Go on. Sing it to the tune of follow the yellow-brick road. You know you want to.
Now that you’ve got the earworm going, you might be
wondering what old, worn, brick road it is that you’re singing about. To answer
that question, you’ve got to go back in time just a little over a century to around
1914, when residents of what is now Flagler County (at the time it was part of
St. Johns County) voted for the creation of a quality highway to connect local
communities. As cars had started to become an ever more popular mode of
transportation, residents – and tourists – desired better quality roads upon
which to travel; sandy and swampy tracks passable by horse simply weren’t going
to cut it for the average Model-T.
The county took part in the Dixie Highway Association, a
conglomeration of city, state, and private interests (and it was predominantly private) which oversaw the
construction of a network of roads ranging from Miami to Montreal. Unlike the
highway and interstate systems of today, in which one highway passes hundreds
if not thousands of miles in one unbroken stretch, the Dixie Highway was truly
more of a ‘network’ of roads, not all of which connected to each other, which
were managed by the Association. (From what I have read, it would seem that the
goal of the Association was to connect areas with modern roads where none at
the time existed. As such, when the Dixie Highway reached a town or area with
existing roadway infrastructure, the highway would connect to the existing
infrastructure, but the Association would not manage or be involved with that
infrastructure in any way. The Dixie Highway would then resume further along once
locally maintained roads petered out, if that makes sense.)
Postcard featuring the Dixie Highway in Florida, mid 1920s (source)
Beginning with the Federal Road Act of 1916, the US
Government began to become involved in the construction of long-distance
highways. Funding and support for predominantly private highway associations
such as the Dixie Highway Association began to dissipate as the federal
government’s role in highway development and maintenance grew. In Florida,
federal highway US 1, which runs from Key West northward through Jacksonville
and on into Georgia (and which continues all the way to Maine), was constructed
in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Much of US 1 paralleled segments of the Dixie
Highway (albeit with some areas being farther from the old route than others),
and with the Dixie Highway no longer needed or funded, it fell into disuse and
disrepair, and nearly disappeared altogether. I periodically see signs here and
there for turnoffs to the Old Dixie Highway when traveling along US 1 in both
Florida and Georgia, but no longer is there a ‘Dixie Highway’ linking the towns
of the southeast.
Much of the original network of the Dixie Highway had been
paved in brick; however, few stretches of the original brick roadways of the
Dixie Highway remain. When US 1 was constructed in Florida, it was built out of
asphalt. In areas where US 1 followed the same path as the existing brick
highway, the bricks were torn out to make way for the pavement. In other areas
the bricks of the road were reclaimed for local use, and in others the roads
were abandoned or unmaintained, the bricks left to sink into the sand and swamp
of Florida. However, small stretches of the Old Dixie Highway in its
brick-paved glory remain. A couple of weeks ago, JOM of Gravel Cyclist took me to a particularly fantastic stretch of the
Old Dixie Highway, running north from the small town of Espanola approximately
11 miles before ending at its intersection with CR 204 in southern St. Johns
County. As always at this point, pictures speak louder than words.
Additionally, if you’d like to see a video of the Old Dixie Highway from a
cyclist’s perspective, check out this excellent video put together by JOM of Gravel Cyclist.
In some stretches, the bricks were barely visible under the dirt, gravel, and limerock.
In other areas, the brickwork was clearly visible.
There was little more than planted pine-forest along this route, all in varying degrees of the plant-grow-harvest cycle. Here the pines to the right had recently been logged.
In this stretch of the Old Dixie Highway, we spotted bricks from two different companies, the Southern Clay Manufacturing Company of Robbins, TN and the Graves Brick Company of Birmingham, AL.
Southern Clay Manufacturing Company Bricks
Graves Bricks
For more information:
