Pine Castle Historical Markers - part 8

DIXIE HIGHWAY

This section of Orange Avenue was a part of the Dixie Highway, the first road connecting the North to the South. It opened in October 1925, and travelers could begin at the northern border of Michigan and journey to Miami, Florida. So many cities wanted to have the roadway that the Dixie Highway grew into a vine-like network of interconnected paved roads rather than a single thoroughfare, each identified by the simple signage of white DH letters on a red background.

In Florida, the route passed through Tallahassee and Jacksonville and proceeded south along the East Coast. Lobbying produced an additional inland route passing through Gainesville, Ocala, Winter Park, Orlando, Kissimmee, Bartow, and Acadia, rejoining the coastal route at Palm Beach. The paving of the Dixie Highway from Sanford to Kissimmee in 1916 put Pine Castle on the country’s primary north-south road until US 441 was built two miles to the west in the 1930s. It became the main route and also was known locally as State Road 2 and Black Bear Trail.