All week, the St. Johns has been holding center stage. Boat taxis take visitors on the short ride from Northbank to Southbank, and dozens of diversions have been set up along the wooden river walks, already flanked by hotels, restaurants, shops, and other attractions. Patrons high inside Alltel Stadium (near the Northbank) can look down on the river, and folks on the river can look up to the stadium. Jacksonville Jaguar fans are known to view home games on the stadium's wide screens while relaxing on boats docked along the river.
Despite the river's reign here, however, the St. Johns is shared with dozens of communities throughout Florida. As Northern steamboat travelers in the 1880s once did, I visited some of those spots this winter -- by car. For four days, I loosely followed the river's northward-flowing 310 miles, from its marshy headwaters in rural Florida to its widemouthed release into the Atlantic Ocean just above Jacksonville.
Off Highway 60, there are only a few roads in Indian River County between Florida's turnpike and Vero Beach, some 30 miles east, on the Atlantic Ocean. The road is flat and straight. A few cattle ranches can be seen before the land turns into miles of marsh. Middleton's Fish Camp is out here, 5 miles down a rutted dirt road that seems to go nowhere.
This area is the site of a 150,000-acre reclamation project, the Upper St. Johns River Basin Project. By using reservoirs and levees, the St. Johns River Water Management District is trying to restore marshes by working to reverse decades of pollution and other damage.
At the end of the road is Blue Cypress Village, a tiny community of trailer and small-home owners, perched on the side of pristine Blue Cypress Lake, which some call the headwater lake of the St. Johns. There's no marker -- or even consensus -- as to exactly where the St. Johns starts.
Joe Middleton, who has run the fish-camp community with his wife, Jeanne, for 43 years, lives here on this 7-mile-long, 3-mile-wide lake known for its largemouth bass and rows of cypress trees hugging the shore. Indian River County has a small park here, and Middleton lets anglers camp for up to a week for free.
