of a drawbridge across the St. Marks River. The line was constructed using strap rail ( long timbers with a thick strap of iron on top), using a track gauge (distance between rails) of laid on ties spaced at intervals of . Most of the route was over very flat, forested land. Drainage was poor, and rain often washed the sand from under the tracks, throwing them out of alignment. This left the track in poor condition, with high maintenance costs. (A traveler on the railroad in 1855 reported being told that the rails had initially been laid directly on the sand without ties to hold the rails in alignment.) The French naturalist, Francis de Laporte de Castelnau, visited Middle Florida from November 1837 until March 1838. While admitting that the railroad was "very useful" because of the near impossibility of transporting cotton by horse-drawn wagon across the sandy soil from Tallahassee to the St. Marks River, he called the railroad "the very worst that has yet been built in the entire world", with such poor construction that it had proven impossible to operate locomotives on the track. Port Leon The initial terminal for the railroad was St. Marks. The Federal government had only granted at St. Marks to the railroad, instead of the it had requested. The land grant from the Territory of Florida included a larger area across (to the east of) the St. Marks River and a little nearer to the mouth of the river. Siting the terminal of the railroad on the territorial grant land gave the company more room for its terminal facilities, and full control of the transfer of goods between the railroad and ships. Starting in 1838, the railroad company laid out and sold lots in Port Leon. The residents of Magnolia, a port town up the St. Marks River from the port of St. Marks, which had been bypassed by the railroad, moved en masse to Port Leon. The railroad reached Port Leon in 1839. The town had quickly grown to a population of about 450, and was incorporated in 1841. Yellow fever struck the town in 1841, killing 139 residents. About 200 residents were still in Port Leon in early 1843 when it was made the county seat of Wakulla County, which was newly created out of Leon County. When it began selling lots at Port Leon, the railroad company had