LEON COUNTY - Canopy Roads

While Leon County's other six designated canopy roads (Old Bainbridge, Meridian, Centerville, Miccosukee, St.Augustine and Old Centerville) were described in the nineteenth century as "spokes in a wheel" emanating from Tallahassee, Sunny Hill Road reflects a hard clay backwoods road that linked both the plantations and hamlets near the Florida-Georgia border. Antebellum planters and farmers in the Red Hills used a network of roads to haul Sea Island cotton to the Gulf ports of Magnolia, Newport, and St. Marks for shipment to Northern markets and England. Today, the only remnants of the antebellum plantation culture along Sunny Hill Road are the family cemeteries of the Ponders and Manning's. The road itself, however, with its high red clay embankments and cathedral tunnel of green that once shaded the cotton wagon driver are visual reminders of the road's history. Sunny Hill Road has a rich history and its scenic beauty has been preserved. It joins Leon County's other designated canopy roads as a treasured community asset.