Florida gardenia in spring.
Florida’s Big Dig
The story of the Intracoastal and other thoughts on water, waterways, land, and ecology
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Fred Bullfrog escorts Princess Orchid to the Perennial Ball. Fred was late arriving at Princess’s branch, overwhelmed with the selection of just the right corsage.
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The Florida canal company formed the Indian River and Bay Biscayne Inland Navigation Company to acquire and run steamers on the nearly complete Florida East Coast Canal in the late 1890s. This steamboat company bought the steamers when the prior owner, the Indian River Steamboat Company, went bankrupt. Courtesy, Florida State Archives, Tallahassee, Fla.
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The City of Fort Lauderdale lies along the east coast of Florida, bisected by the Intracoastal Waterway running north and south, with the New River running seven miles west to east, terminating at New River Sound running several miles north to south. The New River bisects the City into northern and southern halves. Altogether the City has more the a hundred miles of waterways. It has been said that erstwhile New York City advertising executive Commodore Avylen Harcourt Brook coined the moniker ‘Venice of America’ in recognition of the city’s ubiquitous waterways, many natural, many dredged to create residential ‘finger isles’.
Even before Brook arrived in 1919 to retire to his home ‘Brookside’ in the Waverly subdivision, Governor Napoleon Bonaparte (1905-1909) began a program to dredge four canals from the Everglades to the Florida east coast to drain the wetlands for farming. By 1912, the dredging of the extended New River Canal had finally reached Lake Okeechobee. Farmers and fishermen could now trade their goods between the Lake and Fort Lauderdale. Moreover, for a $15 fare tourists could ride steamers from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers on the west coast by way of the extended New River Canal, west across Lake Okeechobee, down the Caloosahatchee River to Fort Myers. The round trip took three days. By 1912, Fort Lauderdale had become known as the ‘Gateway to the Everglades’, a catch-phrase now on the masthead of the Fort Lauderdale Sentinel newspaper.
The interesting hatch drawing here represents the vision of New York City planner Richard Schermerhorn, Jr. for New River parkways, with wide streets and sidewalks, concrete benches, trees and generous plantings along the way. Just a few months after approval of the new City Plan, the collapse of the real estate market, the 1926 hurricane, and the Great Depression all combined to destroy Schermerhorn’s plan. Collection of the author.
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On Memorial Day, local folklore singer-guitarist Greg Russell entertained hundreds of residents and visitors under the old Oak Tree at Lighthouse Marina, Sea Pines Plantation, Hilton Head Island, SC. Every year for 27 years, Russell has played his guitar and sung songs to old and young alike. Small children encircling Russell on stage join in the singing. Russell peppers his music with stories and jokes appropriate for the entire family, free of charge. The Marina is an estuary to Calibogue Sound, the second longest sound on the Atlantic coast and a stretch of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
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The “Steamboat “Saint Lucie” tied up at the Rock Ledge (Rockledge) Landing.
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This sunset view was taken from Skull Creek at Hilton Head Island over the Calibogue Sound. The Sound is a section of the federally controlled Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The Waterway extends some 1,400 miles from Miami, Florida, to Norfolk, Virginia.
Of all the barrier islands protecting the Atlantic coast, the longest is Long Island, New York. The second longest is Hilton Head Island. (Photo courtesy, the author)
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This sunset view was taken from Skull Creek at Hilton Head Island over the Calibogue Sound. The Sound is a section of the federally controlled Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The Waterway extends some 1,400 miles from Miami, Florida, to Norfolk, Virginia.
Of all the barrier islands protecting the Atlantic coast, the longest is Long Island, New York. The second longest is Hilton Head Island. (Photo courtesy, the author)
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Dipper dredge working between Delray Beach and Boynton Beach ca. 1910 in what was then called the Florida East Coast Canal. Four long steel posts at each of the four corners anchored the dredge to the bottom of the shallow canal. The A-frame allowed a steel bucket to scoop and scrape the bottom and deposit the spoil on either side of the canal, building up high banks. Courtesy, Florida State Photographic Archives, Tallahassee, Fla.
Florida’s Big Dig 