County Road 515 (Brevard County, Florida)

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County Road 515 is a north-south county highway in Brevard County, Florida adjacent to the Indian River between Sharpes and Rockledge that once served as a part of Dixie Highway and U.S. Route 1. It is a favorite route of bicyclists, and was once a state highway called State Road 515. Widely called The Scenic Road, it is also known as North Indian River Drive (north of SR 520), Brevard Avenue (in downtown Cocoa), and Rockledge Drive (south of SR 520). In the mid-1970s, the Florida Department of Transportation added an “S” prefix to the numbers of SR 515 and a number of other State Roads throughout the state to indicate their “secondary” status as a first step toward relegating the routes to county maintenance and County Road designation. A decade later, the “State Road S-515” signs started to disappear from The Scenic Road.

The residents and officials of Brevard County continue to refer to The Scenic Road as both CR 515 and SR 515 – both notations have been used recently in county ordinances (signage is banned from the side of most of SR/CR 515). Commonly-available road maps conflict on the proper designation of The Scenic Road, but documents from FDOT leave no doubt that the 14-mile (23 km)-long route is now under county maintenance. Excluding a section crossing SR 520 in Cocoa, SR/CR 515 is a scenic and often tranquil road, relatively undisturbed by automobile traffic to the relative handfuls of houses along the western side of the pavement. Both the northern and southern termini are intersections with US 1. It is part of the 130-mile (209 km) long Indian River Lagoon Scenic Highway.