Adam Putnam has declared a State of Emergency as a result of state officials finding an infestation of Oriental Fruit Fly in the Redlands in south Miami-Dade County. A quarantine extends over 87 square miles prohibiting export of fruit and vegetables from the quarantined area. The area supplies much of the nation's winter vegetables. State [...]
Category: Florida
Ben Franklin, the Gulf Stream, and the 1868 Florida Constitution
At least to this author's mind, one of the greatest enigmas in all of Florida history is the insertion in the 1868 Florida constitution of the "Gulf Stream" as the eastern boundary of the Sunshine State. It is unique among the state constitutions of every state in the Union. No other state uses an indefinite, [...]
Author to be interviewed by Book TV C-SPAN 2, Tuesday, April 21,2015
William G. Crawford, Jr., author of the award-winning "Florida's Big Dig," is to be interviewed by Jason Dorman, a graduate of Flagler College, for C-SPAN 2 Book TV. The interview is to air the month of May, with a special emphasis on a showing throughout the weekend of May 16 through May 17, 2015. The [...]
The Steamer “Saint Augustine” in the Intracoastal Waterway
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 Brook rescues President-elect Warren G. Harding on New River Sound
Commodore Brook rescues President-elect Warren G. Harding on New River Sound in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (1921)
Varieties of Florida Croton
Florida croton.
1959 Gold Coast Marathon on the Intracoastal Waterway
1959 Gold Coast Marathon on the Intracoastal Waterway Russell Fraser, Jr., racing an outboard motorboat in the 1959 Gold Coast Marathon on the Intracoastal Waterway between Miami and West Palm Beach and the return to Miami the next day. Some hydroplanes among the scores of boats of every class reached speeds approaching a hundred miles [...]
Lt. Horatio G. Wright, Florida’s first chief of engineers
Horatio G. Wright was the first Florida chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (1852-1854). Wright superintended the first cut in what would become the Florida section of the Intracoastal Waterway, joining the Matanzas and Halifax rivers at Titusville, Fla. After years of wrangling over Congress's constitutional powers, Congress authorized a mere pittance of $1,200 [...]
James Louis Colee (1834-1912)
Original incorporator and director of the Florida canal company, James Colee (pronounced, 'Coolee') served as an engineer in the dredging of the Intracoastal Waterway until his death in 1912. Colee also served as state representative and county commissioner for St. Johns County and was a stockholder in the First National Bank of St. Augustine. In [...]
Florida’s Big Dig 