Florida’s Big Dig
The story of the Intracoastal and other thoughts on water, waterways, land, and ecology
Category: Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway
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Outboard motorboat towing a house on the Indian River portion of the Intracoastal Waterway near Rockledge, Fla. Courtesy, Ralph Crawford.
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Home first of Charles S. Bradley, former Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and father of George L. Bradley. By the late 1880s, George Bradley became the primary financier of the construction of the privately owned Florida Coast Line Canal & Transportation Company which would later become Florida’s Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. George grew…
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Born in Providence, R.I., in 1846, George Lothrop Bradley had made three fortunes by the time he had become the largest investor in the Florida waterway. Bradley made his first fortune investing in the Newport Mining Company, a square-mile iron mine property along the Michigan upper peninsula-Wisconsin border, in the late 1870s. The mine would produce…
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Young barefooted boys digging for clams along the western sandy shore of the Indian River ca. 1900, with a long dock draped in nets in the background. Courtesy, collection of the author.
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Owned by Commodore Avylen Harcourt Brook, the sloop Klyo “rescued” President-elect Warren G. Harding (in white pants, waving the hat) when the houseboat in which he had cruised hit a “snag” on the poorly maintained–and privately owned–Florida East Coast Canal (after 1929, the Intracoastal Waterway) at Fort Lauderdale in 1921. Born in Sheffield, England, in…
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Dipper dredge in a difficult “dry” cut near Delray Beach. The dipper dredge used an A-frame for stability. Long posts on the corners were driven into the bottom of what appears to be shallow water. The dipper scooped up the bottom consisting of soil and rock, depositing the spoil on either side and building up…
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One of the older steamboats plying the waters of what was then called the Florida East Coast Canal, the “Courtney” carried mostly passengers on short trips along the Florida East Coast in the 1890’s. Henry Flagler, then president of both the Florida East Coast Railway and the Florida canal company, cruised into Miami on the…
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A narrow steamer carrying tourists in the Jupiter Narrows section of what was then called the Florida East Coast Canal (now, Intracoastal Waterway), as the Indian River narrowed down into Lake Worth. In some stretches of the Narrows, steamers of ordinary width stopped and started their way through a brush-lined privately owned tollway in the…
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The “Swan” plied what was then called the Florida East Coast Canal (later, the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway) during the early 1910’s. On the first level, the steamer carried freight, including crates of pineapple, citrus, and fresh winter vegetables. The crew was housed in cabins on the third or upper level. At other times, the “Swan”…
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In this first comprehensive study of the Florida section of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, I trace the roots of the waterway all the way back to the Founding Fathers, through the history of the Canal Era and its difficult path in Congress and in Florida’s young legislature as one of the early public-private partnerships, drawing…
Florida’s Big Dig 