The first dredge used in constructing the Intracoastal Waterway was a crude steel bucket dredge. Each bucket was the size of two average-sized men standing inside. The buckets were attached to a continuous steel chain, powered by steam. First used in the so-called Matanzas-Halifax Cut, the dredge was to join the Matanzas River at St. [...]
Category: inland waterway history
Author leads tour on the Intracoastal (without leaving the hotel)
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 [...]
Florida Coast Line Canal & Transportation Co. Toll schedule for the Intracoastal Waterway (1920)
Evidence is scant but it appears that State trustees first permitted the private canal company to collect tolls from vessels transiting the inland waterway at various points in 1911. The method of collection was to stretch chains across sections as narrow as fifty feet. When the vessel paid the toll exacted, the toll keeper relaxed [...]
Lake Boca Raton with the Boca Raton Hotel & Club (background, west)
The 1889 Corthell survey of the Florida East Coast Canal showed the Lake at 5' - 9' deep with a forty foot bluff along the near, east (Atlantic Ocean) side of the Lake. While four feet would have satisfied state specifications in 1881 (3' then), by 1889 that depth would not have been navigable for [...]
Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse (built 1903)
This photo shows the lighthouse on the north side of the inlet, Intracoastal continues north between Town of Hillsboro Beach to the right and the City of Lighthouse Point to the left of the ICW.
North New River Lock No. 1 at South Bay, Florida, ca. 1920’s
Boarding up Celery at Sanford, Florida, on the St. Johns River
It seems that celery has always been the staple crop of Sanford, Florida. One of my African-American friends, W. George Allen, just retired from the practice of law at 70 years old, a veteran of the civil rights movement. George grew up in Sanford. As a child, George picked celery every day during the dark [...]
Commercial Acetylene Gas Generator, ca. 1905
In the short period of time between kerosene or oil lamps and electricity, many cities, towns, and villages, hotels and businesses throughout America relied upon the often dangerous acetylene gas generator. Such also was the case for canal dredges and excavators running day and night, twenty-four hours a day. The generators mixed calcium carbide and [...]
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 [...]
Florida’s Big Dig 