Young men after a day of fishing in the Indian River in the early 1900’s near Titusville, Florida. The Indian River is today often referred to as a lagoon. It has no origin or mouth and few characteristics of what we commonly call a river. Some, however, refer to the Indian River as part of the Indian River Lagoon system. It is broad and shallow like much of the southern parts of today’s Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. In the 1880s only flat-botttom steamers could navigate parts of the River dredged by the Florida canal company as early as the mid-1880s to a depth of 5 feet and marked for navigation. Some stretches are as wide as 4 miles; others like the Indian River Narrows barely permitted the narrowest of small tourist steamers to navigate the southern reaches of the waterway.
Courtesy, Collection of the author.
Florida’s Big Dig 