Attachment 11 History Report: From Exploitation to Conservation A History of the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway, by Steven Noll and M. David Tegeder Marjorie Harris Ca rr Cross Florida G r e e n w a y From Exploitation to Conservation: A History of the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway by Steven Noll and M. David Tegeder August 2003 This publication was produced in partial fulfillment of a Grant between the State of Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Greenways and Trails, and the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Florida. History Report: From Exploitation to Conservation i i Marjorie Harris Ca rr Cross Florida G r e e n w a y Acknowledgments A project of this magnitude would not have been possible without the help of literally dozens of individuals and organizations not only in the state of Florida but across the country. We would like to thank the staff of the Office of Greenways and Trails in both Tallahassee and Ocala for their assistance, patience, and excitement about our work. Much of the work of this project took place in archives and libraries and we greatly appreciate the help and support of their staffs. Without their assistance this document would be incomplete and much less interesting. As important as our archival research was the fieldwork we did in the Greenway communities. People have opened their homes and offices, as well as spent untold hours over the phone, talking about the history of the Greenway. We would like to thank those individuals who shared with us their time and their memories, and in so doing gave this document its human dimension. Finally, we want to thank our families for their patience and support throughout this project. iiHistory Report: From Exploitation to Conservation ii Marjorie Harris Ca rr Cross Florida G r e e n w a y Table of Contents Page 1 Chapter 1: Letting the Land Speak: The Greenway Corridor from Pre- Columbian Contact to Statehood Page 9 Chapter 2: Tourism, Industry, and the Exploitation of the Greenway Corridor Page 19 Chapter 3: A Dream “Fulfilled:” The Atlantic-Gulf Ship Canal of the 1930s Page 27 Chapter 4: A Dream Deferred: The Rise and Fall of the Cross Florida Barge Canal Page 37 Chapter 5: A Different Dream, A Different Vision: From Canal to Greenway Appendices A. Bibliography B. OGT Sources and Materials C. Newspaper Headline List D. Historical Imagery List E. Oral History Subject List F. Sample Interview Transcript G. Potential Partnership List for Historical Interpretation H. Buckman Lock Visitor Center Interpretative Script I. Suggested Interpretative Center Scripts History Report: From Exploitation to Conservation iiiiii Marjorie Harris Ca rr Cross Florida G r e e n w a y Photo Credits We would like to thank the following for the report’s illustrations. Page 2. www.millennium-exhibit.org; www.southalabama.edu/archives/markers/marker4. htm; Page 4. www.npg.si.edu/exh/franklin/ bartram.htm; www.texancultures.utsa.edu/ seminole/florida.htm; Page 6. Jacksonville Public Library; Page 7. www.frostburg.edu/dept/mdl/ mblovan/seminolewars.htm; Page 10. Hubbard Hart Papers, Florida State Archives; Page 12. Smithsonian Institution; Florida Memory Project, Florida State Archives (FMP); Page 13. Hubbard Hart Papers, Florida State Archives; (FMP); Page 14. (FMP); Page 15. (FMP); Page 15. (FMP); Page 17. (FMP); Page 21. Library of Congress; Gilbert Youngberg Papers, Rollins College; Page 22. Youngberg Papers; Youngberg Papers; Page 23. Tampa Tribune; Page 24. Colliers, Youngberg Papers; Page 25. Colliers, Youngberg Papers; Page 26. www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ USAvandenbergA.htm; Page 27. Youngberg Papers; Page 29. Library of Congress; Page 31. DEP, OGT, Army Corps of Engineers Papers; 1964 Canal Authority Annual Report in DEP, OGT; Page 32. DEP, OGT; Library of Congress; Page 33. Ocala-Marion County Chamber of Commerce; DEP, OGT; Page 34. DEP, OGT; Page 35. Tallahassee Democrat in DEP, OGT; (FMP); Page 36. (FMP); Page 37. (FMP); Page 40. DEP, OGT; Page 41. Tallahassee Democrat in DEP, OGT; Page 42. Smithsonian magazine; Page 43. aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/lanbri2.jpg ivHistory Report: From Exploitation to Conservation iv Marjorie Harris Ca rr Cross Florida G r e e n w a y throwing sticks, and such tools as shell picks, awls, Chapter One: and pins. By around 2000 B.C., they had learned to Letting the Land Speak: make fired clay pottery, tempered with Spanish moss or palmetto fibers. They had also established a The Greenway Corridor complex social order in which the leader or leaders were determined by lineage or other kin-based social from Pre-Columbian organization. Contact to Statehood By about 1000 B.C., in what is known as the transitional period, Archaic peoples began to exhibit regional differences. The Deptford culture, with ties The Pre-Columbian World: 10,000 to other native peoples of western Florida as well as B.C. to European Contact to groups as far north as the Mississippi Valley, settled along the Withlacoochee. To the east, the St. Johns River people lived along the Ocklawaha and Paleoindians and Archaic Peoples later established trade routes with peoples along the Atlantic coast. The geography of the Greenway region, especially the prominence of the Central The geographic area that comprises the present-day Florida Ridge, precluded extensive contact between Cross Florida Greenway has been influenced for these two groups. centuries by the interaction of human beings and nature. Particularly important has been the human relationship to water. For millennia, the rivers of The Weeden Island and St. Johns Peoples this regionthe Withlacoochee and Ocklawahahave persistently provided sustenance, irrigation, and While indigenous peoples maintained many of the transportation for successive generations of Native same cultural patterns of behavior, specific Americans and newcomers from both Europe and environmental variables shaped village life. Native Africa. Americans along the Withlacoochee developed a more sophisticated cultural organization based upon Florida’s earliest natives struggled with an intensive agriculture and wider trading networks to environment that would hardly be recognizable the north. By approximately 500 A.D., the today. Before 8000 B.C., Paleoindians roamed a Deptford people created new types of villages cool arid region, hunting such large mammals as designed around flat-topped burial and ceremonial mammoth, camel, and bison. As the climate mounds. Archeologists have designated this culture warmed, the peninsula of Florida took the shape as the Weeden Island people. A prominent example that it exists as today. As glaciers melted and sea of Weeden Island mounds exists today at the Crystal levels rose, the environment created new River State Archeological site located on the west opportunities for Native Americans. With coast of Florida just south of the Greenway. increasing supplies of water, Paleoindians could Because of their relative cultural isolation, the St. establish camps for longer periods of time and cease Johns peoples were less dependent on sedentary a previously nomadic existence. With the extinction agriculture and had smaller overall populations and a of larger mammals, perhaps in part because of relatively less elaborate lifestyle. Living off the land, human predation, natives became more reliant on and especially the water, the St. Johns people fish, shellfish, wild plants, and abundant small game. developed snares and arrows, and fish hooks and Over the course of approximately 6000 years, this weirs to better hunt and fish. Though not as stable environment allowed for the development of sophisticated as their Weeden Island counterparts, what anthropologists call an Archaic culture. With the St. Johns people also developed burial and this stability came significant population increase temple mounds made from sand and discarded and the development of sedentary village life. shellfish. An example of these structures exists at Archaic natives developed sophisticated spears, the Davenport Mound Site in the Ocala National History Report: From Exploitation to Conservation 1 Marjorie Harris Ca rr Cross Florida G r e e n w a y Forest, near the confluence of the Ocklawaha and at best a marginal role in Spain’s New World efforts. St. Johns Rivers. The lure of gold, however, ensured that more conquistadors would search for quick riches in the These cultures were constantly changing because of area. the periodic in-migration of Native Americans from the north. By approximately 1000 A.D., indigenous In 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez became the first Weeden Island people were absorbed into the wider Spaniard to gaze upon the land that would culture of the Mississippian nations to the north. eventually become the Greenway. Landing near These peoples were the ancestors of the Timucuans Tampa Bay on April 4th, Narvaez and his expedition who confronted the Spanish in the sixteenth of approximately 400 soldiers marched north, century. The St. Johns people similarly evolved into crossing the Withlacoochee River. Along the coast, other branches of the Timucuan confederacy. By south of present-day Tallahassee, Narvaez’s 1513, with the arrival of Ponce de Leon, the expedition, seriously short of food, encountered stiff Timucuan population in north central Florida opposition from the Timucuan Indians. Starving ranged between 50,000 to 100,000. Two hundred and exhausted, Narvaez and his men built years later, less than 100 of these native peoples ramshackle barges in an effort to escape the natives