Florida’s Big Dig

Located in Palm Beach County, the Town of Gulf Stream was founded in 1925 by the Phipps family (U.S. Steel, with Andrew Carnegie), the Uihlein family (Schlitz Brewing) et al. interested in polo and golf. Today, the Town of Gulf Stream has by some measures the 11th or 14th highest per family income in the country. Its estimated population is 826.

A member of the Uihlein family, Dr. Alfred Uihlein, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.,performed a lifesaving procedure upon the author of this post shortly after birth in 1950. Uihlein served as a pro bono professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota, Rochester, for many years.

USCG to step up enforcement of ‘passenger boats’ in FloridaRegion: Gulf Coast – Florida

Date Reported: Aug 26, 2015

Reported By: Mike Ahart, News Editor

Source: Coast Guard News
Coast-Guard-Boat.jpgYou offer to take some friends or acquaintances out for a sail, cruise or fishing outing. Everyone chips in for fuel and supplies. Are you an awesome host and captain – or a scofflaw? The Coast Guard may be asking you that question, as they crack down on illegal “passenger boats” over the next couple weeks – you might want to make sure your passengers understand the difference (and please teach them the safety drill!). From a Coast Guard News article:
Coast Guard and partner agencies are stepping up enforcement of illegally operated passenger boats in the waters along Florida’s coast prior to and during the Labor Day weekend.
Over the past several months there has been an increase in the illegal and unsafe operation of passenger boats less than 100 tons, and many passengers are unaware of the safety requirements regulated by the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard reminds the public to check safety requirements before paying for any boating services.

This bridge connects two tectonic plates that separated early in the formation of the continents of the Earth. Under tectonic theory, there are seven or eight plates that make up the hard outer shell of the Earth.

The land mass on the right is the tectonic plate for Eurasia. The land mass on the left is the plate for North America.

The election of Theodore Roosevelt and Florida Governor Broward (1905-1909) brought in renewed interest in inland waterways and drainage across the Nation. Roosevelt convened the National Drainage Congress at the White House.  Governor Broward began his plan to drain the Everglades by dredging four canals from Lake Okeechobee to the east coast of Florida and one canal from the Lake to the west coast of Florida via the Caloosahatchee River, thence to Fort Myers.

By 1915,state legislators passed legislation authorizing contiguous landowners to form a drainage district. Landowners could then vote to authorize the construction of canals, dams, and other means to mitigate flood waters during conditions of heavy rain not already absorbed by grassy areas or catch basins.  One of first chartered in 1915 was the Lake Worth Drainage District. The following links bring you in video the history of the District from the times before the formation of the District and each decade thereafter to present times. Go to: http://www.lwdd.net, then select tab “About us”; then select tab “History”. Each video is about four minutes long.

By 1935, the State of Florida had authorized charters for 125 drainage districts to control flood waters during the rainy season and collect potable water for dry seasons.

Most of us have a general idea where one might find the ancient kingdom of Babylon. It’s in the Middle East. More precisely it is today known as Iraq.

But few of us know that in ancient times, there were Seven Ancient Wonders of the World AND their locations. They were the Great Pyramid of Giza; the Statue of Zeus; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassas; the Colossus of Rhodes; and, the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Two well-known ancient scholars agreed upon the list. They were Herodotus and Callimachus of Cyrene, both known in the Ancient World as early as the 5th century B.C.E.  Writers after those two historians confirm both the names of these two historians and their lists.

But only one of the seven ancient wonders of the world is without a known site: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Iraq). The seven modern wonders of the World is another question yet to be answered definitively, but ambiguous enough to escape definitive agreement among scholars without first agreeing upon criteria.

In the late 1890’s, as Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway and a New England group of investors headed by George Bradley of Providence, R.I., pushed their respective railway and what would become the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway down the east coast of Florida in exchange for state public land.

Some investors had become skittish about waiting for some return on their investment, which had become more or less a speculative venture.  Investors in one land company affiliated with the canal venture had invested as early as 1892, but as of 1910, eighteen years later, hadn’t received a dime in dividends. The sale of Florida land had been slow. Further, all of the land companies had been required to spend money on draining the land and surveying the land before the land could be sold. This had been especially true of the Boston and Florida Atlantic Coast Land Company (“Boston & Florida land company”).

In 1905, Florida legislators encouraged swamp land subject to overflow and flooding by allowing groups of contiguous land owners to create drainage districts in strict accordance with Florida law to tax neighboring land to dig ditches and to take such measures as may be necessary to divert excess water into lakes and rivers as well as overflow areas away from growing crops.  By 1935, one-hundred and twenty-five drainage districts had been formed in Florida. By far, the east coast county with the greatest need was Palm Beach County.  The Lake Worth Drainage District is now a hundred years old and one of the largest such districts.  Today, Palm Beach County is also the Nation’s ‘breadbasket’ in the cultivation of peppers, citrus fruits and winter vegetables in rich loam, mulch, and “muck lands.”