Cross-Florida Barge Canal

IDENTIFICATION: Intended shortcut for shipping across Florida that would have linked the Gulf of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean

Efforts to build the Cross-Florida Barge Canal caused decades of controversy among environmentalists, government officials, and business interests until it was finally decommissioned in 1990 and the land was converted into a state recreation and conservation area.

Florida’s unique peninsular shape and its 6,115 kilometers (3,800 miles) of tidal shoreline have long frustrated military, industry, and shipping interests. Since no river cuts across the state, ships and barges have had to travel around Florida’s southern tip. In earlier times, this trip was often a perilous undertaking because of turbulent storms and the existence of many dangerous reefs and shoals.

Even before Florida became a state, various interest groups and individuals began calling for the creation of a transpeninsula waterway. Bowing to pressure, the Florida legislature created the Florida State Canal Commission in 1821 to explore the possibility of building such a canal. Five years later, the US Congress adopted the cause and authorized the first of twenty-eight surveys that were carried out to find a convenient and safe route for an inland ship canal across the state. One proposal after another either proved to be impractical or failed to gain political support.

Construction History

In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, intending to ease unemployment problems in Florida, used $5 million in federal relief money as start-up funds for the construction of a ship canal. The proposal called for a 9-meter (30-foot) sea-level ship canal that would stretch across the north-central part of the state from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. On September 19, 1935, Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key from his office in Washington, D.C., and set off an explosive blast in Florida that officially began the canal’s construction.

Roosevelt’s action received popular support across north-central Florida, a region where many communities welcomed the new jobs and economic boost the canal was expected to generate. Intense opposition to the canal also existed, however. Railroad interests, fearing competition from shipping interests, hotly objected to the canal construction and lobbied in Congress to end it. Many south Floridians, fearing that a ship canal would allow to jeopardize the state’s downstream supply of underground water, joined the protest. Three years after the project began, Roosevelt yielded to political pressure and cut off funding; he called on Congress to help, but Congress failed to appropriate any money for the canal, and construction ground to a halt.

World War II rekindled interest in the canal. German submarine attacks against US ships along the Florida coast prompted Congress to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to reexamine the issue of building a canal to meet the nation’s wartime needs. The corps responded with scaled-back plans for a barge canal, but Congress again failed to provide funding, and the project stagnated for years. In 1964 Congress finally authorized $1 million to get construction under way and promised more funds later. The Army Corps of Engineers now had responsibility for the project. Its engineers came up with plans for a five-lock waterway that would stretch 296.8 kilometers (184.4 miles) from Port Inglis on Florida’s west coast to the Intracoastal Waterway at the St. Johns River on the east.

Opposition from Environmentalists

Opposition to the project quickly developed. Environmentalists argued that the canal would disrupt the natural flow of rivers and creeks in the region, flood woodland areas, and destroy many endangered and threatened plants and animals. In 1969 the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), along with the Florida Defenders of the Environment, sued in a US district court to stop construction. Nearly two years later, on January 15, 1971, the court granted the plaintiffs an injunction. Four days later, President Richard Nixon, citing environmental and economic concerns, issued a presidential order that suspended construction. By now, $74 million had been spent to build less than one-third of the canal. Great stretches of trees had been leveled, rivers and streams altered, two locks built, a constructed, and much earth moved.

In March 1974, the Middle District Court of Florida overruled Nixon’s action, but it upheld the injunction. Supporters of the canal received another blow in 1977 when both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Florida cabinet went on record calling for an end to construction. Despite these actions, canal proponents continued to lobby in Congress and succeeded in postponing a complete dismantling of the transwaterway project for years. Finally, in 1990, both the US Congress and the Florida legislature officially and permanently deauthorized the barge canal.

Environmentalists hailed the defeat of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal as a major environmental victory, but they soon faced new problems. Debates arose over questions of what was to be done with completed sections of canal and the adjacent canal lands. In 1993 the Florida legislature resolved the issue when it authorized the conversion of 177 kilometers (110 miles) of the defunct canal zone into a huge nature preserve named the Cross-Florida Greenway State Recreation Area, or the Cross-Florida Greenway (renamed the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross-Florida Greenway in 1998, in honor of a leader of the movement to stop the canal). In addition to providing land that humans can use for outdoor recreation, the 28,300-hectare (70,000-acre) corridor also serves as a permanent wildlife refuge—one of the largest in the southern United States.

One controversial issue remained unresolved. It focused on the fate of the Rodman Dam, which was built in the center of the state on the Ocklawaha River prior to the final decommissioning of the canal. Environmentalists argued that since the dam was no longer needed, it should be demolished so that the Ocklawaha River could be restored to its natural flow pattern. Supporters of the dam—including local merchants and the bass fishing enthusiasts and fish camp owners who used the created by the dam—wanted to keep it in place, citing the reservoir’s economic benefits to the local as a recreational area. Even though Florida governor Lawton Chiles, the state cabinet, and the Department of Environmental Protection expressed support for restoration efforts of the Ocklawaha River and elimination of the Rodman Dam, the state legislature withheld the necessary funds.

Bibliography

Buker, George E. Sun, Sand, and Water: A History of the Jacksonville District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1821-1975. Jacksonville, Fla.: US Army Corps of Engineers, 1980.

"History of the Cross Florida Greenway." Florida State Parks, www.floridastateparks.org/learn/history-cross-florida-greenway. Accessed 17 July 2024.

Flippen, J. Brooks. Nixon and the Environment. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Florida Defenders of the Environment. Environmental Impact of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal with Special Emphasis on the Ocklawaha Regional Ecosystem. Gainesville: Author, 1970.

"Florida Frontiers 'The Cross Florida Barge Canal.'" Florida Historical Society, 17 Nov. 2015, myfloridahistory.org/frontiers/article/95. Accessed 17 July 2024.

Irby, Lee. “A Passion for Wild Things: Marjorie Harris Carr and the Fight to Free a River.” In Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida, edited by Jack E. Davis and Kari Frederickson. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.

Tebeau, Charlton W. A History of Florida. Miami: University of Miami Press, 1981.