REMNANTS AND RELICS
Hike through history of ill-fated Cross Florida Barge Canal at ‘The Island’ in Ocala
An ill-fated idea hatched centuries ago met its decisive end in the 1970s when President Richard Nixon stopped construction on the Cross Florida Barge Canal amid environmentalist appeals.
Since the 16th-century arrival of Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles in Florida, traders and business owners have floated the idea of making the Sunshine State crossable by combining inland waterways. However, several surveys in the 1800s suggested that building a canal would be too costly or difficult to undertake.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his New Deal program in the 1930s, the canal had renewed hope, and crews got to work constructing a water-based route from Palatka to the Gulf of Mexico, which would have expedited shipping and transportation.
The project only got about a third of the way to completion by the time it was scrapped, but it left interesting remnants and relics abandoned in its wake. In Ocala, take a short walk through the woods of a highway median to see four massive steel-reinforced concrete bridge stanchions built in 1936 — pieces of engineering meant for an unfinished roadway over a canal that never came to fruition.
These relics can be found within The Island, an interpretive historical park across the street from the Santos trailhead and campground, a jumping-off point for Florida’s most popular mountain biking trails. The Florida Trail also overlaps with this park in the middle of U.S. Route 441.
Take a short hike of less than a mile to retrace the steps of Florida’s past and learn about the “Ditch of Dreams.” A timeline explains the forces driving the hopes of a canal, including protecting gold shipments and reducing the number of sunken vessels and cargo losses sustained when sailing through the Florida Keys.
The project did employ more than 6,000 workers during the Great Depression, but in the process, Florida lost countless oak trees, long-leaf pines and many wild animals. Thousands of people were also displaced by the government’s acquisition of land.
At almost every stage, the project faced headwinds. During the FDR era, New Deal funding quickly ran out while environmental opposition to the project began to simmer.
“In its pollution of our
fresh waters, it [the canal] would be a greater calamity than any freeze or hurricane which has come to this State,” reads a 1935 editorial in Florida Grower Magazine, as seen on an interpretive sign at The Island. Concerned Floridians worried about damage to groundwater supplies and springs, not to mention the damage to the canal’s surrounding land.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Palatka for a groundbreaking ceremony. In the years to follow, the Rodman Dam was built and to this day still serves as a reminder of “Florida’s Folly” as concerned citizens continue fighting to “Free the Ocklawaha” River.
The Cross Florida Barge Canal met its end when Marjorie Harris Carr, a famed environmentalist, used the power of public relations and storytelling to advocate for Florida’s natural lands and waterways. In 1969, she founded Florida Defenders of the Environment, filed a lawsuit and generated widespread resistance to the canal.
“The project could endanger the unique wildlife of the area and destroy this region of unusual and unique natural beauty,” wrote President Nixon in a statement dated Jan. 19, 1971. “The step I have taken today will prevent a past mistake from causing permanent damage.”
In 1990, the project was federally deauthorized by Congress and made official when Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles signed the resolution in 1991.
Now Carr has a 110-mile linear park named in her honor: The 70,000-acre Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway, which serves as home to about 40 miles of the Florida Trail, more than 80 miles of off-road biking opportunities, 16 miles of paved multiuse trail and more than 80 miles of equestrian paths.
IF YOU GO
To visit The Island, park behind the Marion County Sheriff’s Office at 3260 S.E. 80th St. in Ocala and follow signs for the trail. To learn more about the Cross Florida Greenway, visit floridastateparks.org.
Find me @PConnPie on Twitter and Instagram or send me an email: pconnolly@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun things, follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.