Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The landscaped section of U.S. Highway 90 between Monticello and the Leon County line is about to get some sprucing up and restoration work.
Or so Jefferson County Commission Chairwoman Betsy Barfield recently informed the board. Barfield told her colleagues on Thursday, Oct. 17, that the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) had reached out to her with a plan to return Jefferson County's stretch of the scenic highway to a semblance of its former glory.
“U.S. 90 is going to be spruced up,” Barfield said. “The FDOT is going to give it special treatment.”
She said the FDOT was proposing to enhance the view of the ornamentals along both sides of the highway by cutting back the overhanging limbs and other growth that was encroaching on them.
“The FDOT's going to limb up the trees to 25 feet from the ground,” Barfield said. “If a limb is less than 25 feet from the ground, it will be cut off. And if overhangs a crepe myrtle, it will be limbed up to 35 feet.”
Additionally, she said, the miscellaneous bushes and
undergrowth presently crowding the shoulders of the road and encroaching on the ornamentals would be vertically mowed, making for clearer corridors on both sides.
The idea, she said, was to expose the crepe myrtles and other ornamentals and make them more visible so that they could be better appreciated, especially during the blooming season.
Barfield said the FDOT plans to do a test cut on a small section of the highway in the near future to see how the change will be received.
“It will look ugly to begin with,” Barfield said. “But it will shape up once the trees come back green.”
She underscored that the section of highway within the City of Monticello would be left intact to preserve its canopy.
A FDOT-hired contractor is to do the work, which Barfield said she expected would begin in a couple of months. She called the enhancement project an extension of the work that the FDOT did several years ago, when it pruned the crepe myrtles.
Variously called Mahan Drive, the Old Spanish Trail or simply U.S. 90, the section of the highway between Monticello's west side and Tallahassee has special historical significance to the local community, as it was Jefferson County businessman and horticulturist Fred Mahan who made the road's beautification possible.
As the journals tell it, it was Mahan's donations of thousands of crepe myrtles and other trees in the early 1930s that led to the stretch of U.S. 90 being celebrated for years as one of Florida's most beautiful roads. And for which contribution Mahan, who died in 1960, was honored in 1953 by having the particular stretch of U.S. 90 designated as Mahan Drive.
A monument to Mahan stands on the easternmost edge of the Sgt. Ernest “Boots” Thomas Jr. Memorial Park, just off West Washington Street, marking the official start of the 26-mile-long Mahan Drive.
The monument, incidentally, stands on ground that once was part of Mahan’s Monticello Nursery Company, which in the late 1920s was ranked the second largest pecan and ornamental shrubbery nursery in the Southeast.
In 1935, the state awarded a Miami-based company a $20,175.82 contract to improve and beautify the 26-mile stretch of U.S. 90 between Monticello and Tallahassee, for which project Mahan donated between 35,000 and 40,000 plants that included pyracanthas, arbor vitae, ligustrum, palms and crepe myrtles.
In an article published in Coronet Magazine in 1952, Mahan is described as a “nurseryman-philanthropist (whose) unique hobby had transformed many a drab, unlovely spot into breathtaking beauty.” The article called Mahan, “A strange philanthropist who bestows beauty instead of dollars,” and who had “devoted nearly a third of his 65 years to spreading scenic bounty across the state he loves.”
At the time, it was estimated that Mahan had donated nearly 400,000 trees and shrubs to schools, churches, cemeteries, hospitals, parks, squares and public thoroughfares across the state.
In the early 1990s, the FDOT proposed cutting down the crepe myrtles and other trees alongside U.S. 90 for safety reasons, claiming the trees posed a liability. An outcry arose in Monticello at the idea of cutting the beloved trees, and the FDOT backed off the proposal.
Subsequently, however, the agency adopted a policy of benign neglect toward the trees, which hands-off approach seemed designed to accomplish the original goal through attrition, as trees that died, were toppled by storms or knocked over by vehicles or utility contractors were not replaced.
The hands-off practice resulted not only in scruffy crepe myrtles that in time were overtaken by other growth, but it left many spots on the road empty of the trees, making for interruptions in the symmetrical flow of the rowed ornamentals.
In recent years, however, the FDOT has again adopted a more proactive approach to the care of the trees. It can only be hoped that the agency will in time replace some of the missing crepe myrtles, making for a true restoration of the road's former glory.
You must be logged in to post a comment.