Last updated: Aug. 21, 2021
This blog is intended for those few who may want to visit, hunt for or tour some or all of Bellamy Road. This blog is an addendum to my book, Four Florida Roads. It will be updated from time to time as I find more information or find current information to be incorrect. Hunting Bellamy road is an acquired taste and I wish you the best.
This blog is intended for those few who may want to visit, hunt for or tour some or all of Bellamy Road. This blog is an addendum to my book, Four Florida Roads. It will be updated from time to time as I find more information or find current information to be incorrect. Hunting Bellamy road is an acquired taste and I wish you the best.
Feel free to report back with new thoughts or information you find, or to make additions or suggest emendations you feel important. No matter what you find, the effort will take you to parts of Florida you may not have seen before, and that alone will be worth the effort. Happy hunting.
Bellamy Road was the first Federal road across the north Florida peninsula. Only five years before, 1819, the Adams-Onis Treaty transferred La Florida from Spain to the United States. At the time, there were only two settlements of any significant size in the new U.S. territory; one was Pensacola, a military base in the far western panhandle; the other was St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast, already 270 years old. Jacksonville was still a cow ford, Tampa a pirate hideaway and Miami was an insignificant outpost barely born.
The transfer of land, citizenry and ownership from Spain to the U.S. was largely complete between 1819 and 1821, the point at which the U.S. Congress accepted the Florida peninsula as an American Territory and protectorate. The first Territorial Legislature was held in 1822 and at the end of the legislative session the new Floridians wrote to President Monroe a "memorial" of their activity that season. Probably for the first time the territory officially requested consideration that a road be built from Pensacola to St. Augustine. The Pensacola-St. Augustine road was promoted by Territorial Governor William Pope DuVal and shepherded through the U.S. Congress by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who would become President while the road was under "construction."
Chasing Bellamy Road; A Beginner's Guide
Bellamy Road was the first Federal road across the north Florida peninsula. Only five years before, 1819, the Adams-Onis Treaty transferred La Florida from Spain to the United States. At the time, there were only two settlements of any significant size in the new U.S. territory; one was Pensacola, a military base in the far western panhandle; the other was St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast, already 270 years old. Jacksonville was still a cow ford, Tampa a pirate hideaway and Miami was an insignificant outpost barely born.
The transfer of land, citizenry and ownership from Spain to the U.S. was largely complete between 1819 and 1821, the point at which the U.S. Congress accepted the Florida peninsula as an American Territory and protectorate. The first Territorial Legislature was held in 1822 and at the end of the legislative session the new Floridians wrote to President Monroe a "memorial" of their activity that season. Probably for the first time the territory officially requested consideration that a road be built from Pensacola to St. Augustine. The Pensacola-St. Augustine road was promoted by Territorial Governor William Pope DuVal and shepherded through the U.S. Congress by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who would become President while the road was under "construction."
The road was intended to tie the territory's two towns together; thus, its official congressional name: the Pensacola-St. Augustine Road. While the road was being considered, the first two Territorial Legislatures decided to alternate meetings between
Pensacola and St. Augustine from one year to the next, meeting the first year in Pensacola. They quickly learned this was not going to work well, as the St. Augustine contingent either had to travel almost 400 miles of difficult, dangerous terrain, or risk storms and Tampa's pirates as they sailed around the peninsula. The Legislative session started weeks late, waiting for its other half to arrive. It didn't work any differently the following year, and in 1823, the legislature passed an act to build a meeting
place half way across the Florida panhandle so either side traveled only half
the dangerous distance to meet in the middle. Thus was Tallahassee born, a third settlement that quickly grew to some size; though the first State House was a log cabin.
Bellamy Road is that portion of the Pensacola-St. Augustine road from Tallahassee to the Atlantic. It got its name from John Jack Bellamy, a wealthy plantation owner
who was given the contract to build the road for $13,500, using a crew of his own slaves. Almost as soon as it was built, it began to disappear as land on which it was laid was sold or given away to pioneers. Other useful roads were built as pioneers moved in; railroads and steamboats began to change the way Floridians traveled. Still, Bellamy Road served a useful purpose until just after the Civil War, but by 2019 it hadn't existed as a complete entity for 150 years. Today, what northeast Floridians call Bellamy Road lives on in the daydreams of those who would bask
in the golden glow of days gone by--even if the glow never quite existed back in the day.
The Congressional mandate creating the road specified that it should follow native pathways, which had long since become a Spanish mission trail; more than 29 Seminole villages and missions had sat along the path over the centuries. By 1824,many of them had already been destroyed. Bellamy Road ran from the
Ocklockonee River, just west of Tallahassee, through the new, recently-platted capitol town and across the panhandle. The route dropped southward into North Central Florida around the Suwanee River, and ended (or at least was supposed to end) at the St. Johns River. Congress assumed that the old Picolata Road into St. Augustine was in good working order.
Once the contract was signed, John Bellamy began building the road which went on from December,1824 until around May or later in May, 1826. Bellamy was "supervised" on-site by U.S. Army Capt. Daniel E. Burch and his superior, Quarter Master Gen. Thomas S. Jessup, who was headquartered in Washington. By the time the road was complete, Burch had become Bellamy's son-in-law. The story is covered extensively in Four Florida Roads.
As I began the book, I was committed to trace at least the entirety of the road's known parts, "reconstructing" Bellamy Road, if you will. My search was based on original documents, period maps, lore and original or academic materials created since the 19th Century. There have been any number of professional and amateur historians and journalists who studied and wrote about the road; most seemed concerned with discovering its path only in their area, but not the 200-mile expanse from Tallahassee to St. Augustine.
Once the contract was signed, John Bellamy began building the road which went on from December,1824 until around May or later in May, 1826. Bellamy was "supervised" on-site by U.S. Army Capt. Daniel E. Burch and his superior, Quarter Master Gen. Thomas S. Jessup, who was headquartered in Washington. By the time the road was complete, Burch had become Bellamy's son-in-law. The story is covered extensively in Four Florida Roads.
As I began the book, I was committed to trace at least the entirety of the road's known parts, "reconstructing" Bellamy Road, if you will. My search was based on original documents, period maps, lore and original or academic materials created since the 19th Century. There have been any number of professional and amateur historians and journalists who studied and wrote about the road; most seemed concerned with discovering its path only in their area, but not the 200-mile expanse from Tallahassee to St. Augustine.
I made some basic assumptions
as I began:
1) the shortest distance between two points is always a straight
line. I believe migrating fauna created the basic path, followed by natives who hunted them. Spanish conquistadors and
missionaries came next, subsequently followed by Burch and Bellamy. All of them were likely to have taken as straight a path as possible, except to go around
marshes, water bodies or, as later suggested, the villages or territories of
unfriendly natives. There were no other impediments; just flat, dense, often swampy
Florida terrain. As Capt. Burch told Gen. Jesup, there were few American settlements or even homes in the North Florida interior when he surveyed the road in 1823, and only one of those was near the Spanish Mission Trail. By then, many of the missions and native villages had been or were being moved or destroyed.
I did not try to trace the military
road from Pensacola to the Ocklockonee River. While it constituted the western half of the Pensacola/St Augustine Road, that segment was
built by Capt. Burch and soldiers, not Bellamy. Apparently the
military road was less used, was quickly overgrown and is said to have soon disappeared although I am not convinced of that point. Bellamy's road from Tallahassee to St. Augustine, however was used by American settlers moving into and across North Florida from the Carolinas,
Alabama and Georgia. (The second Seminole War, 1835-1842, may have curbed pioneer
traffic somewhat.)
2) My goal was not to walk step-by-step in Bellamy's footsteps which is well-nigh impossible. Instead, I wanted to lay down a more general route, a guideline to be further explored and refined, by me or others, in years to come. For now, I wanted to feel that I had come within at least a mile of the original road, from one end to the next.
In areas closer to Tallahassee--Leon, Jefferson and Madison Counties--the road was more likely to have been called the St. Augustine Road or Old St. Augustine Road. I felt that if names like "St. Augustine" and "Old St. Augustine" were used on different roads in a same area, I would assume the "Old" version was more likely Bellamy's original than the newer version. I used GPS and online map systems to search for remnants of likely Tallahassee, St. Augustine or Bellamy-related names as I worked my way across the state. I also looked for roads with Spanish, Military, Mission or Federal in their name.
Some days I headed east from Gainesville, others west as convenient until I had covered the entire distance. While I worked from central Florida to either coast, in this blog I will describe what I found as Bellamy would have experienced it, working from west to east.
3) I assumed that a road once built tends to stay a road, and once given a name, it tends to retain it, though perhaps not indefinitely. Flawed logic or not, in Tallahassee I took Old St. Augustine Road and headed west through the capitol city, following the straightest, most logical extension until I came to the Ocklockonee. I crossed the river on the bridge below in the consequent photo.
In areas closer to Tallahassee--Leon, Jefferson and Madison Counties--the road was more likely to have been called the St. Augustine Road or Old St. Augustine Road. I felt that if names like "St. Augustine" and "Old St. Augustine" were used on different roads in a same area, I would assume the "Old" version was more likely Bellamy's original than the newer version. I used GPS and online map systems to search for remnants of likely Tallahassee, St. Augustine or Bellamy-related names as I worked my way across the state. I also looked for roads with Spanish, Military, Mission or Federal in their name.
Some days I headed east from Gainesville, others west as convenient until I had covered the entire distance. While I worked from central Florida to either coast, in this blog I will describe what I found as Bellamy would have experienced it, working from west to east.
3) I assumed that a road once built tends to stay a road, and once given a name, it tends to retain it, though perhaps not indefinitely. Flawed logic or not, in Tallahassee I took Old St. Augustine Road and headed west through the capitol city, following the straightest, most logical extension until I came to the Ocklockonee. I crossed the river on the bridge below in the consequent photo.
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Today at least I assume Bellamy began his road on the eastern side of the Ocklockonee River at this point. If correct, it was referred to in original documents as "Murrey's Ferry." As of May, 2018, I have neither confirmed nor disputed this as the road's beginning point. I did find a point where the territorial legislature extended ferry authorization to Mr. Murrey. On the left side of the photograph, the road extends to Pensacola.The river may have been wider and deeper in 1824, as Bellamy and his slaves began their work; contemporary narratives suggest the road was built during rainy years.
4) There were a few documented points known to have been sited on the road or nearby. I used
straight line mapping in an atlas and a GPS system to look for clues in areas where the road has disappeared. This sometimes included drawing an imaginary straight line
between the end of one likely or known point to the beginning of a next; looking for old dirt or even paved roads between.
"Known" or documented points were the Ocklockonee River (Murrey's Ferry) near Tallahassee, and Tallahassee itself (where at the city's birth there was a
St. Augustine Street. It is still there.) Other reliable bets were St.
Augustine Road south of Tallahassee, Charles Spring on the Suwannee, and settlements referred to then and now as Traxler and Newnansville. There was the three-mile wide natural bridge between O'Leno and River Rise State Parks, the unincorporated town of Melrose, the county line between
Clay and Putnam Counties, an undetermined point in the Bayard Conservation area
on the St. Johns, Picolata and Picolata Road from the St. Johns River to
St. Augustine. These locations are known to have helped shape or they themselves have been shaped by Bellamy Road's path across the state.
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Between Tallahassee's capitol area and W.W. Kelly Highway are a little over 12 existing miles, almost all of it kept as a tree-lined St. Augustine Road or, east of the Suwannee, Bellamy Road. If I add the above bridge as a true starting point and the intervening streets to the road seen above, known segments of the Bellamy Road around Tallahassee become as much as 21 miles of original road.
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Your GPS system may indicate a Bellamy Road east of Jefferson County's Monticello, but that was not part of the Pensacola-St. Augustine Road. It is, however, an open driveway, leading to what was at one time Bellamy's mansion and estate. Just west of the driveway is a road leading from Bassett Dairy Road into a large pecan grove; at the back of which is the Bellamy family cemetery. I couldn't tell whether the grove and cemetery pathway are considered public or private. The gate was wide open when I visited, and I went in despite a warning about pesticides. There were, I believe, people working the grove and no one asked me to leave. I made my visit short and respectful and if you feel you must visit the cemetery, you should too. The cemetery is badly in need of maintenance and repair.
About five miles south of Bellamy's estate, going east to west through Jefferson County is a sizable length called St. Augustine Road; it branches off U.S. 27 (from Tallahassee) which is also called the Apalachee Parkway. Jefferson County's St. Augustine Road lines up well with Old St. Augustine Road in Leon County, and heads east for 8-10 miles, then rejoins the Apalachee Parkway.
Jefferson County's St. Augustine Road and alignment with Old St. Augustine Road in Leon County, let me comfortably add it to my list of likely prospects as Bellamy's original, though it, too, is now asphalted, covering 11 additional miles of the original route and leading us next to Madison County.
There is as well a S.W. Old St. Augustine Road, angled northeast through Madison County, apparently to tiptoe around the perimeter of a large marsh. There are approximately 8-10 miles of S.W. Old St. Augustine, though the name makes one wonder if there was ever something like a Northeast Old St. Augustine Road. In the absence of such, I added this road as well to my list of remnants of Bellamy's road. Part of this road is paved, part is still a dirt road, passing both dilapidated and well-kept properties, both types of which have a nostalgic charm. If my assumptions are correct, I have crossed approximately 33 miles of the original road by this point.
Assuming Bellamy and his crew indeed followed the S.W. Old St. Augustine Road through Madison County, the point at which that road ends today, would have put him and his crew about 22 miles northwest of a next known point, Charles Spring. To get there, he had to cross today's Lafayette County. The question is: did the road go straight east to the river and turn at a right angle southward? Or did it follow a hypotenuse sloping gently downward to the river, where it crossed to Charles Spring?
Lafayette County gives no clues but old maps tend to indicate a blunt southward slope. We're sure Bellamy crossed the Suwanee at Charles Spring as advertised; we can assume the presence of a ferry either as the road came through or, more likely, established shortly afterward. For a while I toyed with the notion that Bellamy actually came down the east side of the Suwanee from the Dowling Park Bridge area. A convincing old riverside woodland trail led me to that conclusion, which I later conceded had to be grossly erroneous. Lafayette County offices seemed unable to help with the search--due to, as Florida's county employees are prone to plead--court house fires in decades gone by.
That said, the ferry landing across the Suwanee from Charles Spring (shown below) is fairly reliably documented by Suwanee County. Documentation suggests the road established the point at which the Charles family's ferry would operate. It would be interesting to know why this particular spot along the Suwanee was chosen to cross the river; but the answer could be as simple as "Because that's where the native and mission trail originally crossed." Slope of the banks and/or width of the river are also possible answers.
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| Charles Spring features an underground spring, said to come directly from the underlying Floridan Aquifer. Beyond is the Suwanee River into which the spring flows. |
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There is a legend--with some documentation--that the Reuben and Rebecca Charles family established a trading post and ferry at Charles Spring when they heard the St. Augustine road was going through. Jumping at such commercial opportunities was not unusual.
There are variations on the Charles family story and its trouble with Native Americans as the Second Seminole War developed. Seminoles may have enjoyed trading or shopping at the Charles family's outpost. Lore says the family agreed to wear red kerchiefs around their necks so native warriors could distinguish them from other whites. Their daughter, Mary was the first to be killed when in her excitement to meet a stagecoach, she forgot her kerchief. This would have probably been around 1833, though her date of death is not marked on her grave site in nearby Luraville. Reuben Charles was walking along the Suwanee riverbank (perhaps on the riverside trail that intrigued me) when he was killed in 1835. Rebecca Charles was also killed in 1852, after the second Seminole War had ended, apparently while standing on her front porch. This time there were rumors Caucasian-Americans might have shot her, resentful of the family’s peaceful relations with natives in times past and hoping to cast blame on the Seminoles. Remaining family members maintained the depot, ferry and general store a few more years. Two additional graves are found in Luraville's Charles Family Cemetery, though names, birth and death dates are unknown.
There is a legend--with some documentation--that the Reuben and Rebecca Charles family established a trading post and ferry at Charles Spring when they heard the St. Augustine road was going through. Jumping at such commercial opportunities was not unusual.
There are variations on the Charles family story and its trouble with Native Americans as the Second Seminole War developed. Seminoles may have enjoyed trading or shopping at the Charles family's outpost. Lore says the family agreed to wear red kerchiefs around their necks so native warriors could distinguish them from other whites. Their daughter, Mary was the first to be killed when in her excitement to meet a stagecoach, she forgot her kerchief. This would have probably been around 1833, though her date of death is not marked on her grave site in nearby Luraville. Reuben Charles was walking along the Suwanee riverbank (perhaps on the riverside trail that intrigued me) when he was killed in 1835. Rebecca Charles was also killed in 1852, after the second Seminole War had ended, apparently while standing on her front porch. This time there were rumors Caucasian-Americans might have shot her, resentful of the family’s peaceful relations with natives in times past and hoping to cast blame on the Seminoles. Remaining family members maintained the depot, ferry and general store a few more years. Two additional graves are found in Luraville's Charles Family Cemetery, though names, birth and death dates are unknown.
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This weathered sign at Charles Spring park in Suwanee County marks a very short length of what is believed to be the original Bellamy road.Two termini of the Charles Ferry are marked with boat ramps on opposite sides of the Suwanee River, the dividing line between Suwanee and Lafayette Counties. Starting from Tallahassee and working my way back east, this was my first official encounter with Bellamy's name attached to the trail.
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A
small park at Charles Spring has memorialized a short section of
Bellamy Road, with the sign shown above designating it as a part of the historic route.The dirt pathway through a shallow stretch of woods, runs a few hundred feet beside a clay road passing the park.
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| This woodland path directly across a clay road that passes Charles Spring is a good candidate for having been Bellamy's road leading east. A woodland path nearby may have been Bellamy Road and may have met the fate of many segments of Bellamy Road as private land owners generations ago made passage, exploration, research and enjoyment off limits. |
From Charles Springs Park it is 41 GPS miles to Ichetucknee Springs, the next documented point along Bellamy Road. However, the satellite system takes you on existing hard roads which zig-zag back and forth from North to East and South. Had there been a straight-line dirt road from one spring to the next, the distance would have been less, perhaps 30 miles. The north entrance to Ichetucknee Park can be reached on the eastern side by Old Spanish Road, a dirt path of a mile or so, leading to and from the north entrance of the popular tubing river. I was told of a Bellamy Road sign in the area, but found none. While, I have no evidence to suggest it, S.W. Elim Church Road nearby is a good candidate to take us directly to our next known point, S.W. Old Bellamy Road in Columbia County.
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River Sink Park, where the Santa Fe River goes underground for about three miles and reappears at River Rise Park, nearby. The natural bridge formed by the underground river has been known and used over the centuries by natives, De Soto, Spanish missionaries, John Bartram and Americans. A similar natural bridge in the panhandle was specifically named by the U.S. Congress in 1823 to be used to construct the Pensacola/St. Augustine Road. This one was not named, although the Mission Trail, which crossed here, was specified.
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A bit south of S.W. Elim Church
Road, you meet a series of roads,the first being S.W. Old Bellamy Road, a dirt road. Along the way, the road's name will
change to Bellamy Road, and then Old Bellamy Road. You will pass
near (but not over) the natural bridge, the three miles of land under which flows
the Santa Fe River. Travelers as far back as the natives knew of this natural bridge, a convenient spot that avoided having to ford or bridge yet another river. There is a road that runs across the natural bridge, but on a GPS at least, it is not called Bellamy Road. Apparently as the county moved to preserve Bellamy, the
state already possessed O'Leno and River Rise park; what is called Bellamy
Road today runs just southeast of River Rise Park.
The distance of the three consecutive Bellamy roads
is about 17 original miles although divided into two parts by I-75. If you could sneak under the interstate and over a fence on the
other side, a few feet into the woods you would find a Traxler
farmhouse on the northwestern edge of Alachua County.
This Columbia County Bellamy Road is adjacent to O'Leno (River Sink) and River Rise Parks. In this scenic area, what is called Bellamy Road has been preserved as a dirt road.
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| A cottage at the Traxler farm. Traxler descendants passed down the lore that John Bellamy, one of the richest men in Florida at the time, arrived to visit a Dell/Traxler home as he and his crew of slaves came through what would become Newnansville. In the family legend he us described as arriving barefoot and wearing a palmetto hat. That lore,as told, is easy to mistake as meaning that Bellamy visited the Traxler farm. Without further information, that was not possible. |
The dilemma of Traxler to historians, professional or otherwise is that Lucille Skinner Traxler was interviewed for an oral history project in the 20th Century and repeated family lore that Bellamy had visited. While an interesting tidbit and perhaps not out of character, an authorized history of Traxler says the farm was established by William Traxler,who was born near the natural bridge, in next door Columbia County, in 1854 and established the farm in the 1880s. In other words, Traxler wasn't established until almost thirty years after Bellamy went through, about 10 years after Bellamy died, making a Bellamy visit to the Traxler home impossible. However, Mary Leila Dell married Traxler in 1889. Two Dell brothers and their father pre-date Bellamy's arrival in the area by several years. Surely family lore began in the Dell side of the family rather than with the Traxlers. Bellamy is believed to have visited the Dells in Newnansville, with or without shoes or his famed palmetto hat.
Today, the Traxler farm site seems to be a dedicated spot, perhaps a historic site, or a community farm.
Bellamy's crew would have passed the site of the (later) Traxler cottage about a quarter mile beyond this spot.Today, Bellamy Road comes to a dead end at a fence, on the other side of which is Interstate 75 just beyond the Traxler cottages.
There is a lovely, more recent church about halfway between the farm and a main modern road, NW 173rd St. a few feet from the site of the photo above. Only a mile or two south of this spot, NW 173rd joins Old Bellamy Road, which continues to NW 140th St. Crossing 140th, the road becomes NW 199th St., also known as Alligator Road, which at least one writer has proposed as part of Bellamy's original route.
About eight miles from Traxler as
the crow flies, was Dell's Post Office, located in a broad expanse of Alachua County. John and Simeon Dell had been among Georgia Volunteers serving under Gen. Daniel Newnan in 1812 during The Patriot's War. They fought skirmishes as soldiers and returned with their father, Philip, to the Alachua area as civilians in 1814, establishing a Mission Trail post office a few years later. Around 1820, they named their settlement Newnansville in honor of their former commander. Bellamy and his crew probably came through in the late summer or early fall of 1825.
Not far from Traxler, Bellamy and his crew were said to have stayed a while in Newnansville, one of few villages the road met as it was built. There was at least one marriage between members of the Dell and Traxler families.
Col. James Dell is buried in the Dell family cemetery nearby. Also found are 20th Century descendants of both Traxler and Dell families. Today, the cemetery is all that's left of Newnansville. In back are graves of African-Americans, probably former slaves. In the 1850s, the Newsnanville population gradually moved a mile away, creating a new town, Alachua, closer to a railroad.
Bellamy's path through Alachua County is a muddled mystery from Newsnansville to today's Melrose. Local historians are sometimes at odds as camps become devoted to their favorite version of the road. Knowns and unknowns add to the confusion: including the exact placement of Seminole War forts, or the belief that two locations Bellamy Station and the town of Waldo were one and the same. That is not likely the case.
Col. James Dell is buried in the Dell family cemetery nearby. Also found are 20th Century descendants of both Traxler and Dell families. Today, the cemetery is all that's left of Newnansville. In back are graves of African-Americans, probably former slaves. In the 1850s, the Newsnanville population gradually moved a mile away, creating a new town, Alachua, closer to a railroad.
Bellamy's path through Alachua County is a muddled mystery from Newsnansville to today's Melrose. Local historians are sometimes at odds as camps become devoted to their favorite version of the road. Knowns and unknowns add to the confusion: including the exact placement of Seminole War forts, or the belief that two locations Bellamy Station and the town of Waldo were one and the same. That is not likely the case.
Eubanks refers to an area referred to as Bellamy Crossing as well. Further investigation led this writer to believe neither Bellamy Crossing nor Bellamy Station were former names for Waldo. Both names most likely refer to a train station which crossed Bellamy road in a forested area about 5 miles west of present day Waldo. Late 19th and even an early 20th century maps in the state archives collection name both Waldo and Bellamy Station existing at the same time in different locations. A potentially stolen map and local historians protecting secret, unshakable but unsupported knowledge doesn't help.
A likely more reliable source has an interesting explanation for the confusion. In a 1981 letter from historian W.S.
Eubanks Jr. to B.V. DeSha, Eubanks, (describing the road from east to west) wrote,
“In your part of the country there
were at least three Bellamy roads. All three went through Melrose, but the
first, the original Bellamy Road, went north of Orange Heights across the neck
of the Saluda Swamp. There is still an old timber road in use there yet, it
crosses (U.S. 301) about one and a quarter miles north of Orange Heights… this
road was completed in 1826. In 1835, however, the people of Newnansville when
they found out about the new Steamboat Landing at the Picolata insisted that
the Bellamy Road be improved and restored to use as the primary road from the
Alachua area to the St. Johns.
The Bellamy Road was improved from the St. Johns into Alachua County in
1835-36 under the supervision of a Lt. L’Engle. The road was straightened in a
number of places this time passing west of the Saluda Swamp and crossing U.S.
301 at a point just above the Orange Heights Cemetery, crossing Hatchet Creek
east branch at a point about where a timber road crosses it now in Special
Section 2…it had a crossing just east of the present day Monteocha road where
this road was located called the “Bellamy Crossing.” After the end of the Second Seminole, in the late 1840s, this road was
re-routed a third time in Alachua County, this time bending south still further
to pass through what is now Orange Heights. When they made relocation (sometime
during the boom days of the 1880s) it became the Melrose Road."**
“In your part of the country there
were at least three Bellamy roads. All three went through Melrose, but the
first, the original Bellamy Road, went north of Orange Heights across the neck
of the Saluda Swamp. There is still an old timber road in use there yet, it
crosses (U.S. 301) about one and a quarter miles north of Orange Heights… this
road was completed in 1826. In 1835, however, the people of Newnansville when
they found out about the new Steamboat Landing at the Picolata insisted that
the Bellamy Road be improved and restored to use as the primary road from the
Alachua area to the St. Johns.
The Bellamy Road was improved from the St. Johns into Alachua County in
1835-36 under the supervision of a Lt. L’Engle. The road was straightened in a
number of places this time passing west of the Saluda Swamp and crossing U.S.
301 at a point just above the Orange Heights Cemetery, crossing Hatchet Creek
east branch at a point about where a timber road crosses it now in Special
Section 2…it had a crossing just east of the present day Monteocha road where
this road was located called the “Bellamy Crossing.” After the end of the Second Seminole, in the late 1840s, this road was
re-routed a third time in Alachua County, this time bending south still further
to pass through what is now Orange Heights. When they made relocation (sometime
during the boom days of the 1880s) it became the Melrose Road."**
**Information on the Eubanks letter available at the Matheson Museum, Alachua County.
Later still, it was called S.R. 26. In Alachua County, S.R. 26 is most well known as Gainesville's University Avenue, one of the more important urban pathways through town. It heads toward, but misses, Newnan's Lake and turning east toward Orange Heights, crosses U.S. 301 and enters Melrose. No one claims that University Avenue was ever Bellamy Road, rather that Bellamy turned north in all three versions of S.R. 26 before it reached downtown Gainesville.
In today’s Alachua County Court House, Archivist Jim Powell and a crew of transcribers have preserved ancient records some of which suggest Bellamy Road paralleled, crossed or had even been part of current S.R. 24, the Waldo Road. As Eubanks points out, some version of Bellamy may have run along present day U.S. 301 for a short distance between Waldo and the Orange Heights/Santa Fe Lake area. Employees at the University of Florida's Austin Cary Forest are aware Bellamy Road may have gone through the woods they tend, but believe any evidence of the road has long since been repeatedly reseeded with pine trees.
While Bellamy is vague around Gainesville, it would be hard to argue that Bellamy Road wasn't some portion of S.R. 26, which runs through Melrose, passing Santa Fe Lake, and becomes any of the three possibilities Eubanks laid out. For one thing, SR 26 in Melrose has been named Bellamy Road for years. While much is made of Melrose history, the unincorporated village appears relatively late in the 19th century. During the Bellamy era the location was known for native villages and missions. The lake hadn't come to be called Santa Fe ("holy faith") for nothing.
While not officially a town, Melrose has an excellent historical society and despite no governmental structure, a central park and a semblance of an historical museum. A number of state historical markers are sprinkled around the village. It is a hotbed of Bellamy Road scholars. The two photos below are part of the Joe and Rosemary Daurer collection, for example. Joe, a photographer, spent many years collecting and making copies of older photos which, after his death, Rosemary preserved and cataloged to illuminate Melrose history. Rosemary passed away in 2019. At last investigation, the Daurer papers were maintained by the Melrose Public Library.
This early hand tinted photo, made well after 1835, is a scene of "the Palatka Road," which Rosemary Daurer said was Bellamy Road. The photo is hauntingly apt: with deep soggy ruts Bellamy's public complained about, and "stump-knockers," a tree felled so high its stump could catch the underside of carriages or wagons, sometimes breaking axles or wheels. Courtesy the Daurer Collection.
This may be either an early 20th Century attempt at color photography or a hand tinted photo. It shows Bellamy Road in Melrose after the advent of automobiles. Note the Texaco gas station in the distance. By then, Bellamy in Melrose had been divided into two roads with a median between them. One was a dirt road accommodating pedestrians or animal-drawn wagons; the other was hard topped for automobiles. Melrose resident John Beckenbach said the two road system may also have been due to monies extended by the government during the WPA era, for improving farm-to-market roads Courtesy Daurer Collection.
The photo above shows Bellamy Road in Melrose, dating anywhere from the 1930s through the 1950s. Daurer said that for a while Bellamy Road, Melrose's main street, was divided into a dirt and a paved road, becoming a pedestrian or horse and wagon path on one side, with a hard topped road for automobiles on the other. Today, Bellamy Road Melrose accommodates only automobiles, though sidewalks have been added.
As S.R. 26 leaves Melrose, it passes Swan Lake Camp, site of an early sermon preached by youthful evangelist Billy Graham. According to the late local historian Rosemary Daurer, what is believed to be Bellamy Road's original path was also called the Palatka Road. Today it runs another 6 miles to end at S.R. 100 across from the Putnam Hall Loop, an African-American community. Putnam Hall is home to many old family names, including a branch of the Wanton family, a proprietor of an early 19th general store near today's Payne's Prairie. Capt. Burch knew the store and area as Wanton's; today the little settlement that grew up around Wanton's depot, about 20 miles from Melrose, is called Micanopy. The segment of S.R. 26, from west of Melrose to Putnam Hall, is more or less reliably believed to have been part of the original Bellamy Road and is an estimated 7 miles in length.
Putnam Hall Loop is, as its name implies, a large circular drive around which are a number of African American homes and churches. At the back of the loop, about one-half mile from the entrance, an official Bellamy Road street sign reappears, with homes along the way. From here, Bellamy Road heads east, until it reaches the St. Johns River.
The Putnam Hall area may have been where former slave Neil Coker had lived; he was interviewed during the WPA Federal Writers Project and recalled having seen Civil War soldiers, including black Union Troops, marching on the original or perhaps a later version of Bellamy Road, possibly after the Battle of Olustee. Coker's description of the area, in Putnam County with Grandin nearby most closely matches the Putnam Hall to S.R. 17 area of Bellamy Road.
A homeowner in Putnam Hall's Bellamy Road area called me after an article appeared to say that the road indicated in the photo below wasn't the original road, but that he owned a piece of property which was crossed by the original road. He offered to show it to me, but didn't want it made public. I didn't take him up on the offer then, but after the article came out I had to move on to other things. The idea of a book was off in the future.
There are other indications this road may not be the original road; a historical marker between Keystone Heights and Grandin is dedicated to Bellamy Road but states only that it was nearby. The uncertainty here may be related to Eubank's comment that the road was redone twice, once when a steamboat began to serve the Picolata-Palatka area. A Keystone Heights resident grew up in Putnam County's Grandin area and also lived on a road called Bellamy Road. While this could be, I'm convinced the original road didn't go that far south into Putnam County, for reasons given below.
Heading east, Bellamy meets road 315C, makes a jog left and continues as Bellamy until it meets S.R. 17, near the St. Johns River. It is through this area that Bellamy became the dividing line, originally between Putnam and Duval Counties, until Clay County was subsequently created from the southern half of the already reduced Duval.
A wealthy dairy family owned much of the property along Bellamy between 315C and S.R. 17, but sold it to a timber company. While the timberland has traded hands over the years, it is still used for timber and wood pulp. I was told by a retired Clay County Commissioner familiar with the area that timber companies secreted "the real Bellamy Road," creating the dirt road seen below to satisfy timber needs on one hand and quell public curiosity on the other, given liability issues. Whatever the case, through here almost all of stated Bellamy Road is dirt or (probably imported) red clay. About half the timber road was not Bellamy Road, which went northeast but became unavailable to the public. As the timber road gets close to the St. Johns River it becomes Sungarden Street, a poorly maintained, asphalted street south of Green Cove Springs.
This much-abused sign on Bellamy Road tells you you are in Clay County. A similar sign on the other side of the road, just as filled with gunshot, signals Putnam County.
A GPS system may tell you it is 33 miles from Putnam Hall to the Bayard Conservation Area in Clay County. However the system is based on hard roads to Grandin and along Coral Springs road, not the shorter, dirt-based Bellamy Road/timber road east of Putnam Hall. To correct for that roundabout route I would deduct 10 miles from the GPS total,or about 23 miles which I believe to be the length of the original road and the dividing line between counties. This route includes S. Bellamy Road, Bellamy Road and Sungarden Road which takes an explorer to U.S. 17. A four-wheel drive vehicle is recommended after crossing 315C.
Whether dry or wet, a four-wheel drive vehicle is recommended for this section of the only available route sine Bellamy road through timberland is closed to the public.
Directly across the St. Johns River from what in 1823 was Fort Picolata, Bellamy's contract came to an end. His contracted stopping point was in today's Bayard Conservation area. His job apparently didn't end there, however.
This 1837 depiction of Fort Picolata, being used as a military hospital at the time, was done by a soldier, perhaps a patient, stationed there during the Second Seminole War. A number of Florida luminaries or tourists stayed at Fort or Hotel Picolata over the centuries, including British naturalist William Bartram, Creek chieftains, William Tecumseh Sherman, Sidney Lanier and Frederic Delius (while composing his Florida Suite.) Courtesy Florida Memory
A homeowner in Putnam Hall's Bellamy Road area called me after an article appeared to say that the road indicated in the photo below wasn't the original road, but that he owned a piece of property which was crossed by the original road. He offered to show it to me, but didn't want it made public. I didn't take him up on the offer then, but after the article came out I had to move on to other things. The idea of a book was off in the future. There are other indications this road may not be the original road; a historical marker between Keystone Heights and Grandin is dedicated to Bellamy Road but states only that it was nearby. The uncertainty here may be related to Eubank's comment that the road was redone twice, once when a steamboat began to serve the Picolata-Palatka area. A Keystone Heights resident grew up in Putnam County's Grandin area and also lived on a road called Bellamy Road. While this could be, I'm convinced the original road didn't go that far south into Putnam County, for reasons given below.
Heading east, Bellamy meets road 315C, makes a jog left and continues as Bellamy until it meets S.R. 17, near the St. Johns River. It is through this area that Bellamy became the dividing line, originally between Putnam and Duval Counties, until Clay County was subsequently created from the southern half of the already reduced Duval.
A wealthy dairy family owned much of the property along Bellamy between 315C and S.R. 17, but sold it to a timber company. While the timberland has traded hands over the years, it is still used for timber and wood pulp. I was told by a retired Clay County Commissioner familiar with the area that timber companies secreted "the real Bellamy Road," creating the dirt road seen below to satisfy timber needs on one hand and quell public curiosity on the other, given liability issues. Whatever the case, through here almost all of stated Bellamy Road is dirt or (probably imported) red clay. About half the timber road was not Bellamy Road, which went northeast but became unavailable to the public. As the timber road gets close to the St. Johns River it becomes Sungarden Street, a poorly maintained, asphalted street south of Green Cove Springs.
A GPS system may tell you it is 33 miles from Putnam Hall to the Bayard Conservation Area in Clay County. However the system is based on hard roads to Grandin and along Coral Springs road, not the shorter, dirt-based Bellamy Road/timber road east of Putnam Hall. To correct for that roundabout route I would deduct 10 miles from the GPS total,or about 23 miles which I believe to be the length of the original road and the dividing line between counties. This route includes S. Bellamy Road, Bellamy Road and Sungarden Road which takes an explorer to U.S. 17. A four-wheel drive vehicle is recommended after crossing 315C.
Whether dry or wet, a four-wheel drive vehicle is recommended for this section of the only available route sine Bellamy road through timberland is closed to the public.
Directly across the St. Johns River from what in 1823 was Fort Picolata, Bellamy's contract came to an end. His contracted stopping point was in today's Bayard Conservation area. His job apparently didn't end there, however.
Fort Picolata was directly across the river when Bellamy and crew reached the St. Johns. The somewhat romantic drawing of Fort Picolata shown above was done by an American soldier in 1837, eleven years after Bellamy Road was completed. There was a road between Picolata and St. Augustine, which had served as a transportation hub for the early St. Augustine settlement, about 18 miles away. Canoeing or boating up and down the river was easier and safer than the same trip up or down the Atlantic. I spoke with two old timers who said the St. Johns at Picolata had been a cow ford before extensive river dredging by timber companies during the war years. Before then, when the tide was low, humans, cows and horses and sometimes wagons could easily cross the river at this point. Farther north, there was a similar point actually called Cowford by the British. Americans--John Bellamy among them--would rename it Jacksonville.
The importance of Fort Picolata waxed and waned as Spain or other European powers came and went.
The Picolata Road became part of the Spanish Mission Trail and across the river, the newly-widened trail westward to Pensacola. However, in Capt. Burch's correspondence with Gen. Jessup, he wrote that the Picolata Road had overgrown and would also need to be cleared.
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| Bellamy's road would include the Picolata Road, which ran from St. Augustine to the St. John's River. For Bellamy and his crew, the job stopped here. |
Bellamy continued clearing away overgrowth along the 18 miles of the Picolata Road. He and his crew of slaves probably took in the sights and sounds of 1826 urban St. Augustine. But Bellamy didn't build the controversial bridge that would take travelers over the San Sebastian River and into the city itself.
The placement of the bridge was already under heated discussion by the town council when Bellamy arrived; of necessity Burch got involved. Documented evidence suggests the bridge wasn't completed until 1828, under the direction of Lt.Harvey Brown, two years after Bellamy and his crew returned to Jefferson County. By then, Burch was to be transferred from Pensacola to Baton Rouge.
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| Bellamy Road ended approximately here, where now tours of St. Augustine begin. Photo by Jeff Knee. |
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