Discovering Florida 5

Discovering Florida 5 continues a long-running journey of bicycle travel, photography, and historical exploration across the Sunshine State. This volume presents 25 additional routes completed between 2018 and 2019, covering more than 2,100 miles across 20 Florida counties. The routes venture deep into rural regions of the state, passing through active towns, forgotten communities, and numerous ghost towns shaped by the rise and decline of railroads, logging operations, phosphate mining, cattle ranching, and agricultural expansion. For the first time in the series, the journey reaches Gilchrist and Dixie counties while also returning to large areas of Levy, Marion, Putnam, Nassau, Duval, Alachua, Citrus, and surrounding regions. Each route blends firsthand cycling experience with historical background, tracing Florida's layered past—from Indigenous cultures such as the Timucua, Seminole, Creek, and Potano to Spanish missions, nineteenth-century conflicts, railroad development, racial segregation, and the environmental impacts of modern growth. The book travels along major river systems including the Suwannee, St. Johns, Withlacoochee, and Ocklawaha, as well as through state forests, wildlife management areas, historic ports, abandoned settlements, and remote backroads seldom seen by visitors. Springs, sinkholes, rail trails, barrier islands, and inland farmland all form part of the landscape. Discovering Florida 5 is neither a cycling manual nor a traditional travel guide. Instead, it serves as a geographical and historical record, observed gradually from secondary roads, former rail corridors, and the saddle of a bicycle. This volume continues an ongoing series that documents Florida route by route, without shortcuts or romanticized portrayals.