Florida, the adopted home of the incumbent US President Trump, almost became an island. But several attempts to build the Florida Cross Barge Canal failed. Ultimately, it was the successful resistance of environmentalists that stopped the third attempt. What remains is a controversial dam and a 172-kilometer-long green strip on which the trees were cleared or bulldozed during the preparatory work.
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The Spanish were already considering the idea of building a navigable tow canal across Florida. In 1561, Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés proposed a canal to his King Philip II of Spain to bypass the pirate-infested Strait of Florida.
Matters were more serious when US Secretary of Defense John C. Calhoun called for a canal for military transport in 1818. When the construction of a railway line from Jacksonville to Pensacola was completed in 1861, the issue was actually settled, but between 1829 and 1911 a total of six reports on the construction of the canal were commissioned. All experts advised against building the waterway.
Oil boom needed cheap transport routes
But Florida’s politicians continued to toil. It was not the pirates, but the oil that was to be transported to the east coast that was now enough of an incentive to relaunch the plans. At least the earlier criticism of the experts was taken into account, who referred to the sensitive system of karst water aquifers, on which the entire drinking water supply of Florida and neighboring states is based:
The canal was only allowed to be a maximum of 3.5 meters deep instead of the originally planned 9 meters for seagoing ships, so that there was sufficient protection for this sensitive system. The Gulf Atlantic Ship Canal became the Florida Cross Barge Canal, on which barges, i.e. flat barges, transported the freight.
Once planned route of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which was never realized for various reasons.
(Bild: State Archives of Florida,Public Domain)
The first work on this barge canal began in 1935, when US President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program made 5 million dollars available for the project, but at that time the total cost was already estimated at 143 million. “Camp Roosevelt” was set up for 8,000 workers, and the small town of Santos, which was predominantly inhabited by African Americans, had to make way for it.
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Union secretary George Timmerman, who went to check local working conditions, was ambushed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and found seriously injured and nailed to a cross on a tree near Ocala, his mouth sewn shut.
The project was stopped after three years. It took six years for new plans for a canal to be made. The threat to shipping from German submarines led to the plans for the Gulf Atlantic Ship Canal being pulled out of the drawer and the US Army Corps of Engineers commissioned to update them. A budget of 93 million dollars was approved, but then not used because the submarine war in the North Atlantic had been won from 1943 onwards.
Renaissance of the canal project due to the Cuban Missile Crisis
In the Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis, Barge Canal plans resurfaced; the Florida Straits had once again become dangerous waters. US President LB Johnson in particular campaigned for the construction of the canal and started work on February 27, 1964 with a telegenic blast. The canal was supposed to be put into operation in 1971.
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English-language video about US President Lyndon B. Johnson’s starting signal to realize the Florida Canal, until its abrupt end by his successor Richard Nixon. Contemporary witnesses have their say.
In fact, the construction was stopped with an executive order in 1971 by US President Nixon to “protect the environment”: a complete success for the activist group “Florida Defenders of the Environment” (FDE), which was founded by zoologist Marjorie Harris Carr. The start of the project helped them: with the construction of the dams in the first phase, entire rivers and animal species disappeared, to the horror of the residents. To this day, the FDE is committed to the renaturation of the rivers.
When Nixon stopped construction of the canal, several bridges and two dams had already been completed, as had clearing work along the canal route. It was not until 1990 that the project was officially declared over by Congress. Since 1998, the 172 kilometer long strip has been called the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway. A year after the death of activist Marjorie Harris Carr, who was instrumental in preventing the canal through her resistance, the green strip was named after her.
With a total cost of $75 million, the canal is the largest failed infrastructure project in the United States to date.
(beautiful)
