The Highwaymen Heritage Trail

Highwaymen Heritage Trail

The Highwaymen, also referred to as the Florida Highwaymen, are 26 storied, world-renowned African American landscape artists who originated in the City of Fort Pierce. The Highwaymen Heritage Trail is a self-guided engaging and educational experience that recognizes these mostly self-taught landscape artists who have strong local, state, national, and international significance.

We cordially invite you to explore this website which is designed to compliment the Trail’s large kiosks, site markers, and significant public art. It is chocked full of oral histories, professional research, video, and dynamic images that we hope will help convey the plight, fortitude, entrepreneurial spirit, and accomplishments of these late Jim Crow-era African American Florida Hall of Fame artists from Lincoln Park, an iconic minority neighborhood in Fort Pierce.

 

Trail Map 2
Highwaymen Trail Stops


1. Seven Gables House - 482 North Indian River Drive

Fort Pierce’s Visitor Center and the beginning of The Highwaymen Heritage Trail and the location of a Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail information kiosk.

The house was built around 1905. In 1943, it was converted into a brothel that was popular among many servicemen who were stationed in Fort Pierce during WWII. The house was sold at auction in 1987 and became a taxidermy studio. It was donated to the City of Fort Pierce in 1997 was moved to its present location, and restored into the City’s Visitor Center.

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2. A.E. Backus Studio - 122 A.E. Backus Avenue

Former art studio of Albert Ernest “Bean” Backus, a talented and revered Florida landscape artist. Backus is remembered for his impressionistic paintings of Florida and the Caribbean and the mentorship he gave to many of the Florida Highwaymen. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1984. Main Street Fort Pierce purchased the property for their offices in 2005.

PlattBackus

3. Pine Grove Cemetery - 10th Street and Avenue K

Location of decorated graves of three Highwaymen – Alfred Hair, Livingston ‘Castro’ Roberts and Johnny ‘Hook’ Daniels. When Pine Grove Cemetery was started, blacks and whites were still segregated, even at death.

Pine-Grove-Hair

4. Lincoln Park Academy - 1806 Avenue I

Many of the Highwaymen attended Lincoln Park Academy where they received art lessons from Zanobia Jefferson, who introduced future Highwayman Alfred Hair, to A.E. ‘Bean’ Backus. The school’s roots reach back to 1921 when it became the area’s first four-year black high school. When Lincoln Park Academy was accredited in 1928, it was one of only four accredited black high schools in Florida.




LPA

5. The Dunbar House - 2804 Dunbar Street

The home of Alfred and Doretha Hair, their four children, and a popular gathering place for several Highwaymen artists and their helpers. Hair often painted twenty or more Florida scenes in a day here.




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6. Eddie’s Place - 1907 Avenue D

Eddie’s Place was a juke joint where several Florida Highwaymen congregated. Alfred Hair was shot and killed here in a bar fight by Julius Funderburk, a local ranch hand.




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7. Highwaymen Trail Obelisk - Avenue D and 15th Street

This grant-funded 20-foot obelisk features mosaic duplicates of Highwaymen paintings. It was created by noted Florida artist Stephanie Jaffe Werner.




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8. Mary Ann Carroll-  Moore’s Creek Linear Park, Avenue B and 10th Street

Mary Ann Carroll is the only “Highwaywoman” – the lone female of the original twenty-six Florida Hall of Fame awardees. Born in 1940, her family of sharecroppers moved to Fort Pierce when she was 8. Mentored by Highwayman Harold Newton, Mary Ann sold her first painting at 18.

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9. Harold Newton - Moore’s Creek Linear Park, Avenue B and 10th Street

Harold Newton (1934-1994) was a central and founding member of the loose-knit group known as the Florida Highwaymen. Despite his lack of formal training, Newton had an exceptional ability to capture the subtlety and variety of Florida’s coastlines and wetlands. His oil paintings, once sold door-to-door for very modest sums, now bring in the tens of thousands, depending on the scene, composition, and quality.




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10. Intermodal Transit Station - 8th Street and Avenue D

The west wall of the Intermodal Transit Station features 26 engraved plaques that list the names of each artist mounted on a huge mosaic of a colorful Royal Poinciana tree, which was painted by many of the Highwaymen artists in their landscape scenes.

Harold Newton (1934-1994) was a central and founding member of the loose-knit group known as the Florida Highwaymen. Despite his lack of formal training, Newton had an exceptional ability to capture the subtlety and variety of Florida’s coastlines and wetlands. His oil paintings, once sold door-to-door for very modest sums, now bring in the tens of thousands, depending on the scene, composition, and quality.




Intermodal5unches