Red Clay Relics

At some point in Tallahassee's history, the citizen's got tired of muddy streets and laid the first paving blocks downtown. In the 1920s a new concrete highway was built between Tallahassee and neighboring Thomasville, Georgia. As the twentieth century progressed paved roads became the norm. Then in the 1980s, Leon County announced that it intended to pave every road in the county.

This meant, of course, the death of the clay roads.

At the time there were still scores of miles of red clay roads north of Tallahassee. Among them were Raymond Diehl Road, Miller Landing Road, Miccosukee Road, and too many others to list. Most were blacktopped before the end of century. Drivers gained a few more miles of all-weather surface for their cars. If you're wondering what was lost, you can visit one of the surviving clay roads in north Leon County. These include:

Old Centerville Road and Sunny Hill Road
At one time, Old Centerville Road was over six miles of red clay road stretching from Moccasin Gap Road near Bradley's Country Store at its south end to the Georgia state line at its north end. (Over the line, Georgia had put down blacktop and named their portion "Springhill Road.") The clay didn't necessarily end there, though, because just south of the line Old Centerville intersected with the clay-surfaced Sunny Hill Road, which paralleled the state line west to Thomasville Road (US 319). This gave you another five-and-a-half miles on the clay, for a total of almost twelve miles of red clay on which to run, ride a horse, or simply drive slowly while admiring the land and seeing what a well-kept country road looked like a hundred years ago. Leon County managed to blacktop about three miles of the west end of Sunny Hill Road and close to two-and-a-half miles of the south end of Old Centerville Road, which leaves about six miles of the two still in red clay. These six miles are likely to remain unpaved for some time, because Kate Ireland--the owner of Foshalee Plantation--has put the land along them in a conservation easement. The hills on these roads give a runner or bicyclist a good workout while the patriarch live oaks provide shelter from the sun. Most of the land on either side of the roads is managed for quail hunting, so you're likely to see many kinds of wildlife, including deer, turkeys, alligators, foxes, and a variety of birds and reptiles.

Old Magnolia Road
Located east of Miccosukee, only four miles of Old Magnolia Road has escaped paving. Starting from the northern end of the road at T. S. Green Road, the first mile is still clay surfaced, the next half-mile is blacktop, and then three miles of red clay follows, ending at the intersection with Ro Co Co Road. There are some good hills on this stretch, as the road descends into and climbs out of the Lake Miccosukee basin. Once again, the road is canopied by live oaks, and is an excellent place to run, walk, bicycle, or ride a horse. The 100 km off-pavement bike ride of the Capital City Cyclists' Spaghetti 100 uses the north mile of Old Magnolia Road as the course leaves and returns to the start and finish in the village of Miccosukee. At one time the Pie Run 5K course also included this part of the road.

Orchard Pond Road
If you wanted to drive completely around Lake Jackson, the north end of the circuit would be Orchard Pond Road. Orchard Pond Road runs east-west, from North Meridian Road just north of Bannerman Road, to Old Bainbridge Road just south of the Ochlockonee River bridge. The west end is more sand than clay, perhaps because of proximity to the river. The east end, however, is definitely in the clay hills. The canopy of trees is less dramatic than on Leon County's other surviving clay roads. Over the years, I've been reluctant to do much running on Orchard Pond Road because of the many blind hills and turns. The one time that I bicycled the length of the road, the sandy stretches were boggy and the clay parts were dry, but washboard-rough. Between 1927 and 1947 the local Boy Scout camp was located off of Orchard Pond Road; now the Scouts are exiled to the Wallwood Reservation across the Ochlockonee River in Gadsden County.

In the southwest sector of Leon County, there are still hundreds of miles of unpaved roads in the Apalachicola National Forest. But these are in the coastal plain rather than the red hills and are mostly flat and sandy rather than rolling and red clay.

No one (or at least no one who is sane) wants a return to the days before widespread pavement and an excellent highway system. Still, it would be nice if we could save some of what's left of our red clay roads. Historic preservation often applies to old buildings; why not old roads as well?