75th anniversary: Officer housing to gambling haven, Shalimar has come a long way since 1947

SHALIMAR — It's not hard to imagine that the entire population of Shalimar, along with neighbors and friends from the surrounding area, could show up for the Okaloosa County town's 75th anniversary celebration from 2-5 p.m. May 21 at Combs Park on Cherokee Road.

The 2020 census pegs the 186-acre town's population at 830 people, up from 717 in 2010's nationwide population count.

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Still, Mayor Mark Franks warned earlier this week that parking likely will be at a premium for the anniversary celebration. Franks suggested that visitors who can't find nearby parking can park at City Hall a short distance away on Cherokee Road or at the post office across Eglin Parkway.

Franks' enthusiasm for the upcoming 75th anniversary of the town, tucked along the shore of Garnier Bayou and straddling State Road 85 just north of Fort Walton Beach, is more than evident.

"I'm a history nerd," he said in a recent interview promoting the upcoming celebration, "That's my favorite part of being the mayor of Shalimar, is just the rich history of the town that I'm still learning about every day.

"It's important to look back at where we came from," Franks added, and he doesn't shy away from or sugarcoat the circumstances of its founding.

The town began in the early 1940s as an assembly of more than 100 homes, the brainchild of property owner Clifford Meigs. The homes were intended for rental by the officers staffing nearby Eglin Field (now Eglin Air Force Base), which had been established in 1935 as the Valparaiso Bombing and Gunnery Base.

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"I furnished the land and another fellow did the buildings … it was a gamble, though," Meigs recounted in a 1959 story in the Playground News, forerunner of the Northwest Florida Daily News. "People said I was crazy to build houses way out here in the woods, that the base would fold up as soon as the war (World War II) was over, and I would be left with empty houses on my hands. But it didn’t work out that way, and the 160 houses I had constructed stayed rented all the time."

But Shalimar wasn't incorporated as a town until 1947, and that action was taken primarily to protect the gambling that went on at the now well-remembered Shalimar Club. In "A History of Okaloosa County," written by Henry Allen Dobson, the club was described as a "sumptuous" place, and its opening was declared "the social event of 1947."

But because Shalimar was not incorporated, the future of the Shalimar Club was clouded by a Florida law that prohibited clubs in unincorporated areas from operating between midnight Saturdays through Monday mornings.

"The Fort Walton Beach (gambling) places were doing a booming business on the weekends (as an incorporated area) while there were rumors that the sheriff might enforce the law in Shalimar and close the place there," Meigs told the Playground News for the 1959 story.

"The owner (of the Shalimar Club) came to me and suggested incorporation, and while I didn’t think I had much to gain then, I agreed," Meigs added. "With only about three other freeholders in the area, it was a simple matter to get incorporated."

For Franks, the origin story isn't particularly dispiriting.

"It was a different time," he said.

And at any rate, soon after the town's incorporation, gambling in Okaloosa County disappeared. Outside publicity, including a Tampa Tribune exposé and direct state intervention, choked the enterprise in Shalimar and across the rest of the county.

By that time, though, Shalimar's development was being spurred by people returning from service in World War II.

"Pilots, returned from combat overseas, are settling at Shalimar now," noted a 1944 story in the Atlanta Journal, in which someone is quoted as saying, "... I am glad they can have its peace and quietness, its unique charm … to help salve the mental wound of battle."

That spirit will be very much in evidence at the upcoming 75th anniversary celebration, according to Franks.

"Basically, it's just going to be a fun day," the mayor said, with music, hamburgers, hot dogs, popcorn, face painting and games and contests for young people.

The celebration will be punctuated with speeches from a number of people, including state Rep. Patt Maney, who lives in Shalimar, Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden and local restaurateur and history buff Tom Rice, Franks said. Other speakers are being lined up, he added.

Another special event planned is a "treasure hunt," with Franks periodically offering hints during the celebration as to where the treasure — he wouldn't say what it is — can be found.

And in a nod to Franks' nerdiness regarding history, the anniversary celebration could also include displays of old maps of the town, along with old books filled with results of town elections — if a safe way of displaying those artifacts can be devised, he said.

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Shalimar Florida to celebrate 75th anniversary on May 21