This is the first of, what I hope will be, a series of photo-galleries of some of my weekend bike-rides. This first gallery is of a location in the Amelia-Fernandina Beach ride I usually do on some weekends (the map & profile in the slideshow is courtesy of Strava, recorded on my Garmin Edge 605 GPS-unit). It is of the scenic & historic village of American Beach, one of Florida's oldest African-American communities, known during its heyday as the "Black Hyannis-Port". Located on Amelia Island (just south of Fernandina Beach, in the extreme northeast-corner of the State where the St. Marys River defines the easternmost boundary between Florida and Georgia), American Beach was founded during the Jim Crow-era South as a place where people of color, who couldn't - under the laws of the time - visit the segregated "white-only" beaches in & around Jacksonville and Fernandina Beach, a few "black-only" beach-plots were designated (of which American Beach was the largest & most popular with African Americans), and some of the more famous 'visitors' included Cab Calloway, Billy Eckstine, James Brown, Joe Louis and Hank Aaron. The most famous permanent-resident was a woman known as the "Beach Lady", MaVynee Betsch, who advocated for years for the area's conservation & preservation. The beach-dune ecosystem located in the center of the village, one of the largest in the USA Atlantic & Gulf coasts, is named after Betsch (known affectionately as "NaNa" in her later years - she passed away in her home in 2005, at the age of 70); the above slideshow features the NaNa Dune.
More about the ride: I usually start at one of the trailhead-parking lots of the Big Talbot Island State Park's paved bike/pedestrian trail that runs alongside State Road A-1-A in northern Duval County and into Nassau County's Amelia Island (ending in American Beach). I then ride alongside the beach-road (Fletcher Ave.) in Fernandina, talking a few side-trips into town (including some residential roads that are quite hilly!) before heading back south again. Sometimes I'll go further south on A-1-A over the Heckscher Drive Bridge, past the Huguenot Park entrance to the Mayport Ferry & back. In future installments, I hope to include additional photo-galleries of some of my rides. Comments are closed.
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