This student driven program allows students to learn legislative protocol, formulate arguments and practice debate techniques by learning to "debate ideas not people." 

   Involved senior high school students are routinely rewarded with scholarships, college credit with two years of involvement, community recognition and most importantly the self-awareness and confidence to be leaders, says Tia Loftin of sponsoring YMCA.

   Program cost is $75 including all materials, tee shirt and an assembly experience at the County Auditorium.

For more information email Tia Loftin, TCraig@firstcoastymca.org or St Augustine YMCA 904-471-9622 ext 8.

   And visit the state website www.floridayig.net.  

   September 8, 2015, St. Augustine commemorated its 450th anniversary. That same month was the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Old Spanish Trail, America's first transcontinental highway, from St. Augustine to San Diego along the trails of early Spanish missions and forts.

   In September, 1915, a coalition of businessmen presented the concept to the national Jackson Highway meeting in Nashville.

   Harral Ayres, managing director and driving force of the Old Spanish Trail Association, called it a highway "following the footsteps of the Padres and Conquistadores."

   The Old Spanish Trail got its start in a city with little claim to Spanish history, Mobile Alabama, founded in 1702 as a French colony and coming only briefly under Spanish rule between 1783 and 1813.

   It was envisioned as "afford(ing) tourists the ability to see Florida towns, come through Mobile and go west along the Mississippi coast through New Orleans and to California."

   Unlike other Southern transcontinental highways that stitched together existing roads across the continent's relatively flat and dry midsection, much of the Old Spanish Trail was forged over formerly impassable swamplands in the Southeast, including five major outlets into the Gulf. Along with these geographical impediments, the Old Spanish Trail Association protested that the uncooperativeness of individual states and the federal government ultimately hampered its completion.

   The Old Spanish Trail was completed in 1929 at a cost of more than $80,000,000, and was billed as the most expensive and most highly engineered of all the transcontinental trails.

   To celebrate the completion, St. Augustine hosted a three-day gala, including the dedication of a six-foot diameter coquina stone monument marking the beginning of the trail. A representative of the King of Spain dedicated the trail and honored Ayres with the title of Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Isabel la Catolica.

   At the dedication Ayres praised the work of the association, and challenging people "to go on with this work and keep this far-southern land a joy for travelers for years to come and a memorial to all that is good in that age of art and chivalry and adventure and great mission works."

   The lure of the Old Spanish Trail continued to captivate travelers until the early 1960s, when new interstates redirected traffic off the old road. Interstate 10 replaced much of the historic trail; itruns from Jacksonville to Santa Monica CA.