Walkabout With Wheels Blog: And We're Off... Biking the Amelia Island Trail

Amelia Island Trails starts
next to a golf course.

The Club House

We pass by Florida
communities.

The bike trail is curvilinear.

There's no taking my eyes off

the trail to sight see.

The bike path parallels the road again.

Berkshire Hathaway
HomeServices.

Berkshire Hathaway is owned
by billionaire investor, Warren
Buffett, "The Oracle of Omaha."

Eric and I turn onto Lewis Street. There's a dirt road off this street that parallels the beach. If it's hard packed enough, we can ride that street back to Peter's Point Beach Front Park.

Franklintown's earliest residents were ex slaves. The first Chapel was built in 1892 and was demolished in 1949 during the construction of Florida State Route A1A.

Franklintown Chapel

Franklintown was bought by the Amelia Island Company in 1972 and the Chapel was moved to its current location.

Next to Franklintown Chapel is
Gabriel Means Fellowship Hall
of the Franklintown Episcopal
Methodist Church.

Just down the street from

Fellowship Hall is the

Chapel of the Sacred Heart.

And, there's the beach.

Lewis Street is part of a

National Historic District.

American Beach is a site on the
Florida Black Heritage Trail.

American Beach was developed in 1935 by Abraham Lincoln Lewis

& his company, the African American Insurance Company, as an

ocean side resort for Blacks.

Lewis' plan included his employees

buying homes & vacations spots

for their families.

American Beach was a choice vacation spot from the 1930s through the 1950s. Black luminaries, including author Zora Neale Hurston, singers Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and sports greats Hank Aaron and Joe Lewis vacationed here and were seen often in area restaurants and night clubs.

Hurricane Dora wrecked numerous homes and businesses in 1964. The passage of the Civil Rights Act that year opened up our nation's beaches to everyone. American Beach lost visitors as blacks flocked to the beaches in Jacksonville.

In 2002, American Beach was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The dirt road is soft sand. Eric and I will return to the Amelia Trail and ride back to Peter's Point Beach Front Park.