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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

TWO GOVERNORS GET TOGETHER

In my 83 years in Columbia County, of course 1 have seen many changes. 1 can remember when the only
paved highway in Columbia County was U.S. 41. Referred to in that day as the Gainesville Highway.
U.S. 90, the east-west thru-way through Lake City, was a brick road, for part of the way to Jacksonville,
and the paved portion of it, that is to say the bricks, were only laid in a strip about 7 feet wide. When I
was a very small child, if we headed out east of Lake City, and met a car, each car would have to get
halfway off the brick and onto the dirt shoulder of the road. The full width paving of U.S. 90 occurred
when I was probably three years old, which would have been about 1931.

I remember when Highway 247, the Branford Highway, was a dirt road all the way to Branford, and I
also remember when the road to Fort White, Highway 47, was a dirt road all the way to Fort White.

A lot of people in Lake City went to Ichetucknee Springs in the summer time, and a large proportion of
them would ride the train from Lake City down to Herlong Road, where there was a small Depot, and
they would disembark from the train and walk on a trail through the woods about a mile to Ichetucknee
Springs, which was just a large un-attended spring out in the middle of the woods, with no
improvements. It was owned by Loncala Phosphate Co. of London, England. They would be certain to
be out of the springs, and back at the Herlong Road Depot whenever the train got ready to head back to
Lake City. Otherwise, they would have been in a real jam.

What is now U.S. 441 was a dirt road, with deep sand ruts, all the way into Georgia, and past Fargo.
Lake City has been fortunate enough on one occasion to have furnished a man for the Governorship of
the State of Florida. That man was Fred P. Cone (incidentally who had the biggest ears I have ever seen
on a man) and Mr. Fred Cone was the President of the Columbia County bank, and I believe had
founded that bank.

He was raised on the Cone Farm about 8 miles north of Lake City, and after he became Governor he got
with the Governor of Georgia whose name 1 do not any longer recall, and the Georgia Governor agreed
to pave the road from Douglas down to the Florida line, and Governor Cone would pave the road from
Lake City to the Georgia line. That is what they did, and for years it was known as the Cone Highway,
and a few of us old timers still call it the Cone Highway today.

In the 1920’s, the only bridge across the Suwannee River in this part of the state was a wooden bridge
on the Cone Farm still known as the Cone bridge. This bridge largely went out of use when they paved
U.S. 41 to White Springs and put in a very much more substantial bridge there. The old wooden Cone
bridge has been gone for many, many years, but you can still see the remnants of it by turning west off
U.S. 441 on Cone Road (a dirt road), which now comes to a dead end at the Suwannee River, at the
location of the old Cone bridge, the remains of which are still clearly visible.

To my knowledge that was the last of the main traffic arteries in Lake City to be paved, and 1 could
remember as a small child when the Branford Highway was paved, and when the Fort White Highway

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