The Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad (P&A) was a company incorporated by an act of the Florida Legislature on March 4, 1881, to run from Pensacola to the Apalachicola River near Chattahoochee, a distance of about 160 miles (260 km). No railroad had ever been built across the sparsely populated panhandle of Florida, which left Pensacola isolated from the rest of the state. William D. Chipley and Frederick R. De Funiak, both of whom are commemorated in the names of towns later built along the P&A line (Chipley and DeFuniak Springs), were among the founding officers of the railroad company.