Florida’s Big Dig

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

Tag: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

  • Within two weeks of Philadelphia congressman Joseph Hampton Moore (Rep.) filing a bill in March 1907 authorizing the Army Corps of Engineers to survey a route for an Intracoastal waterway from Maine south to Beaufort, N.C., North Carolina congressman John Humphrey Small (Dem.) filed a similar bill authorizing a survey from Beaufort, N.C., to Key…

  • Completed in 2002, the new Palm Valley Bridge, near Ponte Vedra Beach, is the only bridge across the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida not owned or controlled by the State. This fixed span bridge is owned by the Federal Government and maintained and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Its vertical clearance is 65…

  • 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]…

  • Horatio G. Wright was the first Florida chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (1852-1854). Wright superintended the first cut in what would become the Florida section of the Intracoastal Waterway, joining the Matanzas and Halifax rivers at Titusville, Fla. After years of wrangling over Congress’s constitutional powers, Congress authorized a mere pittance of $1,200…