Florida’s Big Dig
The story of the Intracoastal and other thoughts on water, waterways, land, and ecology
Category: Saint Augustine
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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.…
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In 1888, Florida canal company general manager George F. Miles engaged acclaimed Chicago waterway and railway engineer Elmer Corthell to survey the soil, rock, sand, and other material the Company dredges would likely encounter in completing the waterway and to estimate the cost of completion. In turn, Corthell employed a former Army engineer, Artur [sic]…
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As the 1912 deadline approached for the completion of the Florida waterway, George Francis Miles became increasingly disenchanted with his role as general manager of dredging operations. In 1911, Miles and others organized the Florida Coastal Inland Navigation Company to run steamboats on the completed portions of the inland waterway (Florida East Coast Canal). …
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The Canadians are coming! The Canadians are coming! In the late 1880s, four Canadians, including Sir Sandford Fleming’s son, Sandford H. Fleming, traveled to the State of Florida to enter into a subcontract with the Florida canal company to perform a portion of the work in the Matanzas-Halifax River Cut joining St. Augustine and today’s…
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Chief engineer of the Canadian and Pacific Railway, Sir Sandford Fleming was also the designer of Canada’s first adhesive postage stamps. In 1892 Fleming and his son, Sandford H. Fleming, as well as several other Canadians became interested in the inland waterway being dredged along the east coast of Florida. In a matter of time,…
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Brigadier General Quincy Adams Gillmore, Second Florida chief of the Army Corps of Engineers. Gillmore graduated first in his class at West Point. He conducted several surveys of the Florida east coast during his command (1869-1884). In later years, Gillmore published several textbooks, including one on underwater concrete, a necessity in waterway and canal improvements.…