When U.S. Alternate 301 in Starke was built in 2019, business owners thought it would drive away all their customers. But five years later, the Starke Truck Route, which locals call the bypass, hasn’t ruined local businesses as expected. Instead, it’s caused a different problem – traffic accidents.
According to the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office, the roughly six-mile stretch that runs from Jacksonville to Sarasota and passes right through the center of town is responsible for the most traffic accidents in the entire county.
Since 2019, BCSO said there have been 281 crashes on the bypass, mostly in the south intersection where it reconnects with the original highway. This averages about one crash per week.
According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles crash dashboard, Bradford County experienced 1,496 total crashes between September 2019 when the bypass was built and December 2024. This means the route accounted for 18.8% of all crashes in the county, or nearly one in five.
The north and south intersections take up most of the sheriff’s department’s time, according to Chief Deputy Brad Smith. He said the layout of the southbound intersection poses unique challenges to drivers.
“Visually, especially in the southbound direction, you’re kind of in a curve coming into the intersection, it’s a downhill slope,” Smith said. “It’s hard for me, just as a person driving in traffic, to see that change where you’re coming into an intersection.”
Smith said monthly meetings between the Florida Department of Transportation, the sheriff’s office and Florida Highway Patrol about the rate of accidents have yielded little result.
“ The accidents have slowed somewhat, but there's still quite a few,” Smith said.
FDOT spokesperson Tracy Hisler-Pace said in an email statement to WUFT the department has several safety improvement projects occurring on the bypass, including adding more lighting on the off-ramps of State Road 100 and State Road 16 and “advanced warning beacons” at the south intersection of the truck route.
Hisler-Pace also said in the email that the crash data provided by BCSO differs from records in Florida's official state crash database. Depending on how searches are worded, Hisler-Pace said the database can yield different results. Crashes in intersections are often categorized differently than crashes on a roadway, which can lead to confusion when pulling records.
Smith said BCSO pulled crash data from the beginning of one intersection to the end of the other intersection when coming up with the number of crashes.

Despite the increase in accidents, local business owners’ original fears of the bypass driving away customers haven’t panned out as expected.
Because the original U.S. 301 cuts across the state between two major metropolitan areas, Starke Mayor Andy Redding said large semi trucks used to drive straight through town, often staying in the left lane and blocking local drivers.
“So you have people continually trying to divert and get around that traffic,” Redding said. “We do not have that type of congestion now.”
The main fear when the bypass was built was that local businesses would lose customers driving through the town who stop to eat or shop on their way. But Redding said those fears haven’t come to fruition.
“ It doesn't matter how beautiful it is, how nice it is. If you are someone passing through and it's congested, it's very busy, it takes you 20 minutes to go a couple miles, you're not going to want to stay around,” Redding said. “Those individuals are not the ones staying here actually doing commerce in Starke.”
Pamela Snider, who owns Grannie’s Country Cookin’ Restaurant located on 301, said the semi-truck traffic going through town used to be the worst.
“ I called it Hell's Highway,” Snider said. “And I didn't drive on it unless I had to.”
Now, Snider said traffic on the highway has eased a lot.
“ They put the bypass in and I thought I would lose a lot of my business, but it helped my business because it opened up 301 from all the trucks, and people could turn and get in here now,” Snider said.
Snider said the people of Starke are sometimes slow to accept change, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beneficial.
“ The older people don't like it too good,” she said. “I've been here for 21 years. I came from Savannah, Georgia, to open up this restaurant and I have a grandchild who's growing up here. So I like it. I like the changes that have been made.”
Whether or not the town of Starke continues to change, residents say they’ll always hold on to the small-town charm that brought them there.