Route #80 Bryant – 20 Mile Bend – Geerworth

Route #80 covers 56 round-trip miles in Palm Beach County, within the agricultural region known as The Glades, southeast of Lake Okeechobee. This area, once part of the Everglades, was drained and reshaped through levees and canals to support sugar cane cultivation, which remains central to the local economy. The route reveals the remains of settlements that grew around sugar mills and vanished when production declined.

The journey begins in Bryant, a former company town linked to the sugar industry, and follows Conners Highway toward 20 Mile Bend, a key junction between the Atlantic coast and the lake. Along the way, vast crop fields, drainage canals, and water treatment areas illustrate the large-scale hydraulic system created to manage floods and agricultural runoff.

The final segment reaches Nine Mile Bend, where the town of Geerworth once stood before being destroyed by fires and floods in the 1920s. Today, only open fields and wetlands remain, highlighting the contrast between intensive agriculture and environmental restoration in a landscape reshaped by human intervention.

This route can be found in Discovering Florida – Volume 4.