Florida's 5th congressional district

Florida's 5th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Florida. It stretches from Jacksonville to Orlando. It is one of the most-gerrymandered congressional districts in the country.

From 2002 to 2013 the district comprised all of Citrus, Hernando, and Sumter counties and most of Lake, Levy, and Pasco counties and portions of Marion and Polk counties. The district included northern exurbs of Tampa and western exurbs of Orlando within the high-growth Interstate 4 Corridor.

The district is currently represented by Democrat Corrine Brown.

Historical district boundaries

Florida's 3rd Congressional District was renumbered to 5th Congressional District but was little changed in the redistricting process in 2012, still winding from Orlando in the south to central Jacksonville in the north.

From 1973 to 1993 the erstwhile 3rd district was based in Orange County, including Walt Disney World and most of Orlando. The peculiar shape of the 3rd (now 5th) Congressional District dates from reapportionment done by the Florida Legislature after the 1990 U.S. Census. The 1993–2012 3rd Congressional District was geographically distinctive. Starting from the southern part of the district, it included the Pine Hills area of the Orlando-Kissimmee Metropolitan Area with small pockets of African-American neighborhoods in the cities of Sanford, Gainesville, Palatka, and finally the larger African American communities of Jacksonville. Connecting these areas were regions which are sparsely populated—either expansive rural areas or narrow strips which are only a few miles wide.Barack Obama received 73% of the vote in this district in the 2008 Presidential election.

Florida State Road 5

State Road 5 (SR 5) is a mostly-unsigned state highway in the state of Florida. It is mainly signed as US 1 from its south end in Key West, Florida to Jacksonville, Florida, and US 17 from Jacksonville to the Georgia state line at the Saint Marys River. US 1 is SR 15 northwest from Jacksonville.

However, from northern Lantana through Lake Worth to Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach, SR 5 is separate from US 1, which runs to the west on the older but wider Dixie Highway. Here, SR 5 runs along a road named Olive Avenue.

Route description

SR 5 uses the parallel Olive Avenue from just north of County Road 812 (Lantana Road) in Lantana until Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach, where it turns west one block to rejoin Dixie Highway and US 1. Olive Avenue and Dixie Highway are parallel and extremely close to each other for this entire length. Olive Avenue is also signed as Federal Highway, but this name is not used as much.

History

Until around 2004, Olive Avenue carried northbound US 1 (and SR 5) north from Dixie Highway (new US 1 / SR 805) to SR A1A. In 2004, US 1 was re-routed onto Dixie Highway without SR 5. Afterwards, FDOT started periodically relinquishing SR 5 in fragments between July 1, 2004 and April 7, 2011. FDOT has relinquished all of former SR 5 in the city of West Palm Beach. Therefore, SR 5 has a gap starting at the West Palm Beach-Lake Worth city line, and resumes at the US 1 intersection with Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach.