The story of Dekle Beach.

The story did not begin with Gus.

Dekle Beach lies on Taylor County’s Gulf coast, roughly 22 miles south of Perry. A June 2024 Perry News-Herald retrospective, drawing on Josh Goodman’s Forest Capital: A History of Taylor County, describes it as an offshoot of the older Jug Island community. Gus Dekle’s development was a new chapter in an existing coastal story—not the discovery of an empty shore.

The regional history reaches back further still. Taylor County coastal histories describe Confederate saltmaking during the Civil War, when salt production had strategic importance. That is important context for this coast, but it does not, by itself, locate a saltworks on the exact property that later became Dekle Beach. Connecting a particular site to the community requires more precise archival or archaeological evidence.

Geography matters, too. This is the Big Bend’s landscape of marshes, creeks, islands and shallow water, rather than a broad, high sandy beach. Florida DEP maps show Jug Island, Salt Creek, Cedar Island and other tidal features nearby. Access to this coast would become an important part of its development.

Sources: 2024 historical retrospective · Florida DEP coastal maps. The saltmaking connection is regional context, not a verified parcel history.

A Perry businessman before a beach developer.

Before entering the Legislature, Dekle was known locally as an automobile dealer associated with Dekle Motor Company, a Chevrolet dealership. His business life and civic work were already established when the coastal community began taking shape.

Taylor County’s historical listing of Perry officials records him on the Town Council in 1935, 1936, 1937, 1939 and 1940. He was not an outside developer who suddenly entered local public life; he was part of Perry’s business and political community well beforehand.

Sources: Perry officials’ historical listing · Corporate search reference · Community archive.

Industrial ambition and the Fenholloway.

A biographical account cites a March 26, 1947, Tampa Tribune report of Dekle’s victory in the Democratic runoff for Taylor County’s legislative seat. His arrival in Tallahassee coincided with a major debate about the county’s future: what would follow its traditional timber economy?

Historical scholarship on the Fenholloway River describes Taylor County and Perry officials supporting legislation in 1947 that benefited a proposed Procter & Gamble operation. Dekle sponsored House Bill 242. The resulting law allowed industrial and chemical wastes to be discharged into the Fenholloway River.

That decision belongs in the story alongside the beach development. It shows a politician pursuing industrial growth through a policy with serious environmental implications, not simply a civic booster building a seaside retreat. Economic development and the treatment of the county’s waterways were intertwined.

The same scholarship recounts Dekle’s June 1947 address to the Taylor County Rotary Club. He described the county as being at a crossroads: virgin pine saw timber could no longer carry the future, while forestry and pulpwood offered a new direction. His public career and coastal venture place him on both sides of Taylor County’s postwar development story—industrial growth inland and recreation on the Gulf.

Sources: Florida Conference of Historians, volume 26 · Legislative service record · Election reference.

A beach in use—not just a plan.

The community archive places Gus Dekle’s acquisition and early development in the mid-1940s. The 2024 newspaper retrospective describes the beach as owned and named for him, with cottages, houses, a café and a pavilion already present by 1947.

That July report identifies Lonzo McCall as the operator of the pavilion and dining room at Dekle Beach. It describes steady patronage from Taylor County and Georgia. This is especially useful evidence: it places visitors and a working recreational business at the beach in the summer of 1947, rather than relying only on memories recorded decades later.

The article credited a newly completed road to the beaches with increasing visitation. It also reported that work was expected to begin on two miles of paving into Jug Island and Dekle Beach. Those are distinct details: improved access was already bringing people to the coast, while additional paving was still anticipated.

Taken together, these accounts place Dekle Beach within postwar Florida’s growing world of automobile travel, vacation cottages and coastal recreation. Gus’s overlapping roles as dealer, politician, landowner and developer help explain his place in that transition. The 1947 report establishes an active destination; it does not settle the exact date of his original land purchase.

Sources: 1947 newspaper material · 2024 retrospective · Community archive.

Channels, canals and the south point

Former residents recalled that Dekle dredged channels and dug canals as the area became a residential beach. If confirmed in development records, that would describe more than subdivision: it would show the physical reshaping of a marsh-and-waterway landscape for recreation and homes. For now, the dredging story is identified as a residents’ recollection, not a documented engineering history.

The same local tradition says Dekle traded the southernmost point to his friend Jimmy Archer in exchange for wrecker services used by Dekle Motor Company. Archer was a Texan who settled in Perry after marrying local resident Sibyl Poppell, whose first name appears as “Sybil” in the original community archive. He operated a salvage yard and wrecker service.

The story suggests how personal connections, services and business relationships could shape small-town development. Accounts also describe Archer descendants retaining part of the property. Neither the exchange nor later ownership should be treated as a verified chain of title without the deeds; the account is not a statement about who owns the land today.

Source: The archived community history. Land exchange and dredging details remain local historical tradition pending primary records.

The community comes into view.

Florida Memory catalogs photographs of Dekle Beach after Gus’s death. These records offer another way to follow the story: not just through names and dates, but through the buildings and waterfront of the community itself.

The collection also includes waterfront and waterfront-building photographs from 1982. Together, these images provide a visual record of the community between its early development and the storms that would later alter it.

Explore the Florida Memory waterfront collection →