Florida State Road 3
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| State Road 3 |
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| Maintained by FDOT | |||||||||
| Formed: | 1945 renumbering (definition) | ||||||||
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| South end: |  SR 520 near Cocoa |
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| North end: |   SR A1A/SR 528 in Indianola |
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State Road 3, also known as North Courtenay Parkway, is a north-south road serving as the southern access for the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida. The shortest of the one-digit Florida State Roads, its southern terminus is an intersection with SR 520 on Merritt Island, near Cocoa.
Ironically, not one inch of the original alignment of SR 3 is in the current route. Until the opening of the Emory L. Bennett Causeway in the 1960s, the route to KSC was signed SR A1A as A1A was routed across the Banana River on the Merritt Island Causeway (SR 520) - and was, in fact, cosigned with SR 520 - and then northward along North Tropical Trail through Kennedy Space Center to an intersection with the former SR 402 (now Brevard County Road 402) near the shore of Mosquito Lagoon in the (present-day) Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville.
In the meantime, SR 3 extended along the length of Tropical Trail from US 1 near Oak Hill to the southern tip of Merritt Island, where it crosses the Banana River on the Mathers Bridge (a swing span drawbridge) before turning south on South Patrick Drive (present day SR 513) and crossing the Indian River back to the mainland on the Eau Gallie Causeway (present day SR 518) and terminating at U.S. Route 1 (SR 5) in Melbourne. Between then-SR 402 and SR 520, SR 3 was cosigned with SR A1A.
The openings of the Emory L. Bennett Causeway and the Pineda Causeway (in 1971) triggered a massive transformation of SR 3. The former shifted SR A1A to the north (to the newly-extended Bee Line Expressway) as SR 3 was realigned to cover North Courtenay Parkway and provide the access to the Kennedy Space Center (the segment north of KSC lost its SR 3 and A1A signs); the latter prompted the establishment of South Patrick Drive as the primary southern access to Patrick Air Force Base as SR 513.
In 1976, the Florida Department of Transportation added a "C-" prefix to the signs on the stretch south of SR 520 and started the transition from State Road 3 to Brevard County Road 3 -- yet a handful of "State Road C-3" signs are still posted on Tropical Trail near the southern tip of Merritt Island.
In the late 1970s there was speculation that SR 3 would be extended along South Courtenay Parkway to serve Merritt Island Airport, but no firm plans for such an extension were proposed by FDOT, and the configuration of SR 3 has remained the same since the late 1970s.
