A spiral staircase led to the upper portion where tourists could view the countryside from the bottle cap. Williams of Opelika, who owned the local Nehi bottling company, the Bottle housed a grocery store and gas station on the ground floor. In See Alabama First: The Story of Alabama Tourism, author Tim Hollis writes about the Bottle, a 64-foot-tall wooden replica of a bottle of orange Nehi soda located five miles north of Auburn. 280 south of Birmingham shows up on road maps as Florida Short Route.įor a while in the 1920s, 280 was home to one of Alabama’s first roadside attractions. Highway 80 and running 390 miles from downtown Birmingham to Blichton, Ga., the route branches off to go south and east through Georgia to Florida’s Atlantic coast. The winding road was so traveled by sun-seeking tourists it earned the lasting name of Florida Short Route, as denoted by a billboard from a Tallahassee motel that pointed 287 miles south.Ī branch of U.S. 280 was the quickest drive from Birmingham to Florida’s beaches and the only route to outlying areas such as Chelsea. Before interstates and four-lane highways, U.S.
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