The original plot of Trenton is land bought on January 29, 1876, from the Florida State Board of Education for $1.25 an acre. Some of the early settlers lived for a time in a log cabin located where the present-day courthouse is.
On April 2, 1883, the name Trenton was given to what was then the Joppa Post Office located in the Sam Slaughter store. The Trenton name came from an 18-year-old Tennessee man, Ben Boyd, who changed the name of Joppa to Trenton to honor his Tennessee home.
The Trenton area had rich soil suitable for several different crops, including cotton. It was written “The long cotton of Florida has now come to rank in fineness and quality with the cotton grown on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia” about the Sea Island cotton that farmers in the Trenton area became famous for. Later Watermelons became a primary crop and still is today.
The Atlantic Coast Line built the railroad through Trenton in 1906 and went on across the Suwannee River to Cross City, Perry, and Tallahassee. Once the railroad was completed through Trenton, it began bringing in the mail. Before then, the mail came twice a week from Gainesville as part of a Star Rural Route. Eventually, trucks carrying the mail would replace the train and bring in mail everyday except for Sundays and holidays.
In 1906, a general store and livery stable was built just south of the railroad depot and a cotton gin and gristmill went in just north of the depot. Soon after a small electric plant went in to supplement and replace the Delco plants several families had already installed. When the first street-lights were installed, they were turned out at 9:30 pm, then later at 10 pm, to signal curfew-time.
The Slaughter House was one of the first hotels in Trenton. First built in 1903 at Wannee on the Suwannee River, it served as a post office and general merchandise store there. When Wannee began to decline, the entire building was torn down board by board and moved by wagons to Trenton. It was rebuilt as a hotel near the railroad depot, where could get a good meal for just a quarter. It suffered extensive damage from fire in the late 1930’s and was eventually cleared away.
Trenton got its charter around 1908, at a time when William E. (Bill) Bell was one of the leaders of the town. A physically imposing man with a booming voice, Bell became very well known in the area, much in the way that domineering frontiersmen did in the early history of our country. In 1930, eleven years after his death, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Florida’s well known writer of such works as The Yearling, South Moon Under, and Cross Creek, heard about Bill Bell. Intrigued with the possibilities of writing up his story, she traveled to Trenton to spend some time learning more about him and collecting anecdotes from people who knew Bell. She wrote her findings up in a short story, “Lord Bill of the Suwannee River,” that very few people know about because it was never published in its entirety.
In the first block south of the depot on the west side of main Street were the hitching posts for teams and horses. Two stores there sold everything from toothpicks to coffins, seed and farm supplies, groceries, dry goods, shoes, candy, etc. This building still stands as the oldest commercial building in Trenton now housing a very busy cross-stitch shop, an antique shop, a frame shop and a stained glass studio.
In the block of brick stores on the east side of Main Street there was a Drug Store, the Farmers & Merchants Bank (opening in 1911), a barbershop, a movie theater and a grocery store. On the west side of Main Street by the general store and the dry-goods store there came another grocery store and meat market and a restaurant.
A book from 1925 describes Trenton as “...a busy shipping point. During the melon season the yards about the station are crowded with trucks and teams. Huge quantities of railroad ties go out all during the year, and at the height of the hog and cattle shipping period a rail car is loaded as fast as the preceding one can be moved from the chute.”
All this time in the above paragraphs Trenton was the “West End” of Alachua County. Read a history of how Gilchrist County came to be HERE.
The present day Trenton is a nice small community now pushing almost 2000 people and is the county seat of Gilchrist County. Its nice quiet living with its tree lined and canopied streets often lines with colorful flowers. The Spring bring Azaleas, Red Bud Trees, Red Tips and many others. Trenton will be full of colorful Crepe Myrtles most all Summer.
Main Street is a north/south street, also US 129. Its lined with the typical old businesses of a small Florida town including the old Coca Cola bottling plant that now houses one of the finest quilt shops in the entire country. In the center of North Main Street sits the picturesque old railroad depot, now the head of the Nature Coast Trail, 32 miles of paved hiking and biking trails through serene countryside. This is a part of the nation-wide Rails to Trails program. Be sure to visit the Chamber of Commerce and Pure Water Wilderness offices on Main Street, 2 blocks south of the intersection with Wade Street (SR 26) and the only stop light in the entire county. Wade Street also has many businesses and an original old silo, now used for local signs.
Trenton is home to a high school and an elementary school, both receiving "A" ratings from the State of Florida.
You will still see thousand of watermelons being hauled through town to two processing plants just northeast of town, most all carried in old converted school busses. A unique sight very reminiscent of the past except the melons came through town on horse drawn wagons. The harvest takes place starting in mid to late May and lasts till about the middle of June. You'll see many hundreds of acres of watermelon fields driving around the countryside this time of year, many with the converted school busses in the fields where the melons are being picked and loaded by hand.
The original plot of Trenton is land bought on January 29, 1876, from the Florida State Board of Education for $1.25 an acre. Some of the early settlers lived for a time in a log cabin located where the present-day courthouse is.
The Atlantic Coast Line built the railroad through Trenton in 1906 and went on across the Suwannee River to Cross City, Perry, and Tallahassee. Once the railroad was completed through Trenton, it began bringing in the mail. Before then, the mail came twice a week from Gainesville as part of a Star Rural Route. Eventually, trucks carrying the mail would replace the train and bring in mail everyday except for Sundays and holidays.
The Slaughter House was one of the first hotels in Trenton. First built in 1903 at Wannee on the Suwannee River, it served as a post office and general merchandise store there. When Wannee began to decline, the entire building was torn down board by board and moved by wagons to Trenton. It was rebuilt as a hotel near the railroad depot, where could get a good meal for just a quarter. It suffered extensive damage from fire in the late 1930’s and was eventually cleared away.
Trenton got its charter around 1908, at a time when William E. (Bill) Bell was one of the leaders of the town. A physically imposing man with a booming voice, Bell became very well known in the area, much in the way that domineering frontiersmen did in the early history of our country. In 1930, eleven years after his death, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Florida’s well known writer of such works as The Yearling, South Moon Under, and Cross Creek, heard about Bill Bell. Intrigued with the possibilities of writing up his story, she traveled to Trenton to spend some time learning more about him and collecting anecdotes from people who knew Bell. She wrote her findings up in a short story, “Lord Bill of the Suwannee River,” that very few people know about because it was never published in its entirety.
In the block of brick stores on the east side of Main Street there was a Drug Store, the Farmers & Merchants Bank (opening in 1911), a barbershop, a movie theater and a grocery store. On the west side of Main Street by the general store and the dry-goods store there came another grocery store and meat market and a restaurant.
The present day Trenton is a nice small community now pushing almost 2000 people and is the county seat of Gilchrist County. Its nice quiet living with its tree lined and canopied streets often lines with colorful flowers. The Spring bring Azaleas, Red Bud Trees, Red Tips and many others. Trenton will be full of colorful Crepe Myrtles most all Summer.
Cola bottling plant that now houses one of the finest quilt shops in the entire country. In the center of North Main Street sits the picturesque old railroad depot, now the head of the Nature Coast Trail, 32 miles of paved hiking and biking 
trails through serene countryside. This is a part of the nation-wide Rails to Trails program. Be sure to visit the Chamber of Commerce and Pure Water Wilderness offices on Main Street, 2 blocks south of the intersection with Wade Street (SR 26) and the only stop light in the entire county. Wade Street also has many businesses and an original old silo, now used for local signs.
You will still see thousand of watermelons being hauled through town to two processing plants just northeast of town, most all carried in old converted school busses. A unique sight very reminiscent of the past except the melons came through town on horse drawn wagons. The harvest takes place starting in mid to late May and lasts till about the middle of June. You'll see many hundreds of acres of watermelon fields driving around the countryside this time of year, many with the converted school busses in the fields where the melons are being picked and loaded by hand.