Northeast Florida Getaways 2008 - (Page 6) The Ponte Vedra Inn & Club Sawgrass Golf Resort Anastasia State Park by Chelle Koster Walton F lorida State Road A1A today means much more than an indifferent transportation code, especially in the Northeast, where it wriggles through slim barrier islands, and delightfully backtracks to intriguing eras in the state’s history, including its most ancient. sion. And so it remains today. As it snakes its way down Florida’s backbone, it takes on different names with the personality of each place it travels. From Loyalists to Tin Can Tourists Through the years, folks have called A1A a lot of names. In the beginning, it was King’s Road, built by the British during their St. Augustine reign from 1763 to 1784. It reached from the colony of Georgia southward through British territory to today’s New Smyrna Beach, south of Daytona Beach. The road later became the path by which Loyalists fled by horse power after the Revolutionary War. Horsepower later came to mean automobile transportation, and with the advent of the “tin can tourist”– so-named for the canned foods they ate en route to and through Florida – U.S. Highway 1 was born. King’s Road was abandoned, except in rare stretches around St. Augustine. An influx of tourists and settlers in the 1920s meant the clearing and developing of the Northeast coast’s barrier islands. Soon there were bridges and a new coastal highway, which detoured off Highway 1 to run close to the surf-pounded Atlantic shoreline. It later became known as State Road 1. In 1947, the state changed the road’s name to State Road A1A to put the brakes on all the confu- Fernandina Beach Like its ancestor, A1A picks up at the Georgia border and hits its first coastal route on Amelia Island, home to Fernandina Beach. Tourism and commerce here predates the road that is called Centre Street as it makes its way into the heart of the town. Veer off A1A to take in Fernandina’s 50 blocks of ornate houses and brick buildings. Back on A1A, white sand dunes loom as you approach the ocean. The coastal road, here known as Fletcher Avenue, takes you past public beaches, vacation homes, fish-house restaurants, and a brick fort standing guard within a lovely state park. Fort Clinch State Park is first in a litany of state parks and other preserves that keep the scenery along parts of A1A as it was in its King’s Road days. Mayport’s Last Ferry & Jacksonville’s Beaches Before bridges crossed the Intracoastal Waterway to take motorists to the Coastal Highway, car ferries carried them across. At Mayport remains the final vestige of this old island transportation tradition, and a charming one at that. Just to remind us that travel along A1A should not, cannot be rushed, the road ends on the other side of the St. Johns River from Mayport Naval Station. Here you must wait to drive onto an old-fashioned ferry for the fiveminute ride across. The ferry, which kids especially love, runs about every half hour. The Florida Azalea Festival 6 VISITFLORIDA.com/northeast http://VISITFLORIDA.com/northeast
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.