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narration by Bob Abbott
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I wanted to point out some of the features in this picture. The western-most bridge over the Loxahatchee is the Florida East Coast railroad. The next bridge to the east is the Dixie Highway. That bridge is now gone, but its abutments can be found just east of the current Alternate A1A bridge. The Dixie was the first highway to come from the north to this area. For a while, Jupiter was infamous for its speed trap on the Dixie. After the bridge, the Dixie traveled south along the east side of the railroad. It then crossed the railroad at Center Street and continued south on the west side of the railroad. Click here for more information about this historic highway. The Intracoastal can be clearly seen as a straight cut through the center of the picture. You can also see the remains of the old river that meandered through this marshy area. The eastern-most bridge over the Loxahatchee is U.S. 1. That bridge is also now gone, but its abutments can be seen just to the west of the current U.S. 1 bridge. U.S. 1 did not take its current course over the river meanders. Instead it slanted over to the coast. When the current U.S. 1 was built, the old U.S. 1 became Highway A1A, but with one exception: the old U.S. 1 followed what is now a driveway into Carlin Park and then went along the top of the hill now occupied by picnic tables. Jupiter Beach Road and Dubois Road are clearly visible. They form a small triangle with the old U.S. 1. The east side of this triangle is now gone (it’s part of the parking lot for the Jupiter Dunes golf course), and Jupiter Beach Road no longer extends west of U.S. 1. Here is a more detailed view of this coastal area. What I found most fascinating about this picture is the faint line that I marked with a red arrow. This is what remains of the “Celestial Railroad.” It ran from Jupiter to Juno (Juno was at the north end of Lake Worth) with stops at Venus and Mars. The railroad was abandoned in 1896, but its right-of-way is clearly visible here. Today there is practically no trace of the railroad. This narration continues after the picture. |
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All these aerial photos were taken from a CD given to me by Lynn Lasseter Drake of the Jupiter History Project. She got the CD from the Palm Beach Soil & Water Conservation District. The files on the CD are in .SID format. SID is a system that lets you zoom into and out of a picture with no loss of clarity. Because few people have a SID viewer on their browsers, I converted different zoom levels of the SID files into JPG files (and this was not an easy process).
It’s likely that I have mistakes in some of my history. If you can make a correction, or if you have information to add, give me a call or send an e-mail. And if you send an
Bob Abbott |
