Florida’s Ghost Highway: The Old Red Brick Road | Hacker News Reader

Florida’s Ghost Highway: The Old Red Brick Road

floridatraveler.com

93 pointsrmason20 comments

I have such fond memories of wasting hours driving down the old Dixie Highway.

That area of Florida is predominately potato farms (chip potatoes), and in another life—before I was a programmer and after I was grad student studying poetry—I found myself selling crop insurance in a town nearby when I suddenly had to take over my father's business.

Any chance I got to take a drive down that old brick road, I would. There were quicker routes to the farmers I was visiting, but none as pleasant. It was truly the best part of a fairly awful period in my life, and I've never been sure if I should recommend the drive to others as it's really out of the way. But if you want to see some "old Florida," it's one of the nicest ways to do so.

Ahh, this is lovely :)

In Upstate NY, we have some similar old forgotten roads, except with yellow bricks instead of red ones. Here was one near where I grew up: http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2009/09/01/the-yellow-brick...

From one of the comments:

> Yellow bricks were manufactured in many local places like Mechanicville and Ravena.

> The creator of the Wizard of Oz was manufactured around here, too! L. Frank Baum grew up in Chittenango NY and appeared on stage a few times in Troy during his failed career as an actor. So the Yellow Brick Road in the Wizard of Oz was more likely inspired by the yellow brick roads in the Hudson Valley...not the other way around.

Here's another red brick road in Florida.

  http://filmnorthflorida.com/photos/location/Milton:-Red-Brick-Road
  http://www.aaroads.com/guide.php?page=ostfl

When I ran track and cross country at Milton High School our coaches liked to bus us to this road. It was easy for the coach to follow us in the bus because of the adjacent side roads. And it was nice for the students because it was a straight shot--no running a circuit--without cross traffic.

Google Street view (poor quality): https://www.google.com/maps/@29.6422288,-81.3742022,3a,75y,3...

Vaguely related: I lament the ongoing work to pave gravel and dirt roads.

Leave the slow roads alone for those who enjoy the less-travelled route. We have enough highways.

Lobby your local departments of transportation please (EDIT: really, please please please).

Iowa is coming around to letting underutilized roads return to gravel as a cost savings measure [1]; expect other government bodies to follow suit.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/7/6/iowa-dot-chief-...

EDIT 2: If you've already gotten this far in my comment, do take the 2-3 minutes reading the above citation/link; its eye-opening.

One of my fathers friend's used to drive a grader on the Stuart Highway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Highway), from Adelaide to Darwin in Australia, through the desert. 1700 miles through some pretty inhospitable country, in stifling heat (pre AC days, too, I believe this was late 60s, early 70s). He'd get to the other end, have five days off, and drive back.

I simply can't imagine that.

There's a show on Netflix called Outback Truckers that shows some of these remote roads. It's amazing the work it takes to get basic supplies to some of the remote outposts.

I met a man who was a long-haul trucker on the Eyre Highway, across the Nullarbor. Sounded bad, but the Stuart Highway looks worse!

Dirt/gravel roads still require maintenance, though. From the article, it almost sounded like he was saying that they would just stop doing anything to those roads.

For example, I've come across dirt roads with potholes deep enough that you really needed a vehicle with a raised under-carriage (e.g. pickup, SUV, etc) to not risk damaging your car while driving it. This wasn't way out in the boonies anywhere either. It was only a couple of miles past the DSL service area, and at an intersection that had a subdivision that was just built on one corner[1].

[1] This was probably a decade ago. I'm pretty sure that area has broadband, etc nowadays.

There's a few awesome little alleyways in SE Portland that are so deeply pitted with potholes and bumps that you really couldn't get through them without a lifted or off road vehicle. I like to take my 4x4 truck through them on bad days :)

These persist primarily in areas that were annexed by the city and where the neighborhood never put up the money to form an improvement district to pave their streets. The city seems to not maintain them at all, even as gravel roads, to encourage the landowners to eventually pay up for improvements... but it hasn't really worked out.

Its definitely been hit and miss, in SE Portland you really can see which neighbors ponied up, as the city asked residents to fund part of the cost of the speed bumps added in parts of SE to reduce through traffic speed. Hence why some are literally bumps atop a bump, cause the house directly beside it paid a non-negligible portion of the cost of that there speedbump!

Living on a gravel road myself, I don't.

On the one hand, it does have character and gives the place a certain "look." OTOH, people don't necessarily slow down, so the road gets rutted. Badly! And then you're forced to drive at a snail's pace because of the massive holes. And that sucks because unlike the visitors who are out for a pleasant country drive, you live here and have to get someplace on time. Sure, the road is graded weekly, but until then, you're dodging potholes.

And then there's the dust. Every vehicle has a coat of dust, inside and out and it gets everywhere

The road leading to mine was recently paved over the most heavily traveled section. Night and day difference. In winter, the snow and ice melts much faster, it's far quieter to drive on and you can drive at a reasonable speed. I happily pay the extra county tax in exchange for it.

Similarly: paved rail-trails. These drive me nuts.

Awwww. Traffic-free paved cycleways are one of the great pleasures in life. And the Bristol-Bath Railway Path (UK) shows that if you do them right, they can attract thousands.

Depends on the context and quality of drainage. An urban trail should probably be paved. Gravel or crushed limestone works great in more rural contexts.

Plus road bikes these days have tires of a more sensible width than the long-popular 700x23c.

Bricks made in Birmingham in the 20's, turpentine plantations... Reminds me of the forced labor chronicled in Slavery by Another Name, which is a great read that I highly recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-A...

The old Yellowstone Trail [1] roadbed is still visible in Redmond, WA [2].

[1]: http://yellowstonetrail.org/ [2]: http://www.historylink.org/File/2363

Wow, I grew up an hour from there and never heard of it before. Neat!

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