Outside of this boundary ran a 200 ft (61 m) dirt clearing designed to protect the city from Indian attacks.

The Emancipation Proclamation was read from its steps on May 20, 1865 declaring freedom for all slaves in the Florida Panhandle.

The Old City Cemetery sits at the western end of the district at the corner of Park Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The gray French granite obelisk is estimated to weigh more than fifteen tons in an elaborate Victorian design.

The grave marker has a number of unusual characteristics including facing West and cryptic epitaph made up of lines from Edgar Allan Poe's poem Lenore.