Ghost Town Tuesday; Eldora, FL and Canaveral National Seashore

Back in 2014 when I was living in the Orlando area I had a lot of time to explore the Atlantic Coastline on Canaveral National Seashore. West of Volusia County Route A1A along Eldora Road is small uninhabited community on the Indian River called Eldora.

Eldora was a small town centered around citrus groves that popped up in the second half of the 19th century. The community of Eldora suffered some hard freezes which kept it from growing to a substantial size. The first time Eldora appears on a map of Volusia County that I could find was in 1886.

1886 Volusia County Map

Today there are only two structures left in Eldora. The Eldora House apparently dates back to 1900 and was once known as the Moulton-Wells house.

County Route A1A 32 is a county level 32.7 mile segment of Florida State Road A1A. CR A1A is a discontinuous segment of A1A which never actually connected to the rest of the route to the south in Cape Canaveral. A 1936 map of Volusia County shows CR A1A with a pre-1945 state road number of 140.

1936 Volusia County Map

Canaveral National Seashore was declared in 1975 and encompasses the Atlantic Coastline from New Smyrna Beach south to the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The coast line south of New Smyrna Beach was some of the least developed in Florida and was always solid for a quiet day on the beach.

Comments

Chowchilla Mountain Road to Yosemite National Park

Chowchilla Mountain Road of Mariposa County is one of the oldest roadways servicing Yosemite National Park. As presently configured this fourteen-mile highway begins at California State Route 49 near Elliot Corner and terminates at the Wawona Road in Yosemite National Park. Chowchilla Mountain Road was constructed as a franchise toll road over Battalion Pass circa 1869-1870. The highway was built at behest of Galen Clark to connect the town of Mariposa to his property near the South Fork Merced River at what is now Wawona. In late 1874 the highway along with Clark’s Station would be purchased by the Washburn Brothers. The Washburn Brothers would continue to toll Chowchilla Mountain Road as part of their Yosemite Stage Route lines. The highway would ultimately become a Mariposa County public highway in 1917. Mariposa would later be more directly linked with Yosemite Valley in 1926 following the completion of the Yosemite All-Year Highwa...

Interstate 40's Tumultuous Ride Through the Pigeon River Gorge

In the nearly 60 years Interstate 40 has been open to traffic through the Pigeon River Gorge in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it has been troubled by frequent rockslides and damaging flooding, which has seen the over 30-mile stretch through North Carolina and Tennessee closed for months at a time. Most recently, excessive rainfall from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 saw sections of Interstate 40 wash away into a raging Pigeon River. While the physical troubles of Interstate 40 are well known, how I-40 came to be through the area is a tale of its own. Interstate 40 West through Haywood County near mile marker 10. I-40's route through the Pigeon River Gorge dates to local political squabbles in the 1940s and a state highway law written in 1921. A small note appeared in the July 28, 1945, Asheville Times. It read that the North Carolina State Highway Commission had authorized a feasibility study of a "...water-level road down [the] Pigeon River to the Tennessee l...

Angus L. Macdonald Bridge

At 1.3 kilometers (or about 0.84 miles) in length, the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge is one of two bridges crossing over the Halifax Harbour between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the other bridge being the A. Murray Mackay Bridge . Opened in 1955 and named after former Nova Scotia Premier and Canadian Minister of Defense for Naval Services Angus L. Macdonald, the Macdonald Bridge was the first bridge that crossed Halifax Harbour that was opened to traffic. The Macdonald Bridge was also the subject of the Big Lift, which was only the second time in history that the span of a suspension bridge were replaced while the bridge was open to traffic. Planning began in 2010 for the Big Lift, while construction took place between 2015 and 2017. Similar work occurred on the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia before the project took place on the Macdonald Bridge. At this time, much of the bridge infrastructure is new, leaving only the towers, main cables and...