U.S. Highway 90 used to be the main east-west route across the northern part of Florida, till the modern era of the interstate highways. Now most people travel the boring I-10 - faster, of course, but not mearly as pretty a drive.

The east end of this trip isn't actually on highway 90 but in 136 between White Springs and Live Oak. 90 goes from Live Oak to Lake City where 2 major interstates, I-10 and I-75, intersect and where a great deal of people enter Florida, just too busy for SeeNorthFlorida!

White Springs is one of our absolute favorite places in Florida, historic and beautiful. Its the home of the Stephen Foster ("Way Down Upon the Suwannee River") Folk Culture Center State Park, dedicated to the famous composer and to Florida folk culture. White Springs is also the beginning of the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail, even though the river actually starts quite a bit farther north in Fargo, Georgia.

Live Oak and Madison, on Highway 90, are both great old towns to visit with a lot of history and typical North Florida scenery such as the marvelous spreading Live Oak tree that the town of Live Oak is named for. Between these two towns is the Suwannee River State Park with a bluff overlooking where the Withlacoochee River joins the Suwannee.

When you reach Monticello you're in the old deep south cotton plantation country, many open to the public for viewing. Monticello is also known as the most haunted town in Florida, even featuring ghost tours.

This trip ends in our beautiful state capital, Tallahassee, after going through one of the absolute prettiest roads in the state, Highway 90 between there and Monticello. Tallahassee is a very well done mixture of the old and new, still being in the old south plantation country. You can't miss this trip!

This old way, which began as a tribal path and then a Spanish trail, welcomed a railroad route and then a highway beside it. There are four lanes along parts of the road now, but the character of the place hasn't changed much. As a plaque says at Suwannee River State Park, "You now stand on the shores of history."

In the late 1920's, Monticello Nursery Company was the second largest pecan and ornamental shrubbery concern in the southeast. The Monticello Nursery donated plants to the county unemployment relief commission to be used for beatification of highways, churchyards, and cemeteries in late 1932. The Coastal Roads Company of Miami received a $20,175.82 contract from the state road department in 1935 to beautify and improve the highway from Tallahassee to Monticello and to clean up the many dead stumps along the right-of-way across Lake Miccosukee. The Tallahassee-to-Monticello highway employed 45 common laborers at 30 cents per hour for an average of $39.00 per month.

The donated right-of-way of what became US 90 varies between forty and two hundred feet. Its background, middle and foreground plantings consist of bwtween 35,000 and 40,000 donated pyracantha, arbor vitae, flowering crape myrtle, liqustrum and palms. Mahan donated between 35,000 and 40,000 plants along the 25 miles between Monticello and the capital. They were set out over a period of eight years. Recent additions of crepe myrtles every 100 feet, from the intersection of I-10 and US 90 east of Tallahassee, for 18 miles to the edge of Monticello present a spectacular range of brilliant colors throughout the summer months. Additionally, highway east of Monticello is lined with hundreds of rather strange little round bushes. Nothing further is known about these at this time. We promise some good pictures of the flowering crepe myrtles between Tallahassee and Monticello in the summer of 2008.