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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 243/340

Depression and War

1933 twelve percent of the white population and twenty-two
percent of the black population of Columbia County were receiving
emergency relief. As helpful as such assistance was, it was
meager, and the county’s monthly grant for families was only $4.16
in contrast to a state average of $9.76.6

Some New Deal programs provided relief but had long-range
goals as well. The $106,000 which the county obtained in 1936 for
WPA projects was used primarily for the National Guard Armory
and the City Hall. In 1934 the federal government supplied the
funds used by the state to purchase the 160 acre site of the town of
Leno which had been unoccupied since around 1900. The purchase
was made for the establishment of a forestry training school which
was set-up in 1936, but this was also the start of the present O’Leno
State Park. Leno was one of the curiosities of Columbia County
tracing its beginnings to the grist and saw mill and cotton gin
operations established by G. M. Whetstone around 1840. Whet­
stone located his town on the “natural bridge” crossing of the Santa
Fe River, and was one of the earliest water-powered mill opera­
tions in the state. Legend had it that Whetstone chose the name
“Keno” for his town because “keno” was a gambling game, and he
regarded his business as a gamble. Other legends held that the
name was changed to “Leno” during the 1870’s because a visiting
preacher did not like the gambling connotation. At any rate Leno
faded away in the latter part of the nineteenth century when the
railroad did not come to it and by the early twentieth century was
just a ghost-town site of “Old Leno” or more simply “O’ Leno.”
Today the site is a part of the O’Leno State Park which en­
compasses some 1,500 acres.7

6 Emma O. Lundberg, “Social Welfare in Florida," State Board of Public Works
Publication No. 4 (Tallahassee, 1934), pp. 61-62, 105.
7 Netti Ozaki and Anne Knight, “1936”; Mary Godwin, “The Ghost Town on the
Banks of the River,” Lake City Reporter, December 13, 1974.
191

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