Elevation: 345 Feet 

Description: 
Walton County, eastern panhandle of northern Florida near Alabama border 2 miles southeast of Florala , Alabama 

Latitude/Longitude:
30 59 18N/086 16 55W

USGS Map
Paxton

Contact Information
Lakewood County Park
Walton County Parks
P.O. Box 689
DeFuniak Springs, FL 32435
850-892-8108 (office)
850 892-8094 (fax)

It may not be much of a hill, but it's still a hill.

We climbed Lakewood (Britton Hill) on February 15, 1999, after a 260 mile drive from New Orleans.

We had taken I-10 from New Orleans, exiting at Exit 12 at Crestview where we drove north on Highway 85 to Florala through a land full of mobile homes and big cars being driven slowly.

After crossing the Alabama line, we encountered a woman selling boiled peanuts before heading east southeast on U.S. 331.  We followed the signs on to Highway 54.

About a mile from downtown Highway 54 forked to the northeast and we turned southeast on a seemingly little used road (which turned out to be Lakewood Highway -- which was much better maintained from the Florida border south about a mile to the summit park).

Although, most people joke that everything is flat here, the summit is indeed on top of a hill and it has a rather nice view.

A Walton County park sports a restroom, picnic shelters, a granite summit marker (although no USGS marker) and a nature trail.  Nobody was visiting when we were there.

I have always known this as "Britton Hill" but all the signs make reference to it as "Lakewood."  There are numerous lakes and ponds here.  A rusted sign in a clearing to the north of the summit woods made reference to the "Britton Memorial Park."

Britton Hill, the country's lowest state high point, is less than an hour from Florida's Emerald Coast in the panhandle on the Gulf of Mexico.

The hill on Walton County Road 1087 was named for the former postmistress of the hamlet of Lakewood nearby. It is well signed and a county park is there.

Andrew Jackson, before becoming President, spent three weeks by nearby Lake Jackson (then named "Big Pond") during an 1818 campaign to subdue Indians in Pensacola. Lake Jackson which stradles the Florida-Alabama border is the largest natural lake in Alabama. 

Long leaf yellow pines here were the basis for a timber industry. The floors of New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel are purported to be from here. The tri-city area (Florala and Lockhart in Alabama and Paxton in Florida) has a total population of 4,000 and a web site.

As we drove the area, the neighboring dirt/gravel roads would switch in a flash from red clay to white sand. 

For further information, contact the Tri-city Chamber of Commerce, (334) 858-6252.