ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – One of the deadliest stretches of Interstate 95 in St. Johns County has long been the subject of a local legend — and it may be more than just a story.
After our previous coverage of the corridor, more than 40 viewers commented with the same belief: that the highway was built on ancient Native American burial grounds. That response sent Reporter Sophia Vitello digging for answers.
Her first call went to a St. Johns County commissioner and former Florida Highway Patrol trooper who spent years responding to crashes along that stretch of I-95.
“This was all Seminole controlled land,” he said. “I say Seminole, it was the compilation of several different tribes over the 1700s and 1800s and they all lived here. This was their land for a hundred years.”
He says the possibility that the interstate runs through sacred land is very real — and that he’s seen things on that road that are hard to explain.
“I’ve seen some really weird things that happen out here on this road,” he said. “There’s been traffic fatalities that I’ve worked out here that you scratch your head and you go — how does one guy spin off into the woods and not get a scratch, and another person gets in a minor rear-ender and they both die?”
Then a historian raised a question that shifted the entire investigation.
Major highway projects today require archeological and cultural reviews before construction begins. But FDOT confirmed those federal requirements weren’t enacted until 1970.
Key portions of the I-95 corridor in St. Johns County were already built and open to traffic by 1966 — four years before those protections existed.
That gap leaves one central question unanswered: What was underneath the highway before anyone was required to look?
“We don’t know what was here, and we might not ever know,” the commissioner said. “I would love for there to be an opportunity sometime in the future for us to poke around out here.”