Last year, I led my first tour on the Intracoastal Waterway about this time of year while aboard the ubiquitous WaterTaxi in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The participants were Road Scholars, a program devised by the Cambridge, Mass., non-profit organization that launched ElderHostel some years ago, today a worldwide lifetime learning program. Participants ranged in age [...]
Category: Florida Inland Navigation District
The Florida Inland Navigation District, local sponsor of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway
http://youtu.be/bAExHNveau4 In 1927, Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take possession of the Florida East Coast Canal on the condition that the State of Florida provide a "local sponsor" to acquire and turn over to the federal government at the State's sole expense the the entire private canal owned by Harry Kelsey, [...]
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 [...]
First Commissioners of the Florida Inland Navigation District (1928)
Of all the coastal states contributing inland waterways that now make up the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, only the State of Florida was required to buy its waterway for turnover to the federal government free of charge. For example, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was not required to buy the privately owned Cape Cod Canal built by [...]
A Ten-Minute Trip Through the Cape Cod Canal
The purchase of the Cape Cod Canal built by August Belmont was authorized by the same Act of Congress in 1927 that authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to enlarge and perpetually maintain the Florida East Coast Canal. Like the Cape Cod Canal, the Florida East Coast Canal was privately owned and collected tolls from [...]
Florida’s Big Dig 