DC's Zero Mile marker is a real zero

Is Ground Zero for U.S. highways really this stone in Washington, D.C.?

 Like most motorcyclists, historic highways interest me. If there's a hiking trail somewhere on an abandoned highway, I'm ready to walk. 

I'd love to ride Old Highway 66 someday, but it's a long way from my Royal Enfield. 

So, as a tourist recently in Washington, D.C., I was interested to come on a little block of stone in the middle of a sidewalk near the White House. 

It proudly proclaims itself the "Point for the measurement of distances from Washington on highways of the United States." 

Wow! That's cool, I thought. 

According to the National Park Service website:

"This four-foot-high shaft of pink granite stands on the north and south meridian of the District of Columbia. It is symbolically the official starting point for measurement of highway distances from Washington, DC.

"On July 7, 1919, the first transcontinental military motor convoy (to) San Francisco, California, started from this spot. On June 5, 1920, Congress authorized the erection of a permanent monument here."

That sounds pretty important.

But I wondered why I had never heard of the monument.

After all, it's right in front of the south view of the White House! You can't miss it, if you want to stand at the best place for a picture of yourself with the White House in the background.

It even turns out that the Second Transcontinental Motor Convoy also started from this point, on June 14, 1920. (The first is the more famous of the two convoys, because a young officer named Dwight Eisenhower joined that expedition.)

In fact, the little stone had been dedicated on June 4,, 1923 by the president, Warren G. Harding. According to Richard F. Weingroff, of the Federal Highway Administration, Harding spoke of its importance:

"It marks the approximate meeting place of the Lincoln Highway and the Lee Highway; of the northern and southern systems of national roads. From it we may view the memorial to Lincoln and the home of Lee.* It marks the meeting point of those sections which once grappled in conflict, but now are happily united for all time in the bonds of national fraternity, of a single patriotism, and of a common destiny."

High hopes, if a little too much to expect from a rock the size of a drinking fountain.

The hopes might persist; but the whole "Zero" thing didn't work out.

Despite its claims, the Zero Point is pretty much a complete zero. Which explains why few people who bump into it have heard of it before.

WAMU 88.5, American University Radio, tells what actually happened, quoting Doug Hecox, a self-proclaimed history nerd and spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration.

Basically, it suddenly seemed like a good time for everybody to get into the act. Marking highway mileage in the United States is a state function, not the job of federal authorities.

About a month after the dedication, Tennessee decided to launch its own zero milestone. Then so did several other states. Virginia established a zero milestone in Capital Square in Richmond in 1929.

"So the entire premise between the Zero Milestone and its intention absolutely fizzled," Hecox said.

Weingroff, of the Federal Highway Administration, concludes:

"And so it stands. The Zero Milestone in Washington never became the American equivalent of Rome's Golden Milestone. Today, it remains in place, baffling tourists and serving mainly as a resting place for their belongings while they take photographs of each other standing in front of the White House. It is forgotten for the most part. Periodically, it is threatened with removal by the National Park Service as it considers options for revitalizing the Ellipse. But for historians, the Zero Milestone marks the place where 'a new era' began."

*At the time of the dedication, the former Custis-Lee mansion at Arlington Cemetery might have been visible over the treeline, at least to President Harding, who would have had an elevated view when he was inside the White House.

Looking for history along Old Dixie Highway in Florida

Forest edges in along this abandoned stretch of Old Dixie Highway.

 If you ride an old Royal Enfield, the first thing you want to find is a way to get where you're going that suits a vintage motorcycle. This will be a route that's slow, and packed with historical interest and places to visit that carry your thoughts back as much as does your old motorcycle. 

I've written about the Old Dixie Highway and how I enjoy discovering lengths of it still preserved along the original route blazed from Michigan to Florida in 1914. It's still a small, slow road in places where it has long been bypassed by bigger highways. 

Old Dixie Highway passes through my hometown, Fort Lauderdale, so it's a rare ride that my Royal Enfield Bullet and I don't experience it. 

One of my favorite stretches of Old Dixie is preserved as a bicycle trail inside Jonathan Dickinson State Park, in Jupiter, Fla. Closed to through traffic about 75 years ago, it's possible to believe there may even be original pavement here, although it has been patched so much that it would take an expert to find it.

Florida is ever changing and it's easy to forget that all roads are relatively new here. People travelled by water, originally, until railroads finally conquered the swamps, all the way to Key West.

Nothing but a photo remains of Florida's "Celestial Railroad."

One of the oddest early railways was the so-called "Celestial Railroad." In 1889 it connected the Florida towns of Jupiter and Juno, passing through stations named Venus and Mars on the way. Only 7.5 miles long, and narrow gauge, the little railroad had no turn around at either end, so the train simply backed up to get home.

It was out of business by 1896, bypassed by Henry Flagler's full-sized railroad. Nothing but a photo of the Celestial Railroad (properly titled the Jupiter & Lake Worth Railroad) remains.

But another artifact of the steam era does exist in the area.

My wife and I recently stayed in a cabin at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, taking time during our visit to bicycle the fragment of Old Dixie Highway there. On our way out of the park we stopped at the visitor center, where I noticed a picture on the wall of an abandoned and heavily rusted "steam engine" somewhere in the park.

What?! I'd never heard of this. The little engine doesn't appear on any of the park maps. My mind leapt to the possibility of an old locomotive submerged in the swampland.

1874 catalog illustration of a Frick agricultural steam engine.

But information posted with the image suggested the steam engine wasn't a locomotive, but an ancient Frick & Co. agricultural steam engine that had powered a mobile sawmill back in logging days. It also suggested that the abandoned engine might have been converted into a still by people who found it so  ideally forgotten and hidden in the woods. 

A park ranger was happy to describe its location and even showed us on a map how to hike to it. A rivulet named "Moonshine Creek" is marked in the area, suggesting some credence for the possibility of a still.

There wasn't time for us to try to reach the engine, this visit. But I'd like to try, next time we're in the park.

The position of the abandoned engine is 26°59'18.2"N80°09'38.5"W and you can find it on Google Maps. The ranger suggested hiking past the Kitching Creek Primitive Campsite and then just keep going on the trail.

He warned that the engine site is off the trail, unmarked, overgrown and hidden in brush. Expect to get your feet wet and muddy. Carry plenty of water. Under no circumstances would I attempt hiking this country in summer.

If you find the engine, take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints. It's history.

Google Maps photo of the steam engine in Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

Old Spanish Trail, a historic road you probably don't know

The Old Spanish Trail runs across the U.S. from St. Augustine to San Diego.

 I love to ride my old Royal Enfield motorcycle on a genuinely old road. Sure, Google will find me a route that avoids highways and toll roads; but I long for something even better.

 The adventure I'm looking for is riding down an actual historical road on the very path the earliest motorcycles and cars would have used. So I was thrilled when I found just such an old road that was new to me: the Old Spanish Trail.

 How could I have missed it? It's supposed to be a coast-to-coast road, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, connecting St. Augustine, Florida to San Diego, California.

 Well, for 100 years the Old Spanish Trail has been first a fanciful fiction, then a dream, later an actual if often re-routed road, eventually just a fading memory and now a subject of hoped-for revitalization. 

There is a website for the Old Spanish Trail and an active Facebook page.

We began our ride at the corner of Milton Trail and Old Spanish Trail in Milton, Fla.

My wife and I stumbled across part of the remaining road while on a kayaking and bicycling visit to Milton, a town in Florida's Panhandle, near Pensacola.

"These bricks were laid in the 1700s," a man who lives in a house along Old Spanish Trail in Milton told us, as we unloaded our bicycles.

Ummm... no.

The Spanish founded St. Augustine in 1565 and were present around what became Pensacola even earlier. It's documented that the Spanish blazed a route connecting the two settlements and the missions along the way.

But a 1798 map shows this actual Spanish route was not where 20th Century Floridians paved the "Old Spanish Trail." Also, the real Spanish path would have been mud, and much of the route would have been traveled by boat.

A 1929 motorcade opened the Old Spanish Trail. Only 15 cars made it.

The path of Florida's portion of the Old Spanish Trail was mostly set about 1921, 100 years after Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1821. It was meant to appeal to tourists and their new fangled cars and motorcycles.

The idea for the Old Spanish Trail wasn't even born until 1915, when organizers met in Mobile, Alabama to shape a route that would connect tourist destinations all the way across the Southern U.S.

There were conferences again in 1916 in Pensacola and 1917 in Tallahassee. Floridians were obviously anxious to start laying bricks to bring the tourists.

Abandoned business along Old Spanish Trail once had a Spanish Colonial look.

There was a problem. Florida taxpayers paid for the road (convict labor akin to slavery contributed to that). But to get farther west the Old Spanish Trail would need to cross the rivers, bays and bayous of Alabama and Mississippi.

The Old Spanish Trail Association had money for lobbying, not bridges. Members knew that tourists would balk at having to pay for ferry boats or toll bridges. These wouldn't do, long term.

This meant getting federal funds for expensive highway bridges and roads.

Leadership of the Old Spanish Trail Association shifted west when promoter Harral B. Ayres of San Antonio, Texas got involved. He spent seven months in Washington, D.C. in 1922, publicizing the road. It would aid the national defense by connecting many military bases, it was argued.

He did a good job. The federal money started coming and kept coming. Today, if you drive U.S. Highway 90 you're basically following the route of the Old Spanish Trail. In fact, you could cruise the big, roaring Interstate 10 and say you were on the buried path of the Old Spanish Trail.

But for me, there is nothing like old bricks to establish a claim to history.

Ours would have to be a bicycle ride, however, as, except for a few residential blocks, motor vehicles aren't welcome on the Old Spanish Trail around Milton anymore.

Old Spanish Trail takes on many names and numbers as it crosses U.S.

A weathered sign proclaimed the part of the Old Spanish Trail we biked to be Historical Florida State Route 1, the Old Brick Road, opened 1921. The bricks of State Route 1 are even older than the Old Spanish Trail. Florida had a lead on creating roads for tourists, and the Old Spanish Trail simply followed that newly laid road.

The brick roadway, though, is rarely more than nine feet wide. Pretty narrow, even for a Model T Ford.

Concrete shoulders along each side eventually made it a useable road. U.S. Highway 90 utilized the bricks of this Old Spanish Trail pathway from 1926 until 1936-'37 improvements gave the highway its own space off to the side.

With U.S. 90 on one side and an arrow-straight railroad track behind a tree line on the other, our ride on the Old Spanish Trail was a bit boring. The slightly uneven bricks and deteriorated concrete edges gave our bicycle wheels a pounding. With other places to get to we turned around after a few miles and headed back to our car.

Disappointed? No. I wish the folks who dream of a revitalized Old Spanish Trail good luck. There's an incredibly detailed, almost turn-by-turn account of a 2009 road trip, from St. Augustine, Florida to San Diego California on what remains of the Old Spanish Trail. What a remarkable journey it must have been.

Old Spanish Trail was paved here with local bricks making it only nine feet wide.

The bit of the Old Spanish Trail we biked shows signs of repair, revitalization, and the need for ongoing repair any road requires. Change happens. Bridges get removed and rebuilt elsewhere, roads re-routed, dead ends accumulate. The Mile Zero marker in St. Augustine has been moved four times!

People move on, too.

After 10 years of hard work, promoter Harral B. Ayres closed the offices of the Old Spanish Trail in San Antonio in 1929, let the staff go, cut off the telephone line and left his home phone number out of the phone book, all in an effort to resign. They got another year's work out of him before he picked up and moved back north.

There he wrote a book entitled "The Great Trail of New England," published in 1940.

Old postcard shows Old Spanish Trail entering Milton, Fla.
(Florida Memory Photo)

Enjoying a stretch of old State Road A1A in Florida

State Road A1A is the Atlantic Coast road the length of Florida.

My wife and I recently stayed in a vacation rental cottage in Florida that was a historic building.

Historical as it was, it is younger than I am.

That's Florida for you. We have the oldest European founded city in the United States (St. Augustine), but everything else is from yesterday.

Believe it or not, this cottage is related to my reverence for my 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle. My Bullet is, essentially, a circa 1955 motorcycle design. As such, it fits neatly into my nostalgia for my childhood. It is the sort of motorcycle I would have wanted then. And now I have it.

The cottage dates from 1951, the year after my birth. It had been built as a "fish camp." (Fish camp is American-speak for a place where a group of guys can get together with beer, but without dames, and without having to shave, or bathe.)

It went on to be a hamburger joint, a Sheriff's office, a hardware store and a trailer park. Today it is a completely renovated and comfortable vacation rental.

"I can't believe the floor is original!" my wife marveled about the varnished boards, as if they had been carved by prehistoric man. That put me in my place: I'm older than the woodwork!

Keeping A1A scenic is important to local residents.

The real appeal of the cottage for me was its position in Flagler County, along the old coastal road, A1A. It is on a stretch of the beach-side highway that extends 23 miles without a traffic light.

In Florida, that is saying something.

This location is far enough from the bright lights of civilization that dead trees from the hurricane of 2016 still dominate the beachside. People ride horses on the beach.

"Old A1A," now bypassed with pavement, shows what the original was like.

A stretch of "Old A1A" (now by-passed) is still just hard-packed sand on top of the dune line. It probably wonders what ever happened to all those Model T Fords it remembers.

One of the last coastal watch towers left over from World War II still looms over the beach, alert for enemy bombers that never came, and now never will. (U-boats did land Nazi saboteurs on Florida beaches in World War II, but not in view of this particular tower.)

One of the last of 15,200 such towers that monitored U.S. coastlines.

The old road suits me and it suits my motorcycle. I had a feeling of being at home on it, even though I'd never been there before. 

That's what nostalgia is, I guess.

Drivers and motorcyclists are drawn to the Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail.

P.S. State Road A1A in Flagler County, Fla., is a gateway to the Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail. It's a scenic joy to ride or drive it if you're in the region to see Daytona Beach or St. Augustine. We loved it.

Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail.

Vintage 1935 Esso station on U.S. 1 in Waite, Maine

Colonial Esso, on U.S. 1 in Maine, doesn't sell gasoline anymore.

We were going at a pretty good clip when I saw it. I got on the brakes, hard, and edged the rental car over to the side of the road. My wife Bonnie looked up from her iPhone, realized what was going on, and said those immortal words:

"Oh, an Instagram moment. I'll wait in the car."

Not that she wasn't happy for me. She knows that the sight of an apparently abandoned gas station straight out of the middle of the 20th Century will always bring this automotive history buff to a standstill.

Old Chevrolet pick-up truck has "Farm" license plate.

Old, yes, and surrounded by rusting old cars, the Colonial Esso station on U.S. Highway 1 near Waite, Maine is not really abandoned. It has its own Facebook page, and a small sign identifying it as the work of Brad and Heidi Potter, of Waite.

Brad is listed as one of the town Selectmen.

According to its Facebook page, the old Esso station was "built in 1935 for Lloyd S. Williams in Waite, Maine as an American Amoco, then sold to Esso gas. I bought it in about 2000 and is just our little museum."

A peek through a window into the station interior is a glimpse of the past.

So the station is real and original, but the Brad's Esso Garage Facebook page reveals that he has added antique garage paraphernalia.

Feeling a bit like a trespassing time traveler, I was able to poke around and peek in at objects on display that recalled a time around the year I was born.

The reminder to buy U.S. Defense Bonds for instance.

"Be Happy Go Lucky" ad slogan dates to the 1950s.

Waite, Maine, is a town of 101 people (2010 Census) served by just one general store.

Although located on U.S. 1, Waite is far enough away from the touristy Maine coastline to seem lonely. There was no danger I would be run over pausing in the middle of the highway to take a photo of the old gas station. I was more concerned about picking up ticks in some high grass (I didn't).

Some of the rusting old cars brought back memories. Some were past identifying, for me. The whole place was a treat for the imagination.

Crosley station wagon parked next to building across the highway.

No guide book had warned me to watch for Waite. What a delightful surprise.

I couldn't help but compare this evocative spot in rural Maine to my own neighborhood, also just off U.S. 1, but in a crowded retail stretch of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. At home, I take my life in my hands using the crosswalk to get to the Whole Foods store across the highway.

We love to shop at Whole Foods. But Colonial Esso in Waite, Maine reminds us that convenience comes at a cost.

Ford Falcon sinks into the earth.

1958 Pontiac Star Chief Safari station wagon slumbers.

Following the path of an old road into the woods

Nothing adds flavor to a road trip like a historic old road.

The road you choose to ride is probably the single most important element in enjoying your Royal Enfield motorcycle.

For me, that means finding a route with few stop lights and without stretches demanding high sustained speeds.

If the road offers great scenery and historical interest, even better!

And so, on a recent trip to West Virginia, my wife Bonnie and I were delighted to discover the road to Rich Mountain.

This twisty mountain path runs through a deep forest from Beverly, W. Vir. west past the Rich Mountain Battlefield. Except for a small sign in town, we'd have missed it entirely. (Take County Road 37/8 west off U.S. 250 in downtown Beverly.)

Tiny brown sign in Beverly points up County 37/8 toward battlefield.
(Google Street View looking west from U.S. 250.)

From historic Beverly the road wiggles up the mountain. The reason for all the switchbacks is simple: it was designed to have no more than a 4 percent grade, so horse and oxen-drawn wagons could climb it.

Back then, this winding little road was the vital Staunton and Parkersburg Turnpike and, in 1861, it was worth fighting for. It was the connection between the fertile Shenandoah Valley and the Ohio River — and both the Union and the Confederacy wanted to control it.

Into the deep woods atop Rich Mountain in West Virginia.

In one of the first battles of the Civil War a Union Army under Gen. George B. McClellan climbed Rich Mountain, to attack Confederate fortifications blocking the road.

McClellan — over caution would dog him his entire career — feared making a frontal attack straight up the road. But the heavy woods to each side appeared to offer no alternative.

His subordinate, Gen. William Rosecrans, learned that the family farm of a young Union sympathizer in camp had been seized by the Confederates to guard the rear of their position. Rosecrans proposed having the young man guide a brigade through the woods to attack the farm.

Names of soldiers lost at the Battle of Rich Mountain are carved into rocks.
Bonnie points out the faint word "Killed" with one name.

It was easier said than done, but Rosecrans' force managed to slash through the dense forest. In a sharp fight they captured the farm, forcing the Confederates to abandon their whole position on the road and take to the woods themselves in an effort to escape. Many were captured.

McClellan never did make his own attack, but he got credit for the win.

Euphoria over this relatively minor victory ignited an "On to Richmond" spirit in the North that encouraged the still unready Union army to go into the much more important First Battle of Bull Run — a massive and stunning defeat.

Vandals have riddled sign at Rich Mountain Battlefield with bullet holes.
It's a curious reminder of the grim history made here.

In the wake of Bull Run, McClellan, still covered in the seeming glory of quick victory at Rich Mountain, succeeded to command of the Union army. His promotion would have further consequences.

Overshadowed by the disasters that followed, the Union victory at Rich Mountain is forgotten today, as is the little road up the mountain that once served as a mighty turnpike connecting the Eastern United States to the Ohio River route to the West.

For my purposes, "forgotten" is good. This is exactly the sort of road I would love to ride on my Royal Enfield.

Only the gentle sound of a small stream
disturbs the silence of the battlefield today.

Twists and turns in history of the old National Road

The Old Stone House in Farmington, Pa. started serving travelers on the National Road circa 1822.

Even as a boy I knew old U.S. Route 66 was special. It ran through the little Missouri town I grew up in and it led, I knew, either to Chicago to the northeast or the golden dream of Los Angeles to the west.

Since then I've learned of other magical highways in the U.S. The Mighty Lincoln Highway. The Old Dixie Highway. And, this summer, the old National Road.

While Route 66 and the Lincoln and Dixie highways all date to the 20th Century, the path of the old National Road is much older. Its long history had many twists and turns.

"Braddock Road" was its original name. British General Edward Braddock and his aide George Washington and thousands of British regulars and colonial militiamen cut it through virgin forests in 1755.

They were on their way to throw the French out of their fort at the place we now call Pittsburgh.

You can still walk original sections of the 1755 Braddock Road.

The soldiers made a road 12 feet wide, ideal for cannons and supply wagons, but making it slowed the army's progress to as little as two miles a day. Braddock decided to take a picked force of 1,300 men ahead to attack the French. But when this column ran into a much smaller force of French and their native American allies, it panicked.

Braddock was among the many killed. Washington had the general buried beneath the road, then had the grave trampled so the enemy couldn't find it.

Remains assumed to be Braddock's were found in 1804 and eventually moved to a more elaborate monument nearby, but the original grave site is still marked. The general's claim to the name of the road he lay beneath is certainly justified.

Original site of General Braddock's grave beneath his road.

Stretches of the original Braddock Road, including the section over his original grave, remain as little more than hiking trails through the woods. But, starting in 1811, the United States would build what it called Cumberland Road to replace, improve and extend Braddock Road.

It proved popular, so popular that wagons and livestock churned up the gravel road. Unwilling to foot the price of improvements, the federal government turned the National Road over to the states through which it passed. They paid for a much better roadway, by erecting tollbooths and charging for its use.

An historic tollbooth? Now I've seen everything.

Hard to imagine anyone considering a tollbooth an historical landmark, but sure enough, at least four of them are preserved.

Funny thing is, the National Road quickly fell out of heavy use. Railroads were coming and could move people and goods faster, cheaper and far more comfortably than a Conestoga wagon — especially up the mountains along this route.

They really nickel and dimed you back in 1835.

It was the automobile that brought the road back to life. U.S. Route 40, designated in 1926, today carries the name "National Road" in many places.

Key West not the only great motorcycle ride in Florida

Great motorcycle roads always (hopefully) lead to sunset at a fun restaurant.

A great motorcycle road in Florida? Hard to believe. Our roads tend to be flat, straight and boring. But there are some great rides — sometimes through small towns to a dead end at the ocean.

There is a whole website devoted to such towns in Florida: Florida Backroads Travel. It has a helpful list and map of the 17 end-of-the-road towns it considers worthwhile, NOT including the most obvious one: Key West.

Of course, everyone know about U.S. 1 through the Florida Keys all the way to Key West.

Key West "is the quintessential end-of-the-road town, not just in Florida but maybe in the entire United States," the website notes.

I thought I'd discovered another great dead-end ride when I came across a reference to the "Ozello Trail" the other day.

I asked my wife Bonnie to Google it. No need.

"We've been there," she replied.

"I don't think so," I said. "This is supposedly a twisty road through islands along the coast, with a great place to eat at the end, called Peck's."

"Yeah," she said. "We've driven it. We ate there."

We did?

The blog MotorcycleRoads.com gives the Ozello Trail a four-star rating.

"Probably the one road that the state of Florida got right," one rider commented. And everyone seems to like the food at Peck's Old Port Cove restaurant at the end of the road.

Surely I should remember it!

Moral of this story: when your wife suggests someplace for dinner, pay attention to the road to the restaurant.

Although the Ozello Trail is only nine miles long, it turns out there are many great, longer rides in my state. Check out MotorcycleRoads.com to find great rides in your state.

Following Elvis Presley to the end of the road in Florida

Follow That Dream Parkway leads to a boat ramp and beach on the Gulf of Mexico.

How many times have you wondered where a little side road went? Or spotted an arrow pointing the way to a small town with an intriguing name, and you thought you'd like to visit it someday?

It happens to me every time I take a road trip.

Recently my wife Bonnie and I drove to the tiny Florida Gulf-coast town of Matlacha so she could do an item for her blog FloridaRambler.com

Matlacha (pronounced mat-la-SHAY) has a fascinating history; supposedly it was "founded" by squatters who exploited a little-known aspect of the law to create a hard-scrabble fishing village in the 1920s. Today it's still a precious time-piece, preserved from the rampant development that has transformed much of the rest of the state.

Later we discovered, to our surprise, that the 1962 Elvis Presley movie "Follow That Dream" is based on the story of Matlacha.

Elvis followed his dream to a Florida side road in 1961.

Except, of course, that the movie had to be filmed in a place that was even less developed than Matlacha had become by 1962. The film makers chose a tiny community up the coast with the intriguing name "Yankeetown."

Thanksgiving week, finding ourselves once again on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I casually proposed taking a side trip to Yankeetown.

"There's nothing there," Bonnie replied. Subject closed. Almost.

Driving past on the highway I noticed that the road to Yankeetown is named "Follow That Dream Parkway." I couldn't resist.

I couldn't resist seeing where Follow That Dream Parkway led.

The next day, Bonnie squeezed a trip to Yankeetown into our schedule. I was glad she did.

We quickly found the bridge where Elvis and the rest of the cast set up their squatter's village in the movie. There IS only one bridge! The site is a bit more overgrown than the movie makers found it, but it's still vacant land.

You'll see this site — less overgrown — in the movie.

Not far beyond is, literally, the end of the road, where Follow That Dream Parkway plunges down a boat ramp into the Gulf of Mexico.

Mission accomplished.

If you can stand watching Elvis pout for 90 minutes, the movie treats you to Florida scenery that is still there.

Forgotten Florida road might remember Royal Enfields

Abandoned after 1956, Old Ingraham Highway is almost forgotten.

Finding roads to suit my Royal Enfield Bullet is always a challenge. I'm looking for scenic byways with unhurried traffic and, ideally, the same routes my Bullet might have traveled when it was designed, not long after World War II.

Even using Google maps set to "avoid highways" doesn't always give me the historic route between two locations. And, even then, I wonder: could roads possibly have been this smooth and well marked back in the day?

I doubt it. Surely the first motorists to enter my home state of Florida would have ridden the unpaved telegraph road alongside a railroad track connecting communities.

I found myself strolling along one historic route the other day, with only my wife and several alligators for company.

Smiling alligator at the edge of Old Ingraham Highway in Everglades National Park.

The road has a great name, too: Old Ingraham Highway. It's named for railway executive James Ingraham, who blazed the trail in 1892, looking for a way to get a railroad across the Everglades. Ultimately, Henry Flagler took the Florida East Coast Railroad down the Florida Keys instead, reaching Key West in 1912.

Ingraham's route wasn't forgotten, although no railroad was built. Instead, between 1915 and 1919 a road was built from Miami to Flamingo, in hopes of opening up a rich farming region. There were unintended benefits — and problems.

Ingraham's road came close to a wonderful place with a wonderful name: Paradise Key. Here, Everglades wildlife and rare vegetation came together in a way that first conveyed to white men and women that there was magnificence in what had been considered just a swamp.

Unfortunately, the road made it far too easy for thieves to steal the plants! Ingraham, to his credit, played a role in the creation of a state park to protect Paradise Key. Today, Paradise Key is the Royal Palm stop within Everglades National Park. Tourists travel the the old route of Ingraham Highway to reach the park.

Dotted line marks Old Ingraham Highway, replaced by new road, in red.

Oddly, once inside the park, a new route replaces most of the Ingraham Highway. The old road was only a foot above the surrounding land so it flooded in the rainy season and yet acted as a barrier to water flow in the dry season.

The canal dug alongside it (to provide fill) helped drain the Everglades for farms but it also allowed salt water from Florida Bay to flow inland, spoiling crops. In an effort to restore natural flows, part of the road was torn up and part of the canal filled in.

Construction of the new road through Everglades National Park began in 1956. This left the remaining stretch of Ingraham Highway locked forever in 1955.

1943 dime I found along Ingraham Highway

Is it just a whimsical idea, to imagine Model T's and Maxwells and old Indian motorcycles riding this rough surface? Yes. But some evidence remains. In 2003, walking Old Ingraham for the first time with my wife and daughter Erin I spotted something round on the ground.

It was a battered and muddy silver dime. These "Mercury" dimes disappeared from circulation in 1965, when the U.S. introduced dimes of non-precious metal. It is unlikely someone dropped this coin after that date. Probably it had been waiting on the road much longer than that. It was dated 1943.

Old Ingraham Highway is a hiking and biking trail today. No motor vehicles allowed, including Royal Enfields. But they remember one another, I'm sure.

Searching for old roads to suit my Royal Enfield

Old fence lines a back-road field.

Vacationing with my mother-in-law posed a challenge.

"Only one challenge?" you ask. Don't be a smart aleck.

Ruth grew up in a small town in Northern Wisconsin, and nothing pleases her more than a drive through the countryside.

Could we make the drive from our vacation cabin in North Carolina back to our home in Florida using only "country roads"?

I wondered too, since someday I would like to make a trip like that on my Royal Enfield Bullet. At the speed of a Bullet, the Interstates are out of the question.

So, is it possible to drive cross-country in America and stay on quaint, "country" roads?

The answer, probably, is "no," as Tom Vanderbilt makes clear in his review of "The Big  Roads" by Earl Swift. Swift writes about the building of the great highways Americans know so well.

Here's how Swift described one road trip on the major highways: "We watched the countryside pass without actually experiencing it."

That is what  mother-in-law Ruth wanted to avoid. From the back seat her daughter — my wife Bonnie — attempted to plot the side roads with maps, GPS and her smart phone. We wanted to go slow enough to smell the roses but still get to Florida in two days.

Driving on the beach; at 10 mph, this is the really slow way to travel.

We did stay off the Interstates, mostly. We even drove for a time on the beach, in Daytona Beach (at 10 mph).

But, by and large, it didn't work. As Swift writes in his book, and Vanderbilt makes clear in his review for The New York Times, it isn't just the Interstates that conspire against any traveler anxious to experience the real America. What we think of as the "old roads" are gone — and they disappeared a long time ago.

The culprit is not President Eisenhower's Interstate system, as bored modern motorists so often complain.

In 1916, American roads, Swift writes, were chaotic — worse than roads in any major nations outside China and Russia. Carl Fisher had developed  the mighty Lincoln Highway, the first marked coast-to-coast route  across the nation. It boasted that motorists would be able to average the unheard of speed of 20 mph.

Off the beaten path, America's past still softly breathes.

But by 1926 this had changed, with through routes established in a national grid by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1921. Speeds quickly exceeded 20 mph and, in so doing, they left much of the original America in the dust.

That legacy continues. Bonnie wrestled with the map and her electronic gizmos, trying to keep us on "Old 441" or "Old Dixie Highway" when everything road planners have done for 90 years conspired to put us back on some through route to Florida.

The old roads lacked signage, gas stations, hotels, restaurants and, not infrequently, bridges across rivers. Why should communities pay to maintain decaying bridges on old roads when there are perfectly fine spans on the big roads?

The answer is that they won't. Not in this day and age.

Abandoned roadside bait shop: where ice machines go when they retire.

But I took comfort in the fact that many towns did take the trouble to label a route "historic." Following these, we saw a lot of little downtowns, straining to keep the last cafe, the little public library and maybe a small museum open.

Ironically, the more Americans use their big roads, the more they treasure the old ones. These deserve to be saved.

Old roads and Royal Enfields go together

The rider of an old-fashioned motorcycle naturally seeks old-fashioned roads. So I hit the brakes when I saw the sign for "Historic Jungle Trail" running off State Road 510 near Vero Beach, Florida.

Jungle Trail is unpaved, dusty white dirt running into a forest of Australian pine trees. Beyond those pines, for much of its length, are the golf courses and mansions of Orchid, Florida, one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. Gradually, though, the road comes out into the sort of scrub land that must have greeted the first motorcyclists to visit the state in the Twentieth Century.




Once known as State Road 252, Jungle Trail was built in the 1920s and '30s to bring citrus fruit from farms to packing houses. Only 7.5 miles remain on the part I drove. The road is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It owes its continued existence in part to naturalists who managed to get Teddy Roosevelt to name tiny Pelican Island as the very first National Wildlife Refuge.

Unless you have a boat, Jungle Trail is the only way to see Pelican Island. The pelicans were not roosting when I visited, but I wasn't disappointed because it was the road that interested me. How much had it changed in 60 years?

For years, I commuted to work on another road that had served the citrus fields, Orange Drive in Davie, Florida. I considered the paved but narrow road along a canal a real respite from city traffic and a sort of journey into the past. My opinion changed, a bit, when an old-timer along the road noted that he and his wife used to take a trip up Orange Drive when it was time for their babies to be born: the potholes tended to encourage things to get moving.

So it's likely that the motorcyclists of the previous century found Jungle Trail harder going than I did. Here's a photo from the Florida state archives of a man resting on his motorcycle and sidecar on a dirt road in Volusia County, Florida, sometime early in that century. The road looks far more challenging than Jungle Trail is today.