Old Brick Road used to be part of the less politic Dixie Highway–the Dixie Highway that stretched from Detroit to Miami. Old Brick Road stretched eight miles starting in Espanola in Flagler County, north to St. Johns, where it continues for two miles. The pavement is made of stately old red, now darkly rusted, bricks. is “the longest such road in the state of Florida today,” County Attorney Sean Moylan says. Its dark-red ribbon cuts a path through the scrub of undeveloped west Palm Coast, the area slated for the city’s so-called “westward expansion.
If Old Brick Road were an animal, it would be endangered. As it is, Old Brick Road is at risk of decomposition or destruction if it is not managed and secured. Flagler County government is trying to do just that, even though Palm Coast annexed the land. There are no protections for Old Brick Road in the city’s comprehensive plan. The road remains in the county’s ownership: the county has been maintaining it for seven years. But that doesn’t pre-empt certain city rights.
“They have their comp plan in place, their land development regs,” Moylan said, of city regulations, “but we still control the right of way, just like for instance, Colbert Lane is in the city of Palm Coast. It’s a county road within the city limits. This is now the same situation.”
The loop road or beltway that cuts west from Palm Coast Parkway to Matanzas Woods Parkway, a road for which Palm Coast secured nearly $100 million in state appropriations, will cross Old Brick Road in two places. No one yet knows how, or what effect that’ll have on the road. But the city is unlikely to spend the significant additional sums required to fly over or dig under the road. It is likelier to cross it, and asphalt it in that crossing.
On Monday, Moylan presented a brief history of the road to the County Commission, along with a recommendation to bring the road “to the forefront again.” The road ahead may be bumpier than the bricks underfoot: as Commissioner Greg Hansen noted, developers could build right up to the narrow road. And an entire Development of Regional Impact is named for Old Brik Road. Old Brick Township, as it is called, may accelerate the road’s demise: it is slated for some 5,000 houses and 1.15 million square feet of commercial and industrial development. A silver lining: the developer, recognizing the historic value of the road, doesn’t want it paved.
The road appears on the very first plat map of Flagler County. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of Florida’s Heritage Crossroads, which crisscross in Flagler, Volusia and St. Johns counties. When Flagler became a county in 1917, completing the roadway–with convicts–was one of the new County Commission’s first actions. It became a state road until the 1960s, when it reverted back to the county.
The original Dixie Highway went from Michigan to Miami. Its segment from Atlanta to Fort Oglethorpe, Tenn., was featured in a 1917 National Geographic picture over the caption: “ROADS GOOD ENOUGH FOR MILITARY PURPOSES MAY SAVE THE UNITED STATES AS THEY SAVED FRANCE.”
“So it has a lot of distinctions,” Moylan said, “but we also want to make sure that we protect it, because it is now under development pressure. Palm Coast has annexed the silviculture area going all the way up to and past the old brick road, and one day in the future, that area will be developed.”
The county bought a well in the area in 2003, when the road was placed on the National Register and a county consultant created a management plan for the road.
“The number one thing that consultant recommended was that we get the logging trucks off the road,” Moylan said. That hasn’t happened, even though the road was designed for Model T’s, not multi-ton trucks. Rayonier, the Jacksonville-based logging company, owns the vast majority of the land out there. “Starting around the 90s, as far as anyone knows, we started dumping topsoil and sand onto the bricks to protect them from the logging trucks. And that has continued to this day. Every so often, our crews go out there to reapply it as it is pushed off onto the shoulders, but eventually at some point, we will need to get those trucks off the road.”
County Administrator Heidi Petito met with Palm Coast officials and a Rayonier representative, who told them halting truck traffic on the road would very disruptive. “So it wouldn’t be fair to just all at once say, Hey, get off the road. But I think at some point we need to have a plan to make it happen,” Moylan said.
“When we met with them,” Petito said, “the developer and the city are in agreement with us. They don’t want to pave it, they want to continue to celebrate it in the future. They would like to see it be preserved as a linear trail. They conceptualize having some sort of a city park in close proximity to it, and potentially using it as maybe historic festivals or events, where maybe you would at a future time, maybe have Model T’s back on there as part of a celebration.”
The management plan recommends using bricks from portions of the road that are being asphalted to repair other portions that have been damaged. Beyond that is development, with needed crossings over the road to accommodate future residents in the area. What that’ll look like is unknown, but it’ll be in the context of a linear-park-like facility with biking and hiking.
“The management plan mentioned things like kiosks and signs and interpretive kiosks to help people understand the history,” Moylan said. “It recommended using some of the original type of signage that was on the Dixie Highway when it was first built.” The road would remain a cultural resource.
The county could enact restrictive covenants, though that may not be necessary: it’s not as if it can be paved over without the county’s permission (which will not be given). But it can’t stop development on either side of it. Fencing is not recommended: “It might be better to engage the landowner and the city and try to maybe come up with a number of crossings, as opposed to the exact location, and to say okay, what can we cap it at? Because we know there’s going to be some number of crossings. Whether a person walks onto the old brick road is fine. They can walk it all they want and hike it. But what we’re concerned about is if there’s too many crossings, roadway asphalt crossings, you chop it up too much, and it loses its character.”
Moylan is recommending developing a more concrete plan with Palm Coast to take the measure of the problem, or opportunities, to protect the road. “How do we make sure this road is preserved for future generations,” he said: that’s the goal.
“At some point out there, you’re not going to be able to use this road anymore. It’s going to be a walkway or bicycle way,” Commissioner Greg Hansen said.
County Commission Chair Andy Dance said protections could be built in through development plans such as planned unit developments. The county won’t be able to direct such codifications, but could ensure them in cooperation with the developer. “We don’t approve the PUD, we will only have the ability to influence it,” Dance said. Fellow-Commissioner Leann Pennington wants a more concerted effort to protect the road “today,” she said, whether through a joint agreement with Palm Coast or through the drafting of covenants for Old Brick Road.
What that will look like is not yet clear.
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