Florida’s Big Dig

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

recent posts

about

I am Bill Crawford. I was born and raised in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., bisected by the Intracoastal. I graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, with distinction, concentrating in finance. I obtained my juris doctor degree from Stetson University College of Law. I have practiced law for more than 43 years. I am a professional historian and author of the award-winning book, “Florida’s Big Dig,” (2008) the story of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. I have practiced law in Florida since 1975. Along the way, I developed a keen interest in researching and writing history, publishing numerous scholarly journal articles and one award-winning book, “Florida’s Big Dig,” the story of Florida’s Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, using my legal pbackground to understand legal transactions, deeds, wmortgages, bonds, preferred stock, and legal descriptions of land and water. In recent years, I have maintained a limited practice consulting with other professionals on various historical land and water issues, including sovereign, riparian, and submerged land rights, focusing on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and Florida inland waterways. I maintain a broad regular website here at www.floridasbigdig.me and a website solely on how the book was researched as well as some of the major themes explored. The website on the book itself is at www.floridasbigdig.com. The website on contacts for professional services is at www.floridasbigdiglawyer.com?. A fifteen-page outline of my book

  • Wildcat Wells in Florida’s Big Cypress Preserve Bring New and Unstudied Risks

    Wildcat Wells in Florida’s Big Cypress Preserve Bring New and Unstudied Risks

  • United States Drought Monitor > Home

    United States Drought Monitor > Home

  • We’re running out of water, and the world’s powers are very worried

    We’re running out of water, and the world’s powers are very worried.

    Fourteen of Yemen’s 16 aquifers have run dry leading many to predict greater political instability in the Middle East.

  • Appropriations snapshot for Intracoastal Waterway 

    Appropriations

  • If you dredge it, officials say, the megayachts will come; Deepening of Intracoastal Waterway begins (Thursday, May 5, 2016)

    If you dredge it, officials say, the megayachts will come; Deepening of Intracoastal Waterway begins (Tap on blue twice for news article)

    William G. Crawford, Jr., editor

    Fort Lauderdale, Fla.–On Thursday, May 5, 2016, the Florida Inland Navigation District (FIND) began a two-year dredging project to deepen the Intracoastal Waterway to a minimum of 10 to 12 feet from the 17th Street Causeway Bridge north to the Sunrise Bridge to attract the burgeoning mega yacht business.

    From 1912 to 1929, the Intracoastal Waterway was a privately owned waterway initially owned by St. Augustine investors that  collected tolls from boats crossing six chains at different points from Jacksonville, Fla. to Miami, Fla.  In 1881, the Florida Coast Line Canal & Transportation Company agreed to dredge the waterway for a grant of  3,840 acres of Florida owned land for every mile of waterway dredged to a depth of five feet and a width of fifty feet and the right to collect tolls. 

    By 1912, the private enterprise comprised mostly of New England investors received over one million acres of public land along Florida’s Atlantic coast for dredging 268 miles of  waterway according to state specifications. Although more than 80% of the waterway’s length had already consisted of water courses, lagoons, estuaries, and sounds, commercially viable vessels like steamboats could not navigate these waters without some dredging.  In Fort Lauderdale, waterways generally were three to four feet deep and tidally influenced.  

    Work in Fort Lauderdale to dredge a course through the New River Sound to create a depth of five feet deep and fifty feet wide occurred between 1893 and 1896.   In the early 1920’s, about a mile west of today’s downtown on the South Fork of the New River, boaters throughout the country regarded the Pilkington Yacht Basin as  the largest covered yacht basin Florida. This basin accommodated almost exclusively flat-bottomed boats and houseboats. In sum, while the city had been known as the ‘Gateway to the Everglades’, most of its waters were non-navigable without dredging.  In 1929, the Federal government assumed control of the waterway. The State of Florida retained ownership of the bottom lands as they existed on the date of statehood, March 3, 1845.  Tolls would no longer be collected on the Florida East Coast Canal upon assumption of control by the Federal government.

    Tap twice on the blue sentence at the top of this page.

  • “Harmon Field at West Side School: a forgotten legacy,” by William G. Crawford, Jr.,  vol. 29, no. 1 (2009)

    Harmon Field at West Side School: a forgotten legacy.     Click underlined line to the left.

  • “The Vanishing of Harmon Field”

    Fort Lauderdale Magazine : The city magazine for Fort Lauderdale. Events, fashion, dining, architecture, investigative journalism, and more. In the May 2016 issue of Fort Lauderdale magazine, there is an extremely well-written article about the Harmon Foundation gift of $2,000 to the City of Ft. Lauderdale for a two-acre playground for children in the early 1920’s.   The little town was among fifty small towns out of 750 applicants awarded the grant. A bronze plaque memorializing the gift is embedded in what was once a a concrete water fountain standing in front of the School at the end of West Las Olas Boulevard.

    I was interviewed for the article by Fulbright scholar April Simpson. [As I write this post, April has accepted a position as writer for Current magazine, Washington, DC.   I predict great things for this exceptional young lady of color. Her article appears in the Fort Lauderdale magazine link underlined above. To me, it involves the paving over of the Harmon playground or at least its loss during the late 1950’s during the period of “massive retaliation” when the City of Fort Lauderdale sold its western golf course for less than fair market value to avoid integration.  It involves the City, Broward County, and the School Board, whether by neglect, confusion, or intentional actions.  In any event, the ‘chickens have come home to roost’, as they say. Now that Sailboat Bend neighborhood has turned the corner, the neighborhood justifiably wants to know what happened to Harmon park.

    The complete and accurate story as this young journalist wrote it appears as appended electronically to this article by tapping on the above blue sentence in Fort Lauderdale magazine. Tap on the line and read the whole sordid story of your public officials in action (or, inaction) in the days of ‘massive retaliation’.

    My contribution which led Ms. Simpson to me appears in the next post, Broward Legacy.  It was written a few years ago for the Broward County Historical Commission’s Broward Legacy, a magazine chosen for digitization by the colleges and universities of Florida some years ago. The BrowardCounty Commission recently defunded the Historical Commission out of existence. As a result, there may  be no further editions of the Broward Legacy, unless the County Commission resurrects it.  The Legacy has been chosen in years past  for reading to the visually impaired by “Insight for the Blind.” Yet a county of nearly two million cannot find the money to support what had been the smallest agency in county  government.

  • The Gulf Stream:  Florida’s eastern constitutional boundary since 1868

  • Invasive Asian carp threaten the Great Lakes (video)

    In the 1970’s, scientists introduced non-indigenous Asian carp in southern United States waters to control catfish and other fish species. Other scientists warned that the highly reproductive, voracious carp would overwhelm all other species, eventually posing a threat to the Great Lakes. This variety of carp eats 40% of its body weight every day.

    So far, carp have invaded the Mississippi River basin, the Ilinois River, and threatened the Missouri River and Chicago River. Scientists have used electrified fish barriers as well as toxic chemicals to stop the invasion with varying degrees of success.  If these measures do not stop the carp, the species will invade the Great Lakes, soon becoming an international dilemma.

    The following short video demonstrates the size and activity of the Asian carp as well as the threat the Asian carp poses. Asian carp

  • University of Florida News: protecting blue holes parks

    Recently, the Bahamian government protected a 34,000-acre underwater blue holes park.  University of Florida scientists have dubbed these caves, now inundated with water, as underwater ‘blue caves’.  These blue caves contain a plethora  of ancient and historic artifacts of the past.

    Without protection these blue holes are likely to be plundered or obliterated, with the knowledge within them lost for all time.  The Bahamian government has protected the first such blue holes park, the South Abaco Blue Holes Park. Florida scientists are hopeful additional blue holes parks will be protected by governmental declaration.