19th century Throughout the 19th century, the panhandle was sparsely populated, dotted in places with small farming communities, none of which had as many as a thousand residents. Many panhandle residents had, in fact, migrated to the area from Alabama and had relatives there; it was also easier to trade with and travel to southern Alabama than to reach East Florida by slow, arduous journey across the thick cypress swamps and dense pine forests of the panhandle. It was natural for West Floridians to feel that they had more in common with their nearby neighbors in Alabama than with the residents of the peninsula, hundreds of miles away. In 1821, Pensacola was the only city (in 19th-century terms) in West Florida, with a population estimated to be about 3,000. In the 1850 census, the enumerated population of Pensacola was 2,164 (including 741 slaves and 350 "free Negroes").
Alabama annexation proposals During the course of the century, proposals for ceding the Florida counties west of the
Apalachicola River to
Alabama were often raised: • In
1811, while
Florida was still a Spanish possession, American settlers in the territory sent a petition to
Congress asking to be incorporated into the
Mississippi Territory, which at that time included present-day Alabama. (See
West Florida article.) • In
1819, the constitutional convention of Alabama asked Congress to include West Florida in their new state. • In
1822, only a year after the U.S. acquired the entire
Florida territory from
Spain, residents of West Florida sent a petition to the
U.S. House of Representatives asking that their section be annexed to Alabama, and Alabama Senator
John Williams Walker also promoted the idea. • On November 2,
1869, a referendum was held in the West Florida counties (except
Jackson, which was in the throes of bloody racial violence), with a result of 1162 to 661 in favor of annexation. • In
1873, a similar proposal was made in the Alabama Legislature, which the state senate approved, though it did not pass a separate proposal to finance the measure by selling all of Alabama's territory west of the
Tombigbee River, including the city of Mobile, to
Mississippi. However, nothing came of this action. • In
1901, Alabama made yet another offer when the Legislature appointed a commission to negotiate with Florida about annexation, but this attempt, too, was unsuccessful. The region's post-Civil War timber and turpentine industries were spurred by the development of new railroad lines. One addition was Henry Bradley Plant's 1883 railroad branch that extended to Chattahoochee. The building of the
Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad, completed in 1883, finally linked Pensacola and the panhandle solidly with the rest of the state and ended the region's isolation, although from time to time during the twentieth century there were still occasional calls for annexation that generated some public discussion but no legislative action.
20th century In the last quarter of the century,
hurricanes that directly struck the area and caused significant damage included
Hurricane Eloise in 1975,
Hurricane Kate in 1985, and
Hurricane Erin and
Hurricane Opal, both in 1995. The area was a prime target of the March
1993 Storm of the Century.
21st century The panhandle suffered direct hits from
Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and
Hurricane Dennis in 2005. Ivan was the most disastrous, making landfall near
Gulf Shores, Alabama, with 120 mile-per-hour (193 km/h) winds and a storm surge that devastated Perdido Key and Santa Rosa Island, wrecked the
Interstate 10 bridge across
Escambia Bay, and destroyed thousands of homes in the region, some as far away as inland. On June 23, 2010, oil from the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill landed on Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach, damaging the fishing and tourism industries, and prompting a massive clean-up effort. On October 10, 2018, the panhandle suffered a direct hit from
Hurricane Michael, with winds as high as 160 mph. Michael was one of only four
category 5 hurricanes to ever hit the US mainland. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and apartment rents in Panama City increased, with a $500 apartment renting for $1000 in 2019. Recovery from Hurricane Michael was not complete in June 2019, and disaster relief for the panhandle remained stalled in Congress. Hurricane Michael in 2018 caused long-lasting demographic impacts in Bay County. Studies show that almost 5.2 percent of the county’s population permanently relocated for better living and stressing local recovery efforts (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 2025). This migration underscores the lack of coastal communities to climate-related problems. ==Economy==