05/29/2026
One of Florida's most eerie sights is the "Old Brick Road", found deep in the scrub forest of Flagler County. This nine-mile stretch of brick road that looks like it belongs in another century...because it does! Locally known as the "Old Brick Road," this bumpy, red-brick path was part of the original Dixie Highway, a massive 1915 project meant to connect Chicago all the way to Miami.
Before the smooth interstates we have today, Florida was a land of swampy trails that were nearly impossible for the new Model T cars to cross. To fix this, workers laid down millions of bricks by hand. If you look closely at the road today, you can still see the words "GRAVES B'HAM, ALA" stamped into the red clay...the mark of the Alabama company that manufactured them over 100 years ago. At just nine feet wide, the road was only built for one car at a time. Back in the 1920s, it saw over a hundred "Tin Can Tourists" a day...adventurous families who camped in their cars as they headed south to see the "exotic" Florida wilderness.
However, the road's fame was short-lived. By 1926, the much faster U.S. Route 1 was built nearby, and the brick path was largely abandoned. Today, the road is a quiet,
, "ghost
highway" listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It cuts through thick pine trees and palmettos, looking exactly like it did when the first tourists drove it a century ago. It's a bit of a rough ride, but for anyone who wants to literally drive through history, there's nothing else like it in the Sunshine State!
