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You South Floridians Really Don’t Know The Roads Here (And Neither Do We)

AVERILL HECHT
/
AA ROADS
An old sign for the Dolphin Expressway showing that the road was, indeed, named for the football team.

It turns out the quiz we made testing your knowledge of South Florida road names threw more people than the Santa Slide at the Redlands Flea Market last weekend.

We knew it was a really hard when the WLRN newsroom scored a measly 38 percent. After almost 1,000 people took the quiz, y’all bumped our average to a still-failing but respectable 48 percent, according to our analytics.

Credit Kenny Malone / WLRN
/
WLRN
So many roads, too much traffic.

Read more: Do You Really Know South Florida Roads? You Sure?

Our friends over at The New Tropic included the quiz in their newsletter and asked anyone who scored above 80 to get in touch. Well, Kim Soby wrote in with her score of 86 percent. 

“I get really bored while driving,” said Soby when we called her up to talk about her score. “We spend so much time in traffic, so I get to read the road signs.”

Soby says she can get carried away, so she likes it when her friends drive so she can get distracted by sheets of green metal without consequences.

She attributed the high score to her sign-reading-while-driving regimen, which she bolsters as she drives across the tri-county area as a freelance musician. Also context clues: Willy Chirino Boulevard just did not seem like it belonged in Monroe County.

But wait--she’s only lived in South Florida for five years, so you born-and-bred South Floridians have some flashcards to draw up.

If you haven't taken the quiz, try your hand at it... but don't cheat and look ahead, that's no fun.

While we are 10 points ashamed, as penance, we thought we’d explain some of the most-missed questions:

1. Where is the Barefoot Mailman Memorial Bridge?

Credit FDOT
Restoration efforts on a memorial to the Barefoot Mailman

Just 15 percent of people got this question right in the quiz. Even though the idea of being barefoot in Monroe County seems most likely, the bridge is in fact in Broward County.

Turns out, there is some interesting historyhere. The barefoot mailman was less an individual shoe-less postal worker and more the actual mail route that connected Lake Worth through to Miami in the late 1800s. This was, in fact the first U.S. mail route in the area. Back then there was no easily passable route, so the mailman spent almost a week on foot and on water to complete the drop-offs. The folkloric character is memorialized as part of A1A in Broward County.

Credit Public Domain
Dwight Laing Rogers

2. What is another name for part of Las Olas Blvd?

Named for a former U.S. representative from Florida, Dwight L Rogers, just 32 percent of people associated that name with part of Las Olas. He moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1925 and served in the Florida House from 1930-1938 with a stint as House speaker in 1933. Rogers then went on to the U.S. House from 1945 until his death in 1954. You can find his grave in Lauderdale Memorial Park.

Credit Public Domain
Claude Denson Pepper

3. Claude Pepper Mem Hwy is also what road?

A U.S. senator from 1936 to 1951 and a U.S. representative from 1963 until he died in 1989, Claude Pepper has lent his name to a 33-cent stamp, building No. 31 at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland and a large section of U.S. 27. All of 31 percent of you got this one right.

4. The Dwight David Eisenhower Veterans Mem Hwy is the lesser-known name of what road?

While I-75 was a favorite for this one, alas the behemoth I-95 is the correct answer. Just 31 percent got this correct, so if you didn’t recognize Eisenhower as our country’s 34th president, you have other trivia you need to brush up on first.

5. The bright spot: Alligator Alley is a nickname for what road?

Most of you—69 percent—knew that Alligator Alley was another name for I-75. Claps. It was just one of three questions more than 60 percent of people got correct.

Thanks to everyone who took the quiz!

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