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Warren Weekes
Warren Weekes (1922-2004) was a native of north Santa Rosa County and served in the U.S. Navy in both World War ll and Korea before returning to his beloved Santa Rosa County. He worked at the Pace Chemical Plant as an accountant, then as an accountant for Santa Rosa County at the courthouse. He and his wife and daughter resided in Bagdad, where he taught Sunday school at the Bagdad United Methodist Church.
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In the early 1960s, he and his daughter, Louise, went up Pond Creek and were able to locate the forgotten remains of the Arcadia industrial site dating from the antebellum period. From the 1970s-1990s, Warren held special classes on Santa Rosa County history and led numerous field trips to historic sites in the county.
Weekes sitting in a salt vat, in which salt water was boiled to produce salt.
Weekes was caretaker of the Arcadia site from the early 1990s until his death in 2004, when the property was transferred to the University of West Florida.
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Through the years, Warren Weekes served as the Santa Rosa County historian, spoke to numerous local groups, wrote newspaper columns, and authored a collection of historical stories in Cornbread, Fatback, and Syrup: Lectures on the History and Folklore of Santa Rosa County (1999).
In the 1980s, he was instrumental in getting the old water-powered grist mill installed at Krul Recreation Center in Blackwater River State Forest, and in the 1990s was a key player in listing the Arcadia industrial site (1817-1855) on the National Register of Historic Places, as well as in protecting several key acres of the site as a historic park, first operated by the Santa Rosa Historical Society and currently by the University of West Florida Historic Trust.
