Florida’s Big Dig

The story of the Intracoastal and other thoughts on water, waterways, land, and ecology

Category: Uncategorized

  • Sketch of survey of Lake Boca Raton, Boca Raton, Florida, made by Arthur Wrotnowski, Civil Engineer, for a Report on the Florida East Coast Canal (Intracoastal Waterway) from Jacksonville to Miami, Florida in 1889 by Elmer Corthell of Chicago, Illinois. The report was undertaken to encourage New England investors like Bradley and Albert P. Sawyer…

  • Unlike the Federalists who believed that the Constitution authorized a full-time standing army, the nation’s third president Thomas Jefferson signed into law the Military Peace Establishment Act (1802). The Act founded the U. S. Military Academy at West Point to train engineers skilled in surveying and planning military roads, inland waterways and constructing bridges, harbors,…

  • 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…

  • Whiskers Hangin’ Ten…I think..

  • Gregg Russell plays his guitar and sings folk and children’s songs to hundreds of young and old under one of the largest and oldest oak trees in Harbour Town, Sea Pines Plantation, Hilton Head Island. The Memorial Day concert has been free during the entire time of Gregg’s 26-year run. The youngest toddlers sit on…

  • Russell entertains old and young alike with children and folk songs under the gargantuan old Oak Tree in front of a string of small boutiques, clothing stores, and restaurants. It’s at Lighthouse Marina, in Sea Pines Plantation. The smallest children sit on the stage at Russell’s feet, often singing along with Russell. It’s nice to…

  • 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,…

  • The Florida gray Ibis in its wet,marshy habitat. It consumes the smallest sea animals, mollusks, and sea grasses. In turn, larger predators like snakes and alligators occasionally find sustenance in consuming the Ibis. In the early 1900’s, Florida women leaders like Ivy Stranahan led the fight in stopping the hunting of water birds solely for…

  • At Fort Lauderdale, the first bridge to the beachside was a short wooden bridge across what then known as the private Florida East Coast Canal ca. 1910. Located on the north side of the land was a small wooden house occupied by the bridge-tender and his family. Upon the approach of a small boat or…

  • After escaping from Panda prison in China for having too many babies, Panda crossed the Bering Straits, making her way down the California coast to Tinsel-town, where she made three 3-D movies with Jim Carrey; a career in movies seeming much too dull and unrewarding, Panda again escaped to San Diego to a peaceful, carefree…