An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century

9 The Sovereign

Even when its boiler was cold and dormant, the one-hundredfoot -long floating dredge was an imposing rig. The superstructure straddling the thirty-eight-foot beam was a small factory, pungent with the smell of grease and rotting Everglades detritus . When lit off, the boiler roused the dredge into a belching hulk of steel cables, pulleys, and I beams in repetitive motion. A mechanical sigh sounded with each in-and-out, turning move of the boom, controlled like a giant grasshopper leg on puppet strings by an operator pulling at levers. Assisted by an onboard crew of twelve, he could plunge the dredge’s bucket twenty-two feet into the water, swing it out seventy feet, and disgorge 4.5 cubic yards of muck, enough to cover the infield of a baseball diamond. One lover of wild Florida called these creatures of human invention “steel behemoths.” They were earthmovers in the grimmest sense of the term. In 1908, the trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund purchased two of them from the Marion Steam Shovel Company of Ohio, one for $22,000 and another , with a shorter boom, for $19,941. Over the next several decades, they and other dredges crisscrossed the Everglades, excavating more than seven hundred miles of canals. In their The Sovereign [ c h a p t e r n i n e 116 ] part one day, the dredges were a masterwork of engineering. In Florida, they attempted to create yet another kind of engineering marvel—the reclaimed Everglades. The initiative was a bold one. The project’s domain encompassed as much earth as sky, with no end to either. Running out to all points of the compass, through the sawgrass and marsh, around the hammock islands, and through the cypress strands, was water. To convert so much water into land required technology that did not yet exist. The attempt, though, required only blind faith in human capacity. Dredges were that faith manifested. One had been under way in the New River outside of Fort Lauderdale since July 1906, and it yielded positive results. The freshly exposed muck soil, reported the Miami Metropolis, was “creamy black and ranging anywhere from three to five feet thick.” Cultivated fields took form as quickly as the land was dried out, rendering “good, big healthy” fruits and vegetables. Additional land would be made available as the dredge, later joined by one of the new Marion machines, continued carving out the river, which was turning from a mere drainage outlet into a bustling avenue of commerce. A flotilla of launches, workboats, and other craft plied the placid waters; truck farmers and citrus growers built new homes along the precisely carved banks; and entrepreneurs opened new businesses . Here was Florida’s very own land of milk and honey, a “tale from the Arabian Nights,” said one Florida magazine. The reports of the Metropolis, whose editor, the partisan Bobo Dean, had traveled to Fort Lauderdale to survey the work, were more than encouraging for the future of drainage. Dean’s assessments of agrarian success made the people living around Biscayne Bay eager to hear the machine noise of progress and to see the signs of “thrift and prosperity.” Seven months before the Internal Improvement Fund placed its order with the Marion Company, Governor Broward received a petition from Miami citizens requesting a dredge to convert the loping Miami River into a busy canal linking their city to reclaimed land. Broward liked the idea. Before making a trip to inspect the progress on the New River in early 1908, he sent word to the petitioners that he would 9. the sovereign [ 117 be in Fort Lauderdale and available to discuss their request. A delegation of sixty businessmen subsequently huddled with him in the meeting hall above the store of Frank Stranahan, a pioneer merchant who enjoyed a lucrative trade with Seminoles and the local reclamation crews. Broward told the Miami men that if they purchased forty thousand dollars worth of Internal Improvement Fund land, the state would buy a new dredge and dig the canal they wanted. The delegation agreed to the terms. According to the Metropolis, the meeting was a veritable “love feast,” and Broward was the gracious host extolling the feasibility of drainage with what had become his trademark refrain: “Water will run down hill.” When the promised dredge arrived in early 1909, people celebrated in the streets. Delivered from its assembly...