Oregon Trail vs Dixie Auto Trail?

 One requirement for the Boy Scout  Citizenship in the Nation merit badge is to visit a place listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. You might not think of a highway as an historic place, but
at the beginning of the last century with automobiles becoming more common, the US needed cross country roads that were easier to travel on than the Oregon Trail and other pioneer trails developed for covered wagons and stage coaches. The solution was to create cross country "Auto Trails."

In 1913 the Lincoln Highway was the first paved auto trail from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco joining the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.  Interstate 80 now closely follows that route. But what about north/south auto trails?

It just happens that the first of the north/south auto trails passes right through Flagler County--the Dixie Highway from Detroit to Miami built in 1916. Most of it now is Interstate 75 and 95, but a stretch of the original brick road still exists hidden in the backwoods of Flagler County from Espanola to Hastings Florida, easy for Boy Scouts to travel on if they know where to look.

Here's a look at the Old Brick Road or Old Dixie Highway today. You can see why Auto Trail may be a more appropriate name for this one lane highway. This is the longest stretch that hasn't been paved over as it was upgraded for new highways. However the name "Dixie Highway" is still used for several stretches of the replacement roads from South Florida to Michigan. If you look closely, you can see that the bricks for this stretch were imported from Alabama several hundred miles away.

 To find out more google "Dixie Highway" and "Lincoln Highway"