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Reclaiming the Everglades of Florida.*

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Reclaiming the Everglades of Florida.* RECLAIMING THE EVERGLADES OF FLORIDA.* BY ISHAM RANDOLPH, D.H;ng., Member of the Institute PONCE DE LEON discove.r.ed Florida, March 27, 1512. I dis- covered it in I913; not that I had not previously seen on the map a flat, misshapen projection fending the Gulf of Mexico from the broad Atlantic. I had heard of St. Augustine and even of Tallahassee, but, apart from this casual hearing and seeing, the land of flowers was a terra incognita to me. 1 was invited by Governor Park Tramel to come to Tall,a- hassee to meet him and his fellow-menabers, Trustees of the In- ternal Improvement Fund of the State of Florida, to counsel with them about the drainage of the Everglades. The name applied to that broad expanse of seini.~queous land gave me no conception of its characteristics" those were to be revealed later. When leaving Chicago, April 24, I9~3, I equipped myself with the best map I could procure of the State with whose de- velopment I was so. soon to be associated, and thereon was indi- cated a lake of considerable magnitude and named Okee.chollee; a name conferred by the first inhabitants of a land in the State of Nature, but not then in the United States. Below this lake stretched an expanse almost coequal with the area of the lower peninsula, and on this was printed " Everglades." There were lines leading from the lake in a southeasterly direction, and these were labelled " canals," and they ended in natural channels lead- ing to the Atlantic. They were sixty or seventy miles long, whereas the lake was only 25 miles away from an estuary. When I met the Floridian powers that then were, on April 28, after a few preliminaries, I said to them that the whole subject was new to me and that, therefore, I might be " talking through my hat," but that, with the superficial knowledge I then had, I was led to believe that what was needed was a canal leading from the lake to the sea by the shortest possible route: and that locks * Presented at the Stated Meeting of the Institute, held Wednesday, February 2I. I917. 49 50 ISHAM RANDOLPH. [J.F.I. should be put in the existing canals to prevent the lake water from ttowing out over the Everglades. ' C i-- ,V.;u ~ -- -~, ~ o ~_~J~;c£:_: o "-" i z .[ m X . f ~[ ;'" ":i.-4 [ " }~'~' ~:'~ ' / , ~ ~]~,,'~:~,~. , ....~ ~,~.~-,,.-h~qk.~..= ~. ~ -~ ~].T..L . ~, ~d ~" ~"~ .- -- ;,-~,............ _ ExistingCana s , ."~'~o ,. I -- Reoommendedtot Immediate construction .~. ,~ ,~,*- [ .... Reoommendedfor future onnstruetlen .,aid ~'jii~_. ~""~"~,~*~ ' [ Marqze~es Keys ,' "-~P " I | t~.~tllh~.llLJyg:GU~ H | .. Zd~ .~ Map of the EvergladEs. To cut a long story short, I was engaged to organize a com- mission to report upon the problem and empowered to cause to be July, z917.] RECLAIMING FLORIDA EVERGLADES. 5I made the necessary surveys and other investigations essential tu a proper knowledge of the facts. i associated with me two very able engineers. Mr,. Marshall O. Leighton, who was for many years officially and most re- sponsibly connected with the U. S. Geological Survey and was, and is, a recognized authority on hydrology and its collateral subjects. The other selection was Mr. Edmund T. Perkins, who had been responsibly connected with the engineering branch of the Department of the Interior. I assigned the hydrometric and meteorologic branch of the investigations to Mr. Leighton and the surveys to Mr. Perkins. You may ask what i (lid; well, among other things, I, like the owl, (lid a " heap o.' thinking." \Ve organized several survey parties and put them into the field, and it was a source of profound thankfulness that I did not have to follow them over the lines they run, for the hardships and discomforts which the)' endured were very great. 1 was first to see the Everglades from the deck o.f the moto~ yacht Pearl, chartered for our use. On May 7 we passed through New River and into North New River Canal, headed for Lake Okeechobee, and it was not long after we entered that canal that my preconceived notions of the Everglades evaporated like morn- ing mists. There was no growth of cypress and juniper, no tangle of vines, no contracted view, but a broad expanse of water- logged land over which the eye searched in vain for a land- mark. a disting-uishing feature. There were no trees, no bushes, no mounds, nothing to steer towa.pds nor to back sight upon. Just flatness grown up with saw grass : saw grass sometimes eight or nine feet high. Saw grass needs an introduction, a definition of its qualities. It is a broad-bladed grass, very stiff, and each edge of the blade is serrated like the teeth of a hack-saw, and its cutting qualities are almost as pronounced as those of its steel prototype. When an unfortunate has to forge his way through this growth, it is only a question of time, and not a long time at that, before his bootlegs or his leather or canvas leggings are scarified and torn away. I said there was nothing to steer by, but the navigator of a canal so narrow that turning his boat in it is a task of some difficulty has little need o.f compass or range target : his liquid path is narrow, if not always straight, and all he has to do is to shun the banks on either side. 52 ISHAM RANDOLPH. [J.F.I. You will realize the vastness o.f this Everglade expanse when told that it is equal in square miles to the combined area of Con- necticut and Rhode Island. The only relief to the monotony of such a voyage as we were taking was afforded by the abundant and beat~tiful bird life, ducks, herons, cranes, limpkins, and other aquatic fowl--met so casually that their family names, if ever heard, have been for- gotten--were a constant delight to the eye. Then, too, there were the alligators, little and big, and the snakes and other reptile life. On a later voyage, made pleasant for us by the presence of our Taking a "Glade boat" to the Glades. wives, they, the ladies, began counting alligators, but when they reached five score they tired of that census. On the morning of May 8 we passed into Lake Okeechobee, the liquid heart of Florida, and on occasion that heart palpitates vigorously, as I was to r~ealize to 11137 discomfort at a later date when I was out on it in a storm. At the time of our first visit this lake had never been surveyed, and one of our duties was to determine its form and a.rea. By an arrangement, which Mr. Leighton was able to perfect, this lake survey was made for us by Mr. E. P. Davis, Topographer of the U. S. Geological Survey. This survey was at our expense, but it is sponsored by the U. S. Geological Survey. The greatest width of the lake is, north and July, i9~7.] RECLAIMINGFLORIDA t~VERGLADES. 53 south, 37 miles, and east and west, 3I miles; its area at eleva- tion 19 above sea level is 735 square miles--which makes it the largest body of fresh water within the confines of any single state in the Union. It is a beautiful sheet of water, abounding with fish. So abundant are the finny tribes that the catch is an in- dustry of great importance and its earnings run into six figures, and I am not sure that they do not call for seven. This catch was formerly shipped via the Caloosahatchie to Fort Myers and by the North New River Canal to Fort Lauderdale for shipment by rail to northern markets. But on the 6th of January, I915, the track of the Florida East Coast Railway reached the north side of the lake and immediately a town sprang up, with the fishing industry as its inspiration. I was there early in November of that vear and it then had IIOO inhabitants, a bank, electric light and ice plants, and other modern comforts and conveniences. Of course, the Florida East Coast Railway now takes all of " the catch " in its refrigerator cars and speeds it to northern markets. The h~arbor of this new town is on the Onoshohatchie Creek or River, which is a deep, crooked, and very picturesque stream. But the new town is on the north side of Lake Okeechobee, and, River, which is a deep, crooked, and very picturesque stream. ing from the lake southward to the Gulf; not: bounded, however, by the Atlantic on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west, for there is on each side an inconsiderable uplift or ridge, and the Everglades fill the trough between these ridges. This uplift along the Atlantic coast is only a few miles wide, but much wider on the Gulf side. -What one sees of the Everglades is, as heretofore described, a vast expanse of saw-grass-covered, waterlogged soil. Wheat one does not see is the solid substratum upon which this super- imposed mass rests, and my ignorant preconceptions were first startled, then dissipated when I learned that the substratum is rock: rock whose general surface is level, but not smooth; it is full of pot-holes and minor indentations. Ho,w did this solid foundation for the. peninsula come to be there? I do not know, but I accept with faith, not to be shaken until better proofs are forthcoming, the explanation given by Prof.
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