Community turns out for Shalimar's 75th anniversary celebration at Combs Park

SHALIMAR — Perhaps it was the Choctawhatchee High School Jazz Band's rendition of the classic Irving Berlin tune "Blue Skies." Or maybe it was just the smiles on the faces of the people gathered Saturday in Combs Park in the tiny Okaloosa County town of Shalimar.

Whatever the reason, the town of Shalimar's 75th anniversary celebration avoided the rain that had threatened from Saturday afternoon's gray skies, giving free rein to dozens of people — older residents gathered in lawn chairs to listen to the band, youngsters playing in a "bouncy house" and other people enjoying free hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn and soft drinks — to mark the historic day.

A look back: 75 years of history in Shalimar

"I'm so happy the weather worked out for us," said Mayor Mark Franks, a self-proclaimed "history nerd" who spearheaded the Saturday celebration.

The success of Saturday's commemoration, one of the few times in recent memory that the park has been used for a communitywide gathering, has Marks thinking about staging more frequent community events under the park's ample canopy of shading oak trees.

"This is a strong community," the mayor said. "I feel like they like to get together."

Franks didn't stray far from his "history nerd" leanings at Saturday's anniversary celebration, stepping on stage periodically to pose trivia questions to the crowd.

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Among the historic tidbits revealed by the mayor's questions was the fact that Shalimar elected the first female mayor in Okaloosa County when Kathleen Bowman was elected to serve a term from 1979-1981.

Bowman, who died in 2015 at the age of 88, was a politically active woman who would go on to hold public office in the city of Crestview from 1999 to 2003.

Shalimar also was the first community in the county to allow golf carts to be operated on city streets, an action the town took in 2008, Franks said as he teased the answer out of the crowd. 

Shalimar, a city of 830 residents tucked along the shores of Garnier Bayou and straddling State Road 85 just north of Fort Walton Beach, traces its formal beginnings to 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.

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

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 owner of the club came to Clifford Meigs, who owned the land on which the housing had earlier been established, and Meigs and the two other people who owned the land comprising the community quickly incorporated the settlement.

Soon after the incorporation, however, media attention and state intervention choked the gambling enterprises that were operating in Okaloosa County, including Shalimar.

Nonetheless, that part of the city's history was remembered Saturday, as local history expert and restaurateur Tom Rice brought a gambling chip from the Shalimar Club to the anniversary celebration.

"It's got 'SC' on it," Franks told the crowd as he posed for a photograph with the quarter-sized red disk, which Rice brought to share with the city for the day.

Rice also brought another memento from the early days of Shalimar to the 75th anniversary celebration. He presented a speaker from the old Florida Drive-In theater to the city as an addition to its collection of historical artifacts.

The theater, with room for 280 cars, operated from 1950 until 1973.

Others who spoke at the 75th anniversary celebration included Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden, a lifelong Shalimar resident who called the town "a very special place."

"This is where it's at," Aden said, adding that the size of the crowd on hand for the 75th anniversary celebration was "a testament to how people feel about their community."

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Shalimar celebrates 75th anniversary at Combs Park