When was the everglades drained

Severe hurricanes in and caused catastrophic damage and flooding from Lake Okeechobee. President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to assist the communities surrounding the lake. The effects of the dike were seen immediately.

An extended drought occurred in the s, and with the wall preventing water leaving Lake Okeechobee and canals and ditches removing other water, the Everglades became parched. In , a million acres of Everglades burned. Further floods in prompted an unprecedented construction of canals throughout southern Florida. Following another population boom after World War II , the Everglades was divided into sections separated by canals and water control devices that delivered water to agricultural and newly developed urban areas.

Coinciding with the dedication of Everglades National Park, in south Florida saw two hurricanes and a wet season responsible for inches of rain, ending the decade-long drought. Although there were no human casualties, cattle and deer were drowned and standing water was left in suburban areas for months. Between and , a levee miles long was built between the eastern Everglades and the suburbs from Palm Beach south to Homestead.

Between and , Everglades were divided into basins. Leverett White Brownell, a naturalist, visited Flamingo in He described the village as 38 shacks on stilts, infested with fleas and mosquitos. He claimed to have seen an oil lamp extinguished by a cloud of mosquitoes. He added that tomatoes, asparagus, and eggplant were the principle crops. Chokoloskee, near present-day Everglades City, was first settled in the s, although it had been the home of Calusa Indians for centuries in pre-Columbian times.

It became the trade center for homesteaders who occupied the deserted Calusa sites scattered throughout the Ten Thousand Islands region. Over people occupied Chokoloskee in Like Flamingo and Cape Sable, most were farmers or laborers. In addition to the general unpleasantness that life in Everglades could bring, hurricanes were another challenge that early settlers had to contend with.

The Everglades and Chokoloskee community was just recovering from a hurricane in when it was devastated by another, the worst on record, the following year. Only the highest ground of the old Calusa shell mound remained above water. Low-lying farm fields were salted by flood tides and most cisterns were polluted, a major tragedy in an area where few springs or wells existed.

Many inhabitants of the outlying islands were forced to abandon their homesteads. Many people blamed the catastrophic flooding on poorly designed and unfinished drainage projects left by early developers. To alleviate future flooding, the corps constructed the Herbert Hoover Dike, which was eighty-five miles long and at least three times the size of the old state-built mud levee. Building a canal across Florida had been a pet pork barrel scheme since Congress first allotted money for it in Blake , President Nixon finally killed the project in By , the federal assault on the Everglades was in full operation.

In , one of the worst storms on record had flooded nearly 2. The money initiated the Central and South Florida Flood Control Project, a system of more than 1, miles of canals and levees and sixteen major pumping stations GAO , 4. This project drains lands south of Lake Okeechobee that is now farmed primarily by sugar growers. And it left environmental problems in its wake by severely disrupting the flow of water in the Everglades.

Signs of environmental trouble became visible in the summer of , when heavy rains forced extensive pumping of excess water from farmlands. Hundreds of deer drowned and smaller animals like wild hogs and raccoons died because high water covered their food supply.

Today, levees and drainage canals continue to block the flow of water through the Everglades, including Everglades National Park. During years of adequate rainfall the park has enough water, but in dry years, water is held in drainage canals and diverted from the park. The park is last in line in the mile system and thus at the mercy of other uses, from flood control for agricultural lands to municipal water demands. In some years too much water is a problem for the Everglades. After large rainstorms, water control districts relieve flooded farmlands by releasing large volumes of fresh water in brackish estuaries adjacent to the park.

The excess water disrupts the delicate mix of brackish water needed to produce shrimp and fish, a food source for many coastal birds. When these aquatic creatures are not abundant, coastal birds will desert their nests and nestlings in search of new food supplies, farther away. Water drainage and control, paid for largely with federal funds, opened the door for commercial sugar production in the Everglades.

No single policy affected the development of the Everglades more than the sugar embargo on Cuba. In fewer than 50, acres of sugarcane were planted in all of Florida; but domestic sugarcane growth exploded from as Cuban sugar was entirely eliminated from the U.

Furthermore, federal price supports ensured that more land would be drained and planted in sugarcane. Domestic sugar prices are supported by the federal government through a complex arrangement of loans and import restrictions. But to create farmland, the swampy Everglades had to be drained. Disston planned to drain the land, which stretched from Orlando to south of Lake Okeechobee, to expose the fertile muck that was perfect for growing crops.

This purchase started wheels turning that did not stop through lawsuits, government resolutions, land grants, studies, and contracts made and cancelled. The many players included several determined Florida governors, the railroad companies of Henry Flagler and others, and a series of government groups formed to be stewards of the land or to monitor the others who were involved. Although the U. The governors believed in their obligation to drain the wetlands for cultivation and settlement, and each one contributed to its progress, beginning with William Bloxham in , although Napoleon Bonaparte Broward is most often remembered for beginning the actual drainage.