The routes travel deep into rural Florida, visiting active towns, forgotten communities, and numerous ghost towns shaped by the rise and collapse of railroads, logging camps, phosphate mining, cattle ranching, and agricultural frontiers. For the first time in the series, the journey enters Gilchrist and Dixie counties, while also revisiting large territories in Levy, Marion, Putnam, Nassau, Duval, Alachua, Citrus, and beyond.
Each route combines first-hand bicycle travel with detailed historical context, tracing Florida’s layered past from Indigenous cultures such as the Timucua, Seminole, Creek, and Potano, through Spanish missions, 19th-century conflicts, railroad expansion, racial segregation, and the environmental consequences of modern development.
The book passes through major river systems including the Suwannee, St. Johns, Withlacoochee, and Ocklawaha, as well as state forests, wildlife management areas, historic ports, abandoned settlements, and remote backroads rarely seen by visitors. Springs, sinkholes, rail trails, barrier islands, and interior farmland all form part of the landscape.
Discovering Florida 5 is not a cycling manual or a conventional travel guide. It is a geographical and historical record, observed slowly from secondary roads, former rail corridors, and the saddle of a bicycle.
This volume continues the five-book English series and continues the larger project of documenting Florida route by route, without shortcuts or idealization.
Publication date: December 31, 2025
Language: English
Print length: 143 pages
ISBN-13: 979-8242002913
Formats: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover
Amazon: Click Link
Google Play Books: Click Link
Explore the Complete Series
This book is part of an ongoing collection documenting a decade-long bicycle journey across Florida.
