Flagler Executive

Marker for the original Daytona-Ormond Beach measured mile, where Ransom Olds, Henry Ford, William Vanderbilt, and Barney Oldfield set land speed records on the hard-packed sand from 1902 to 1907. Olds set the first record at 50mph in 1902; by 1907 Fred Marriott had gone 127mph in a steam-powered Stanley before crashing. The hard sand era ended when speeds outgrew the available run length and the Bonneville Salt Flats took over in 1914.

NASCAR's cathedral — the 2.5-mile tri-oval where the Daytona 500 has run every February since 1959. Built by Bill France Sr. to replace beach racing, which had run on Daytona's hard-packed sand from 1903. The high-banked turns (31°) require purpose-built stock cars; speeds approach 200mph. Adjacent to KDAB; pilots can taxi to the FBO ramp and watch race traffic from the field during Speed Weeks.

The world's largest residential airpark — 1,400+ homes built around a 4,000ft runway (private 7FL6), 5,000 residents, most homes with attached hangars. John Travolta based his Boeing 707 here in the 1990s, but noise complaints pushed him out; he moved the jet to the Jumbolair airpark near Ocala, where he lives today. The community has its own gates, restaurants, and country club. Pirep counts this as an aviation pilgrimage even if you can't land — KDAB is 8 miles north and offers Uber access to the public Spruce Creek dining at The Tail Wind. The fly-in lifestyle made tangible.

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-founded settlement in the continental United States — Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed on September 8, 1565, 42 years before Jamestown and 55 years before the Pilgrims. The Castillo de San Marcos anchors one end of the historic district. Two more landmarks sit just a few miles away. The St. Augustine Lighthouse is the current black-and-white spiral-banded tower on Anastasia Island, completed in 1874. It stands 165 feet tall, with 219 steps to the watch room. A wooden tower on the same spot served from 1824; before that, the Spanish built a wooden watchtower here in the 1500s — making it the longest continuously operating lighthouse station in Florida. The current tower is a working aid to navigation (active light, USCG-maintained) and a working museum. Generations of climbers have left graffiti carved into the masonry; the lighthouse has been featured on Ghost Adventures and Travel Channel paranormal shows due to the 1873 drowning of three children near the construction site. Henry Flagler — Standard Oil partner, then the most powerful man on the East Coast of Florida — discovered St. Augustine on his honeymoon in 1883 and decided to make it the "American Riviera." He built three luxury hotels here: the Hotel Ponce de Leon (1888), the Hotel Alcazar (1888), and the smaller Casa Monica (1888). The Ponce was the first major building in the US made of poured concrete — coquina aggregate and cement, hand-mixed by Black laborers — and the first American hotel wired for electricity, by Thomas Edison personally. The interior includes Tiffany stained glass commissioned from Louis Comfort Tiffany. Today the Ponce is the centerpiece of Flagler College. Flagler used St. Augustine as the launchpad for the Florida East Coast Railway — the railroad that extended all the way to Key West by 1912, crossing the Seven Mile Bridge.