico and Joseph.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1836, 1842, 1835—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Lake, Wimico and Joseph providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company”, the useful work is to connect “early railroad in Florida” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6478504. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1836, 1842 and 1835.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company primary sources, Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company archive and Lake research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Lake Wimico and St. Joseph Canal and Railroad Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.