The Old Brick Road extends for a distance of eleven miles between S.R. 204 and the rural community of Espanola. The northern two miles of the road are located in St. Johns County while the remaining portion is located in Flagler County. The road was part of the Dixie Highway which stretched from Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan south to Miami Beach, Florida. The road is composed of a packed shell foundation topped with a nine-foot wide brick roadbed and four-inch wide concrete curbs, flanked by three-foot wide shell shoulders for a total width of fifteen feet. The road construction was part of a sixty-six mile project completed in 1916 by St. Johns County.
Florida contained 337 miles of rural brick road that were part of the state highway system and an additional 389 miles of county and local brick roads in 1925. Florida contained the third highest concentration of rural brick highways in the nation by the mid-1920’s, but now has apparently less than fifty miles remaining. This segment of the Old Brick Road contains approximately 2,376,000 vitrified bricks. The bricks used to construct the Old Brick Road were vitrified bricks, clay bricks glazed at higher temperatures than common bricks.
For more information on the history of the Old Brick Road, please visit the links to the right. |
