Take a trip along the highways and back roads of western Nassau and its small town neighbor in this five-part series: Traveling Western Nassau. Visit Boulogne, Hilliard, Callahan, Bryceville and St. George, Ga., highlighting the area’s history while telling today’s story.
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Hilliard beckons beyond Boulogne with a past that connects commerce and travelers to western Nassau.
Located south on U.S. 1 about 5 miles from Boulogne, Zan’s Bazzar Salon and Boutique serves male and female clients, lending itself as a hub for conversation. Customer Jaime Bare enjoys the familiarity.
“It’s like going to have coffee with your friends, but you get your hair done at the same time,” Bare said. “It’s hard to explain. But that’s how it is in a small town.”
Stylist Lisa Clark has styled Bare’s hair for 16 years. She visited the salon to have a deeper shade of red added to her hair. The salon is located at the rear of a boutique that features clothes, boots, jewelry and home furnishings.
Bare remarked on Hilliard’s closely-knit community.
“Even if you don’t know someone personally, you feel like you know them because the other person knows the person who knows them,” she said. “It’s weird.”
Decades earlier as mom and pop hotels sprung up along the highway to fulfill the need for accommodations, the Dixie Motel opened its doors to guests.
For the past several months, hotel manager Gerald Fischer II has worked to restore rooms and return it to its former glory. Two family members also work at the hotel.
Fischer told how a stainless steel sink stamped with the year 1929 was onsite. The damaged sink was removed as part of a renovation project.
“We’re just trying to bring it back to what people remember it was,” he said.
The Dixie Motel sign still stands, slightly modified with a red arrow pointing toward the 17-room motel. The site also has one apartment available for weekly rental.
Tourists still stop to visit the iconic emblem.
“They come by, they stop and take pictures of the sign,” Fischer said.
The motel now serves guests and long-term renters, as lodgers embed to transition into the area. Special rental rates run $35 per night, $150 per week and $500 per month.
The motel and its sign are just one of the landmarks that links Hilliard to its timber and aviation history.
Though mills were first recorded as early as the 1770s, the timber industry grew from a May 23, 1878 lease agreement between W.H. Jones and Company of Nassau County and the town’s namesake, Cuyler Hilliard and James Bailey, according to Yesterday’s Reflection II author Jan Johannes. The 12-year agreement provided 12,000 acres of land, timber rights and utilization of a tram road that was under construction from Kings Ferry to Jonesville.
Kings Ferry figured into the deal temporarily, as the two men relocated a milling operation there. Timber was loaded onto ships that arrived from Fernandina Beach via the St. Marys River before the tram providing access to Kings Ferry was finished.
The community grew as a commissary, schools and other businesses sprang up to support the timber industry and subsequent population growth. Though timber dwindled from harvesting in the 1900s, Hilliard’s incorporated area flourished as the Federal Aviation Association dedicated an air traffic control center on March 26, 1961. Taking two years to build, on April 9, 1960 then-Mayor David “Buck” Buchanan and citizens held an open house day, welcoming FAA employees with a parade and additional festivities that attracted 3,000 guests to the new center, according to Johannes.
The Jacksonville Air Route Control Center currently employs more than 320 controllers, 10 staff specialists, 85 airway facilities employees, support personnel and numerous contract employees, according to its website.
State Road 115, County Road 108, County Road 121, hundreds of paved streets, gravel, dirt roads and trails, many of them with colorful monikers comprise the area’s road system within the incorporated and unincorporated areas of Hilliard.
Cookie Trail leads to a residence near C.R. 108 a few miles past River Road. Other colorful residential street signs, either county maintained or private, include Doggone, Ghost Rider and Utopia trails, Forbidden and Memory lanes and Karma Way.
With the ebb and flow of commerce, Hilliard and outlying areas in western Nassau are still quaint compared to the hustle and bustle of Jacksonville.
Those at Zan’s Bazzar have grown accustomed to the rural setting.
“There’s not a lot to do, but it’s home,” Clark said.
“It’s quiet and that’s always a good thing,” Bare interjected.