FLORIDA NOTES
We have listed website links for many of
the services and places mentioned in
this book. Visit our website at:
www.FloridaOnline.info/FLwebsites.html
for further information.
Free Coffee or Water–You don’t have to be
a guest at a Baymont Inn to take advantage of
their safety driven, “DriveRevived” program.
You just have to be a tired driver.
If you find yourself feeling weary behind the
wheel, stop at a Baymont and receive free
reviving coffee or bottled water.
Coffee Bargain–The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain will fill your coffee thermos for
$2.49. We’ve also heard that if you eat there,
some will waive the charge.
Free Local Phone Calls–I hate having to pay
$1 to $1.50 (plus taxes) to make a local phone
call or dial a 1-800 access number so I can
use my phone card. Several smaller Inn companies–Baymont and Jameson Inns–recognize this and offer free local phone service.
Special Reports, by Theme – Throughout the white Travelogue
pages, you will find Special Reports ... information of specific interest
related to the surrounding countryside. The chart below provides a
thematic index to these reports.
Florida’s Indian Cultures
Cave Diving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Florida’s Indians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Draining the Everglades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Seminole Indian Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Early Building Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
General History
Barefooted Mailmen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Birthplace of I-75, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Buried Alive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
CCC, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Cow Town Kissimmee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Eglin AFB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Flagler, Henry Morrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Five Flags of Pensacola, The . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Reedy Creek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Tallahassee-the City in the Center . . . . . . . . 33
Tin Can Tourists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
WWII - Florida’s Front Line . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Green Flash, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Green Swamp, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Kudzu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Lakes, How they disappear! . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Manatee “Sea Cows” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Phosphate Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
“River of Grass” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Sinkhole Surprise! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Strand, Hammock, Prairie, Slough . . . . . . . 81
Turpentining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Water Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
When Florida was Part of Africa . . . . . . . . 10
Spanish Exploration
Emanuel Point Wreck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Ancient Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Spanish Explorers/the de Soto Mystery . . . 70
Aquifer/Karst Topography . . . . . . . . . . . 30-31 Spanish Mission Trail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Black Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Treaty of Tordesillas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Natural Florida
On the next four pages, you will find some very unusual Florida-wide Special Reports to
get you started.
Did you know that Florida was once part of Africa?
Do you know what the Spanish exploration of Florida had to do with King
Henry VIIIth’s decision to marry his brother’s widow, Katherine of Aragon?
“Along Florida’s Expressways”
9
Started
Insider Tip - Florida Websites
Getting
There are several companies issuing them.
The green “Traveler Discount Guide,” red
“Florida Travel Coupons” and smaller
“Florida Travel Saver” are probably the best
known. The books can usually be found lying
in a pile on the counter or a rack inside the
door. Ask the staff, if you don’t see them.
After hours, you will usually find them in
boxes by the vending machines.
Insider Tips–Throughout the book’s pages,
you will find our Insider Tips - hints of special significance to help you save money and
have a more enjoyable journey. In many
instances, we recommend specific exit facilities (often first brought to our attention by our
readers–see page 203) which, from our personal inspections have proven to offer exceptional value and service to interstate travelers.
Please note, no business has paid to be recommended in Along Florida’s Expressways.
There is no commercial content in this guide.
In fact, none of our “recommendations” knew
they were being inspected at the time of our
visit. You can trust our “Insider Tips”–here’s
where you get the real local knowledge.
Miles 350-329
Map 140-141
Exit 350: Need a shopping mall? The Paddock Mall (90 stores) is east of the exit along
US200-College Rd, about 1/3rd mile on your
right.
Mile 342.5-Land Bridge: Do you see those
trees ahead of us on the bridge crossing the
Interstate? This is a “land bridge,” a very
unusual structure carrying the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross-Florida Greenway hiking,
cycling and horse riding trail across I-75. If
you were on the Greenway, you would just
see a tree-lined open path ahead of you and
probably wouldn't be aware of the cars zipping by at 70 mph beneath your feet.
The Carr Cross-Florida Greenway is part of
the Florida National Scenic Trail, a natural
trekking system stretching across Florida. It's
managed by the USDA Forest Service in partnership with the Florida Trail Association.
This section runs from Dunnellon in the west
to Lake Carr in the Ocala National Forest.
Who was Marjorie Harris Carr? Her story
starts with the Cross-Florida Barge Canal.
The idea of a
ship crossing
the Florida
Peninsula had
been around
since
early
Spanish days.
Ships carrying
gold to Spain
would be able
to bypass the
treacherous
shoals, reefs
and pirates of
the
Florida
Straits.
Over the years, the idea was studied in great
detail. FDR gave it new life during the
Depression when work projects were needed,
but after a few miles had been built at a cost
of $5.5 million, hydrologists halted the
scheme concerned that salt water would enter
the Aquifer and contaminate water locked up
in the limestone. Revived again in the 1940s
as a small and shallow barge canal for transporting WWII supplies, it had to be abandoned since there were no building materials.
And then came 1962 when, with the full
financial support of Congress, canal construction got off to a running start. The beautiful
Ocklawaha River with its mossy tree-lined
banks was dammed, flooding and destroying
62
INTERSTATE-75
9,000 acres of hardwood forest. In just a few
days, 16 miles of what a poet had once
described as “the sweetest water lane in the
world,” was turned into a shallow, weedy,
mosquito-bearing lake the Army Corps of
Engineers called, Lake Ocklawaha. Giant
earth movers began advancing downstream
crushing hundreds of thousands more trees
and obliterating what had once been a sensitive and invaluable Floridian ecosystem.
Marjorie Harris Carr, in her own words “a
tired housewife from Micanopy,” was angry.
She formed the Florida Defenders of the
Environment (FDE–still very active today)
and in two years of non-stop lobbying at state
and federal levels, succeeded in persuading
President Nixon to halt construction of the
destructive Cross-Florida Barge Canal forever. The Greenway trail named in her honor is
built on the lands originally acquired by the
government, for the canal's right of way.
Exit 341-Don Garlits' Auto & Drag Racing
Museum: Varoom! This is for all you drag
racing fans who don't need to be told who
Don “Big Daddy Garlits” is. For others, Garlits is a very successful drag racer who has
pioneered just about everything in the sport,
including the rear engine dragster after having half of his foot blown off during a front
engine explosion. Many of his early Swamp
Rat cars are here as well as his later machines
[Hrs: 9-5; Adult/Snr/Youth/Child, $15/$13/
$13/$6; ☎ 352-245-8661].
Mile 335.5-Sumter Co.: Named for General
Thomas Sumter of the Revolutionary War,
and yes, this is the same General who gave
his name to the Charleston Harbor fort of
Civil War fame. The County seat is Bushnell.
Exit 329-Wildwood: To many travelers,
Wildwood means it's time to leave I-75 and
head onto Florida's Turnpike for Orlando and
Kissimmee. But to me, it will always be the
memory of ice and orange blossoms.
The first time Kathy and I drove to Florida,
Wildwood was our first stop in the Sunshine
State. At the time, I-75 was still in bits and
pieces. Some sections had been completed
and were a delight to drive–Ohio and South
Georgia come to mind. Others, most notably
Tennessee and the 25 miles north of Atlantathe famed “Marietta Gap"–meant using the
old “Dixie Highway” and were usually slow
with bumper to bumper traffic. Kentucky was
a different story. Just as you got up to speed
on the new ‘75 “Super Slab,” the “end of sec-
Dave Hunter’s
The FTP is a toll route. To give you some idea
of cost, a passenger car traveling from here to
I-4 (Kissimmee/Orlando) will pay $3; if
heading to Ft Lauderdale, the cost is $17.20.
FTP–go to map 175, FTP Notes, page 113.
Northbound–there is no northbound I-75 exit
328. For some reason, the engineers didn't
think anyone driving north would want to
switch to the FTP…hence, no exit. If you do
want to join the FTP, the best advice is to go
off at exit 329 (one mile above the south-
Miles 328-314
bound FTP exit)–turn around and come back
on I-75 south, to exit 329.
If you are continuing to drive north on I-75, I
have good news. From here to the Georgia
Border, it’s 3 lanes and 70 mph all the way.
Mile 322-The Lost City: Look around you.
We are surrounded by wetlands…the home of
alligators, water moccasin, egrets and heron
…swampy wetland where the hardwood
hammock is the only solid ground.
It's hard to imagine that this was once the site
of a bustling city, twice the size of Jacksonville. An 1800s Florida Gazetteer shows
that this growing metropolis was a key station
on the Florida Central Railroad and a major
shipping point for the area's cypress timber
and citrus industries.
Boasting a city hall, parks, churches, schools
and hotels, Panasoffkee as it was called, was
not only known as the “orange capital of the
world.” With a population in the thousands, it
was heading to be “the largest city of peninsula Florida” but the City Fathers desperately needed a new source of funds to continue.
A group of influential New York bankers
were invited to visit Panasoffkee, to decide
whether to invest in the town’s rapid growth.
But on the very morning their train arrived–so
did the hard freeze of March, 1883, with its
driving sleet and plummeting temperatures.
When the investors saw the ruined crops and
broken, ice-covered trees, they couldn't get
back on the warm train quickly enough!
Sunny Florida? Hah!
So Panasoffkee did not get its much needed
capital to expand. Slowly people moved
away, the industry died and Nature took over.
And that's why, when you look around today,
all you see is swampy wetland and hardwood
hammock...with alligators, water moccasin,
egrets and heron.
Let's cross the Florida Veteran's Memorial
Bridge and continue our interstate drive to the
warmer climes of the south.
Exit 314-Dade Battlefield: If the single musket shot echoing across Lexington’s Green in
1775, was the “shot heard around the world,”
then the sudden crash of guns which rang out
here early on a December morning in 1835,
WILDWOOD - long before the town, a telegraph line was being stung here when the crew ran out
of wire. They telegraphed back for supplies heading their telegram, “location - wild wood.”
PANASOFFKEE - the name of a long gone Indian village from the Seminole “pani” ("valley")
and “sufki” (“deep").
“Along Florida’s Expressways”
63
Travelogue
Pages
tion” speed bumps rippled under your tires,
the “beginning of construction” barriers
loomed and it was time to get off again.
But back to Wildwood. In the 1960s, it was a
small community. We stayed in an old 1950s
style motor court and to my horror when we
opened our front door to our first Florida
morning…our car, a Volkswagen Bug, was
covered with ice!
Ice in Florida? Nobody had told me about this
possibility and our ice scraper was back in the
North. Luckily, I had my Chargex card (an
early form of Visa) and so put it to use taking
the ice off the windshield in curling slivers.
Like most frosty Floridian mornings, it
warmed up as we left Wildwood and with
windows opened, we soon smelt the aromatic
sweetness of orange blossoms as we motored
down the FTP. Wildwood will always bring
these long past magical moments to my mind.
Exit 328-Florida's Turnpike junction:
Southbound–until now, we have been driving
in 3 lanes from the Georgia Border. From
here to mile 265, we will be on a 2 lane I-75
stretch. If you are continuing on I-75 South,
stay or move to traffic lanes L2 or L3.
If heading onto the FTP South for Kissimmee
and Orlando, or the Atlantic coastline south
of Fort Pierce, move to L1 (which leaves I-75
at this point) or L2 which splits between the
FTP and I-75.
Maps 141-142
I-75
INTERSTATE-75