Behind an Advance Auto parts lies the Brookside Historical Cemetery. It is a perfect example of an old Florida cemetery. African-American and White sections contain many of the founding families from the small agriculture centered community of Fellsmere which was founded in 1911. The cemetery is much older however and is one of the oldest cemeteries in Indian River County. The land for the cemetery was donated to the city of Fellesmere by Fellsmere Farms in 1916 but there are unmarked graves in the oldest section of the cemetery from the 1880's. Brookside contains an array of markers, homemade brick, cement, and modern engraved granite. Prominent people are buried here as well as the the lesser known turpentine workers who worked in the pine camps that is now the St. Sebastian River State Buffer Preserve. The city of Fellsemere maintains the cemetery. Across from the historic cemetery is the entrance to another piece of history, the rails to trails project. The abandoned Trans-Florida Central Railway trails have been turned into hiking trails. The trail is a 2-mile hiking and biking pathway sitting in a former railroad corridor that once connected Sebastian and Fellsmere. The centerpiece of the trail is the iconic bridge over Interstate-95 where the name of the trail is displayed prominently in huge letters across the span of the bridge. It was designed to look like an old trail bridge. Though the railroad trail is about 15 miles long, only 2 miles of trail have been completed. read more

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