FLORIDA is known for many things–beautiful beaches, Disney, Universal–but one minister claimed the state was also once home to the Garden of Eden. Several geographical features of one reverend’s Florida hometown led him to believe that the area was the biblical site once home to Adam and Eve. Elvy E.
Callaway, a Baptist reverend and former lawyer, revealed in 1971 that he determined the Apalachicola’s four-headed river system validated the Bible, proving that the Garden of Eden was in Florida. “The Garden of Eden, east and west, is not over 10 miles wide, paralleling the Apalachicola River from Chattahoochee down to Bristol,” Callaway told WFSU-TV in 1972. Many historians and theologists speculate that the true Garden of Eden would’ve been based in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, per the Institute of Creation Research .
However, Callaway stayed true to his belief that the real garden sits on the Florida panhandle. His argument was based on a passage from the Book of Genesis which says that the river running through Eden separated into four heads. Callaway claimed that this fourway split only appears in two rivers, one in Florida and the other in Siberia.
In the Beginning, a 1971 book published by the reverend, states that the river system “proves beyond a doubt” that the Bible is true and that the garden is in West Florida. In 1956, almost two decades before publishing his book, Callaway turned what he believed to be biblical holy land into a tourist attr.
