Torreya State Park, located in northern Florida, was created in the 1930s as a nature preserve, but some say it is home to a historic site of biblical proportions.
A former lawyer and Baptist minister maintained for decades that this desert retreat was the literal site of the Garden of Eden from the Bible’s Book of Genesis.
Flanked by the Apalachicola River and home to the now endangered Torreya tree, the park gained new neighbors in 1956, when this minister founded a ‘Garden of Eden’ tourist attraction in the nearby city of Bristol, with fees of just 1 $10 per ticket.
While many biblical scholars and theologians have spent centuries speculating that a true ‘Garden of Eden’ once existed in Turkey, Armenia, or at the head of the Persian Gulf (where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet), few have suggested Florida.
Torreya State Park (above), located in northern Florida, was created in the 1930s as a nature preserve, but some say it is home to a historic site of biblical proportions.
Flanked by the Apalachicola River and home to the now-endangered Torreya tree, the park gained new neighbors in 1956, when a Baptist minister founded a “Garden of Eden” tourist attraction (above) in nearby Bristol, Florida, with fees only $1.10 per ticket
This Baptist minister claimed that the geography of the area that included Torreya State Park was reminiscent of the Garden of Eden.
But Baptist Reverend Elvy E. Callaway, then a retired lawyer, claimed that he had discovered several geographic features of the local landscape that matched the description of the Garden of Eden detailed in the Old Testament.
“The Garden of Eden, east and west, is not more than 10 miles wide, and parallels the (Apalachicola) River from the Chattahoochee to Bristol,” as Reverend Callaway says. he told a WFSU-TV reporter in 1972.
At the center of his argument was a passage from the Book of Genesis that said that “a river that watered the garden flowed from Eden, and from there it divided into four branches.”
According to Reverend Callaway’s analysis, this fourfold division only appears in two rivers on Earth, the Apalachicola or another tributary half a world away in Siberia.
Former lawyer and Baptist minister Reverend Elvy E. Callaway (above) maintained for decades that this wilderness retreat in northern Florida was the literal site of the Garden of Eden from the Bible’s Book of Genesis.
But Siberia, the former lawyer and once devout nonbeliever believed, was too cold to be the paradise described in Genesis as the birthplace of humanity, according to a Florida journalist. Antonio Talcot.
In his 1971 book At firstReverend Callaway proclaimed that the Apalachicola’s four-headwater river system “proves beyond a doubt that the biblical account is true and that the Garden was in the Apalachicola Valley in western Florida.”
Decades earlier, Callaway had left his father’s strict Baptist church in Weogufka, Alabama, and adopted a secular outlook with plans to leave home to pursue a law degree.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Callaway prosecuted cases in Lakeland, Florida, on behalf of the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helping to fight racial injustice in the area.
But shortly after the end of World War II, Callaway had befriended a local retired doctor, Dr. Brown Landone, who had dedicated his golden years to producing spiritual and metaphysical books with titles such as ‘Transforming Your Life Into’. 24 Hours’ and ‘Spiritual Revelations from the Bible.’
The shape of the local river system was just one feature of the land that led the reverend to his conclusion that the region was the Eden of the Old Testament. Torreya’s native trees, among the rarest and oldest in the world, also influenced his thinking.
After World War II, Callaway had befriended a local retired doctor who had devoted his golden years to the production of spiritual and metaphysical books. Friendship may have convinced him to buy the property that became his ‘Garden of Eden’ tourist site (above)
Soon, Callaway was changing course and purchasing the same property that would become his ‘Garden of Eden’ resort site in northwest Florida.
But the shape of the local river system was not the only feature of the land that led the reverend to the conclusion that this patch of green in the Panhandle was once the Eden of the Old Testament.
Torreya’s native trees, among the rarest and oldest in the world, also influenced his thinking, perhaps as much as the eccentric teachings of Dr. Landone.
“The truly primitive Torreya taxifolia had survived the previous ice age in what is called a ‘pocket reserve’ along the Apalachicola River,” says Brook Wilensky-Lanford, author of the 2011 book. Paradise Lust: In Search of the Garden of EdenPut it on.
“It is a vestige of a now-defunct world that existed before a massive geological event,” he wrote in an article for Religion and Politics at the University of Washington“just as a survivor of Noah’s Flood should be.”
The already rare tree was endangered by the 1950s, due to disease and overharvesting, as the southern evergreen was used for everything from fuel for riverboats to house shingles and Christmas trees. .
Only a few hundred trees remained, most of which were no taller than two feet.
Visitors to Rev. Callaway’s park were able to enjoy a well-traveled 3.75-mile trail, called Garden of Eden Road and dotted with many specimens of the endangered Torreya tree. The minister said the company was a “non-profit sanctuary.”
Reverend Callaway passed away in 1981 and today you can walk his Garden of Eden trail as part of a non-profit organization. Nature Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Reserve.
And the nearly four-mile hike still includes a view of the Apalachicola River from Alum Bluff, the place Callaway long claimed was once the home of Adam and Eve.