Brooksville: a county seat with hills

Drive into Brooksville from any direction and the road climbs. That is not a common sensation in Florida, and it is the first thing visitors comment on. The town sits in the Brooksville Ridge, a band of higher, hillier terrain running through this part of the state, and the streets were laid out to follow it rather than to flatten it.

The courthouse square

Brooksville has been the seat of Hernando County government since the nineteenth century, and the historic courthouse remains the anchor of the downtown. Around it are brick commercial buildings from the era when this was the county's commercial center rather than one node among several.

The downtown is compact and walkable, which is precisely what makes it worth an afternoon. Local shops, restaurants and offices occupy the older buildings, and the scale is human in a way newer development along the highways is not.

History that is not simple

The town is named after Preston Brooks, the South Carolina congressman best remembered for beating Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate in 1856 over the question of slavery. That naming was a deliberate political statement at the time.

Local institutions including the Hernando Heritage Museum, housed in the May-Stringer House, hold and interpret the county's history, and the fuller version of that history is more complicated and more interesting than a plaque allows.

Getting there and around

Brooksville sits near the junction of US 41 and State Road 50, with the Suncoast Parkway a short drive west. The Good Neighbor Trail runs east from town toward the Withlacoochee State Trail, giving cyclists a paved route out of downtown and into the forest.

If you want to understand Hernando County rather than just visit its coastline, start here.

Cover photo: DanTD / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source.