Unquestionably the 'Father' of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, in 1907 Congressman J. Hampton Moore sponsored a bill to direct the Corps of Engineers to survey the Delaware River in his district for much needed deepening. Bills dealing with such questions were referred to as Rivers and Harbors bills and were passed, generally, every few years [...]
Category: American Legal History
Before eminent domain: the writ of ad quod damnum
Florida did not become a state until 1845. In the Treaty with Spain in 1819, the East and West Floridas would become the Territory of Florida under federal jurisdiction in 1821 until the "territory" became a "state" under the United States Constitution. Most of the meager population inhabited the extreme northern portion of the territory. [...]
President Theodore Roosevelt operating a Dredge in the Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal
The Culebra Cut was the most difficult of all the dredging operations in the digging of the Panama Canal. Capt. David Gaillard, of French Hugenot ancestry, was chief of dredging operations at the Cut and a cousin of Henry Gaillard. Henry had been one of the four original incorporators of the Florida canal company, the [...]
May an indefinitely moored houseboat be subject to federal maritime jurisdiction?
Several years ago, the City of Riviera Beach ("the City") straddling the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) in Florida, arrested a houseboat under federal maritime law and demolished it. The homeowner, Mr. Lozman had lived on his houseboat for more than a dozen years under a lease with the City. The City had sent Lozman several eviction notices [...]
St. Augustine’s anchoring and mooring pilot program tested | StAugustine.com
St. Augustine's anchoring and mooring pilot program tested | StAugustine.com. Under a state pilot program, St. Augustine enacted an ordinance requiring boats to moor at least fifty feet from the navigable channel of the Intracoastal Waterway. One man who has lived aboard his sailboat for eleven years filed suit challenging the law in federal court. [...]
The Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association and Congressman J. Hampton Moore
At the turn of the last century (1895-1920s), something of a renaissance occurred in the political will of the Nation in the demand for inland waterway transportation. More than thirty citizens groups coalesced from all over the country to demand waterway construction to challenge not only the confiscatory tariffs charged by the railways but also [...]
Back to the future: The Great Dismal Swamp Canal
The oldest working canal still in existence, the Dismal Swamp Canal transits through naturalistic views of North Carolina and Virginia. This short video captures a history of the waterway three centuries long, beginning with some of the founders of the Nation making plans for a waterway between North Carolina and Virginia. [Tap the following to [...]
Watermelon Feast on East Coast Canal (Under Construction) at Boynton Beach, Fla. In 1914
By November 1912, according to the terms and conditions of the Settlement Agreement made in 1906, the last of twelve deeds had been delivered by the State of Florida Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund (the State Cabinet) to the Florida canal company conveying in the aggregate more than one million acres of prime east [...]
Commodore Avylen Harcourt Brook (1866-1946)
Commodore Avylen Harcourt Brook was born in Sheffield, England, in 1866 into a family of silver and bronze electroplaters. His early education was in England. Brook studied art under the famous English artist and critic John Ruskin. It was said that one of his 'parlor tricks' was to paint two paintings simultaneously, one with his [...]
Unlike Florida, states like South Carolina must rely on federal funds
Taken at sunset from the Lighthouse Marina at Sea Pines Plantation, one of the largest plantations on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, with several yachts docked awaiting the arrival of more marine vessels for Memorial Day festivities.Beyond the marina, Calibogue Sound is one link in the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and the second largest sound on the [...]
Florida’s Big Dig 