Standard (left) and toll (right) State Road shields
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System information | |
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Notes: | State Roads are generally state-maintained. |
Highway names | |
Interstates: | Interstate X (I-X) |
US Highways: | U.S. Highway X (US X) |
State: | State Road X (SR X) |
County: | County Road X (CR X) |
System links | |
In the mid-1970s, the Florida Department of Transportation (formerly the State Road Department) started a sequence of events that eventually resulted in the transferral of hundred of miles of roadway from State of Florida maintenance to county control. The first step was the addition of an "S-" or "C-" prefix onto the original FDOT designation ("S" represented "secondary"; "C" represented "county"). State Road signs started disappearing from the "C" roads and were replaced by blue pentagonal county road signs in the early 1980s; the transition of "S" roads to county control took a bit longer (some state road signs with S-prefixes remain standing two decades after the transfer to county control). Many roads that were decommissioned in later years skipped the prefix step.
While the transition occurred throughout the State of Florida, the area most dramatically affected by this process was Florida south of State Road 70 (SR 70) (which runs from Bradenton to Fort Pierce). While other state roads had portions turned into county control (for example, SR 29, SR 31, SR 78, SR 707, SR 780, SR 880, SR 884, and SR 951), entire state roads in southern Florida disappeared from the FDOT lists. Many decommissioned roads in the Treasure Coast and Space Coast occurred in sparsely-populated areas, including orange groves and wetlands.