Armstrong celebrates Third Annual Rails to Trails Festival

Malinda Peeples has informed local Historic City News reporters that this weekend the Sea Community Gullah-Geechee organization will hold its 3rd Annual “Rails to Trails” festival; honoring the Gullah-Geechee ancestors and neighbors from the small St Johns County community that now forms our connection to the National Park Service Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.

The free festival, held in Armstrong off SR-207, will include a film showing dancer’s, a poem reading in Gullah-Geechee from direct Gullah-Geechee descendant, Derek Boyd Hankerson, music pickers, fun walks, bike rides, arts and crafts, home cooking, music, and a farmers market.

“From the 1680s, enslaved Africans fled from the chattel British colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia seeking freedom and refuge and establishing Maroon settlements in Spanish Florida; such as Fort Mose, Angola, Fort St. Nicholas, and other posts,” Peeples told reporters. “In an effort to combine culture, history, travel and tourism, the local Gullah-Geechee community is promoting cycling trails that run atop old railroad ties laid by Florida East Coast Railroad — giving Armstrong the distinction of being the only community along the Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor that is home to 3 bicycle trails.”

The National Park Service, St. Johns County, Department of Environmental Protection, Rails to Trails Conservancy, Sea Island Loop, and the East Coast Greenways all have trail heads in Armstrong.

Armstrong was established on October 5, 1900. Its origins date to about 1886 when it was known as “Cokesbury” — one of the oldest African American settlements in St. Johns County. Development centered on the nearby saw mill until the town was formally laid out in 1911.

The festival times are Friday, December 5th, from 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. and Saturday, December 6th, from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. For more information contact Malinda Peeples (904) 806-3939, Kathy Taylor (904) 824-5314 or Margaret Murray (904) 692-3561.