Florida’s Big Dig
The story of the Intracoastal and other thoughts on water, waterways, land, and ecology
Tag: St. Augustine
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Originally posted on Florida’s Big Dig: Matanzas Inlet -South St. Johns County In 1881, the private St. Augustine-based Florida canal company agreed to dredge an inland waterway from Miami, Fla., to St. Augustine, Fla., and later to Jacksonville, Fla., a distance of approximately 400 miles. For every mile of waterway dredged, state legislators agreed to…
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Sometime in 1888, the Florida canal company engaged acclaimed Chicago-based railway and waterway engineer Elmer Lawrence Corthell to undertake a complete survey of the cost of the work to be done in completing what would become the Intracoastal Waterway from St. Augustine to Miami, Florida. In turn, Corthell retained Arthur F. Wrotnowski, an experienced civil…
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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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By November 1912, according to the terms and conditions of the Settlement Agreement made in 1906, the last of twelve deeds had been delivered by the State of Florida Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund (the State Cabinet) to the Florida canal company conveying in the aggregate more than one million acres of prime east…
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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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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.…
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Bucket dredge in the Matanzas -Halifax rivers Cut south of St. Augustine ca. 1893. Large steel buckets attached to a continuous heavy chain scooped up sand, clay, and rocks, and then dumped the material on either side of the Cut via conveyor belts. Among the earliest of the dredges employed, the bucket dredge soon fell…