THE NATIONAL WATERWAYS

GULF INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY
January 1983

Navigation History NWS-83-9
AUTHORITY FOR THE NATIONAL WATERWAYS STUDY

The Congress authorized the National Waterways Study (NWS) and provided the

instructions for its conduct in Section 158 of the Water Resources Development

Act of 1976 (Public Law 94-587):

The Secretary of the Army, acting through the Chief

of Engineers, is authorized and directed to make a

comprehensive study and report on the system of

waterway improvements under his jurisdiction. The

study shall include a review of the existing system

and its capability for meeting the national needs

including emergency and defense requirements and an

appraisal of additional improvements necessary to

optimize the system and its intermodal

characteristics. The Secretary of the Army, acting

through the Chief of Engineers, shall submit a

report to Congress on this study within three years

after funds are first appropriated and made

available for the study, together with his

recommendations. The Secretary of the Army, acting

through the Chief of Engineers, shall upon request,

from time to time, make available to the National

Transportation Policy Study Commission established

by Section 154 of Public Law 94-280, the information

and data developed as a result of the study.
PREFACE

This pamphlet is one of a series on the history of navigation done

as part of the National Waterways Study, authorized by Congress in

Public Law 94-587. The National Waterways Study is an intensive review

by the Corps of Engineers’ Institute for Water Resources of past, present,

and future needs and capabilities of the United States water transportation network. The Historical Division of the Office of the Chief of

Engineers supervised the development of this pamphlet, which is designed

to present a succinct overview of the subject area.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I. THE CONCEPT

Chapter II. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

TO WESTERN FLORIDA

Chapter III. THE LOUISIANA AND TEXAS

INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY

Chapter IV. THE FLORIDA PENINSULA

Chapter V. UNFINISHED BUSINESS

CHRONOLOGY

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1

7

21

39

51

59

65

79
GULF COAST
Chapter I

THE CONCEPT

The earliest settlers in America quickly recognized the advantages

afforded by inland waterways. As vital arteries supporting

transportation, the streams, rivers, bayous, lakes, and other natural

water routes facilitated primitive settlement and eventual urban

development. They also promoted a type of water transportation

different from that conducted at deep-water ports. Their shallow,

sheltered waters provided safe passage to barges and other light-draft

vessels that could not withstand the battering of the “open seas; they

could be depended upon to link the scattered coastal communities and

to penetrate the interior of the country, creating a commercial

connection between geographically isolated points.

A PLAN FOR NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION

The vision of a vast network of roads and protected waterways

captured the imaginations of influential men. Thomas Jefferson and

other leaders of the young republic proposed a national system of

internal improvements. Responding to the growing desire for improved

inland transportation, the Senate ordered a report on the subject. In

1808, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin submitted his classic

report on “Public Roads and Canals.” This report formulated a plan

for federal promotion of inland transportation and established the

principles that have guided the governments role in water-related

public works since that time. Gallatin advocated considerable federal

assistance, arguing that private capital was not being used to develop

essential roads and canals. Many areas through which potential

avenues of traffic would run were settled only sparsely, if at all,

and more attractive investments divertd the precious supply of

available capital. Gallatin maintained the federal government could

overcome these obstacles by participating in construction of extensive

projects that would, in turn, stimulate private enterprise to carry on

further improvements.l

The prototype for many future plans of internal improvement,

Gallatin’s report called for canals along the Atlantic Coast, canals

linking the Atlantic Ocean with the western rivers and the Great

Lakes, and interior roads and canals to provide strategic local

connections. The elaborate plan further proposal that the government

conduct engineering surveys to establish the need and to plan for

improvements beneficial to the national interest. Gallatin based his

justification on the military, political, and commercial needs of the

growing nation.2

Although the War of 1812 forestalled any immediate implementation

of the Gallatin plan, it emphasized the pressing need for an adequate

network of coastal defenses and underscored the military value of
improved inland communication. Postwar efforts to improve military

logistics directly involved the War Department and its Army Engineers

in transportation planning. A board, including one naval officer and

Corps of Engineers officers Brigadier General Simon Bernard and

Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier General) Joseph Totten, undertook

a study of national defense needs in 1816. These officers concluded

that the national defense depended on four elements: a strong navy,

adequate coastal fortifications, a regular army and organized militia,

and improved internal transportation. Agreeing with the board's

recommendations, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun used the Army

Engineers to investigate problems of inland river navigation. The

Engineer studies revealed urgent military and commercial needs for

waterway improvements. In 1819, Calhoun published his "Report on

Roads and Canals," reiterating Gallatin's plan and adding to it.

Familiar with the work of the Army Engineer officers in fortification

construction and navigation studies, he proposed that they be used

extensively in surveying, planning, and, when necessary, supervising

the construction of internal improvements.3

Pointing out the mutual benefits to military and commercial

objectives, Calhoun included navigable rivers in the broad scope of

his program. He recognized the desirability of developing a chain of

canals along the Atlantic seaboard, but he also perceived that no

state or group of states would have sufficient interest in such a

canal to complete it. 4 In this astute projection, he anticipated a

political problem that later would impede the development of an

intracoastal waterway along the Gulf Coast.

Certain features of Calhoun's proposal formed the basis for

federal policy contained in the General Survey Act of 1824. This

legislation formalized the use of Army Engineers in civil projects

meriting national support. Thus began the continuous association

between the Corps of Engineers and the waterways, leading to the Army

Engineers? historic responsibility to maintain the navigable waters of

the United States. President James Monroe appointed a Board of

Engineers for Internal Improvements to administer the act.

Essentially, the General Survey Act represented the first step in a

prolonged struggle to fashion a national policy for waterway

development. 5

The more heavily populated East Coast presented the greatest

demand for immediate canal improvements, but men of vision pursued

their grandiose schemes to create avenues of transportation reaching

far across the country. Some entertained dreams of a canal that would

tie the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, eliminating the need for

vessels to navigate the cumbersome and often dangerous course around

the Florida peninsula. Two years after enactment of the General

Survey Act, the President called for an examination to determine the

most eligible route for such a canal. The Army Engineers responsible

for this assignment pointed out the formidable difficulties and

expense involved in a trans-Florida canal, but they viewed more

favorably the possibilities for a protected passage to permit inland

navigation along the Gulf Coast between St. Marks, Florida and Lake

2
Pontchartrain, Louisiana.

6 This last optimistic projection laid the

groundwork for the eventual creation of the canal we know today as the

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW).

POLITICAL PROCRASTINATION AND RAILWAY COMPETITION

Even though in 1829 the Engineer officers described much of the

route actually followed by the eastern portion of the future GIWW,

almost a century would elapse before Congress authorized its

construction. For many years, the intracoastal waterway from Florida

to the Mississippi River existed in conceptual form only while

Congress dealt with more urgent domestic and military concerns. When

the Civil War ended, the Corps of Engineers decentralized,

establishing regional "Engineer Offices " from which the Army officers,

assisted by government-employed civilian engineers, initiated a

far-flung program of local river and harbor improvements. After an

ambitious beginning, the fact became painfully clear that even the

vast resources of the federal government could be spread too thinly.

Political pressures eventually resulted in more selective

appropriations, concentrating larger sums on fewer projects.

7

No clear-cut federal policy dictated development of a national

system of navigable waterways--or, for that matter, of transportation

in general. The bitter rivalry that arose between the railroads and

the waterway users further complicated the problem. Railroad growth 

accelerated at an enormous rate between 1850 and 1910. Workers laid

more miles (70,335) of track between 1880 and 1890 than during any

other decade in the nation's history.

8

Seeking to entice commerce away from the waterways, the railroads

successfully adopted various techniques to drive competing water

carriers out of business. Rate-cutting practices became prevalent

soon after the Civil War. In locations where water transportation was

available, the railroads would reduce their freight rates to

artificially low levels, even hauling water-competitive commerce at a

loss if necessary. Another technique they employed was to purchase

competing water lines and then discourage their use by raising the

water rates. By gaining control of waterfront facilities, the

railroads hampered freight delivery to and from water carriers. Also ,

they often refused to transship goods that might be moved in

combination by rail and water. 9

The competitive practices of the railroads worked to the detriment

of the waterway operators, causing a marked decline in river and canal

transportation toward the end of the nineteenth century. The economic

advantage of water transportation resided in the movement of

low-grade, heavy and bulky staples such as lumber, cotton, and coal,

for which low freight rates were more important than speed of

delivery. 10 By offering equally low or lower rates for these

commodities, the railroads undermined the ability of the water

carriers to compete and brought ruin to many boat lines. As commerce

abandoned the waterways for the railroads, many channels fell into

disrepair and were not maintained by the private companies for which

they had ceased to be profitable.

3
INLAND WATERWAYS GRADUALLY GAIN SUPPORT

Interest in the waterways revived late in the 1800s, as the people

of the Mississippi Valley complained the railroads did not have

sufficient capability to meet their needs. Because the Interstate

Commerce Act passed in 1887 had failed to curb effectively the

discriminatory practices of the railroads, railroad regulation

remained a compelling issue. Renewed interest in waterway

transportation assumed the form of demand for river and canal

improvements to be financed with public funds. Frustrated commercial

interests banded together, formed numerous organizations and

associations, and petitioned for a comprehensive plan to improve and

control the national river systems. 11

A champion for the waterways emerged. According to one, not

disinterested, contemporary, "Theodore Roosevelt was as a Moses

leading the people from an ‘oppressed and degraded state of commerce?

in which they found themselves beleaguered, as did their forebears a

century and a quarter before. "

12 During the first decade of the new

century, President Roosevelt vigorously addressed the issue of

national transportation. His leadership and efforts on behalf of the

waterways bore fruit. In 1909, Congress authorized sweeping surveys

for a host of waterways improvements including a system of connected

intracoastal waterways stretching from Boston to Brownsville.l3

Finally, Congress had bestowed official recognition upon the concept

of a national system of inland waterways; however, this acknowledgment

was not tantamount to actual adoption of the desired project. More

years, more money, more effort, and more people would be required to

achieve a continuous navigable passageway along the shores of the Gulf

coast ●

The most successful and enduring effort came from an unexpected

quarter. In 1905, a group of businessmen in Victoria, Texas had

organized the Interstate Inland Waterway League, pledged to the goal

of a continuous system that would tie together the 18,000 miles of

navigable waters extending from the Great Lakes, through the

Mississippi Valley, and along the Louisiana and Texas coastlines.

This league clamored for a channel to match navigational features on

the Mississippi and Ohio river systems. In 1912, supporters of the

project claimed that coal from the mining regions of Pennsylvania

could be brought by water to Texas at half the price being paid for

the fuel in Texas and Louisiana, saving $2 million annually on coal

shipments alone.14

The league later changed its name to the "lntracoastal Canal

Association of Louisiana and Texas" and, finally, to the "Gulf

Intracoastal Canal Association" as it is known today. No history of

the GIWW would be complete without presenting the crucial role played

by the canal association. From camping on the doorstep of the

nation’s Capitol to prodding sluggish county governments, encouraging

the donation of necessary rights-of-way and the rebuilding of bridges,

this organization has served as the leading proponent of the
GIWW.15 To the present day, this unique association remains

exclusively identified with the waterway. Without the association,

there might never have been a canal.

Two pieces of legislation probably represent the canal

associations greatest triumph. The Rivers and Harbors Act in 1925

authorized for the first time a continuous Louisiana-Texas waterway

from New Orleans to Galveston. Two years later, Congress authorized

extension of this canal west to Corpus Christi. The Louisiana-Texas

Intracoastal Waterway proved an immediate success. Eventual extension

of the associations scope to include the entire Gulf Coast became

inevitable as eastern interests sought support to develop the portion

of the canal between the Mississippi River and Florida. The

associations unyielding efforts further supported passage of

legislation in 1942 authorizing an enlarged channel extending from

Florida west to the vicinity of the Mexican border.16

TO PROMOTE THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

The impact of war has facilitated transformation of the Gulf

Intracoastal Waterway from concept to reality. During periods when

the nation was engaged in military conflicts, movement of personnel,

troops, and defense materials increased greatly. Heavy transportation

demands imposed by wartime conditions served to emphasize the urgent

heed for protected inland transportation and called attention to

existing inadequacies. The correspondence between major military

encounters and subsequent transportation-related legislation must be

noted: the General Survey Act followed the War of 1812; extensive

railroad surveys followed the war with Mexico; a rash of river and

harbor improvements followed the Civil War; the progressive policies

of the Roosevelt era, culminating in the surveys of 1909, followed the

Spanish-American War; authorization for the intracoastal canal in

Louisiana and Texas followed World War I; and authorization to enlarge

and complete an intracoastal waterway from Apalachee Bay, Florida to

Brownsville, Texas followed the outbreak of World War II.

During World War II, the presence of German submarines in the

waters skirting the eastern and Gulf shores of the United States

demonstrated most dramatically the extreme vulnerability of coastwise

traffic. The enemy vessels sunk more than two dozen merchant ships in

the Gulf of Mexico, severely disrupting commerce. Towboats, tugs, and

barges, pressed into service on the protected inland waterways, moved

tremendous quantities of strategic commodities essential to wartime

? production. 17

Heavy movement of petroleum products, more than 1 million barrels

a day, began early in 1943 and continued throughout the war. The

barges coordinated with pipelines, tank cars, and tank trucks to

deliver a total of 1,731,030,485 barrels of petroleum and petroleum

products during the war. Assessing the contribution of the inland

waterways to the war effort, the Office of Defense Transportation

said, "If our waterways rendered no service beyond that of

transporting petroleum and its products during the war, they would

have amply justified their improved existence.

5
Vital war-related industries located production facilities along

the GIWW and its tributaries. This waterside industrial development

offered innumerable benefits to the adjacent communities. The

experience of Houston provides an outstanding case in point. The

spectacular rise of the petrochemical industry along the banks of the

Houston Ship Channel not only supported the war effort but also

contributed significantly to that city’s tremendous postwar boom. The

advantages of low-cost barge service for bulk-loading commodities

attracted many manufacturers to the Gulf Coast ares, enabling them to

move large quantities of raw materials from one stage of production to

the next along the intracoastal canal.

The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway is sometimes referred to as the

1,000-mile miracle. Although its creation may not have been truly

miraculous, it certainly was prolonged and laborious, involving an

enormous region and a multitude of scattered communities. Development

of the waterway progressed in a fragmentary, piecemeal fashion,

subject to the political forces of the times and the whims of

Congress. This pattern of segmented growth does not lend itself to

presentation as a single, continuous story, dictating instead

organization by geographical units. Therefore, chapters in this

history correspond to the major segments of the inland canal along the

Gulf and to the respective Army Engineer installations responsible for

them.

Today, chemical plants, glass plants, paper mills, oil refineries,

steel-fabricating plants, power plants, shipyards, grain elevators,

and fertilizer and synthetic rubber plants are among the industrial

facilities lining the waterway. Picturesque fishing vessels, sleek

pleasure boats, and graceful sailboats dot the channel, joining the

bustling stream of barge traffic. Perhaps J. F. Ellison, secretary of

the National Rivers and Harbors Congress, entertained such a vision

seventy years ago when he wrote:

The New South, not the old, self-satisfied South of pleasant

memories and tender recollections, that lay ever half asleep

basking in her own sunshine, content to raise the cotton supply of

the world and to allow her wonderful natural resources of mine and

forest to remain undisturbed, but the New South, awakening as a

young giant, strong and vibrant, throwing off the fetters of

commercial indifference, is at last . . . being aroused, to the

fact that the beneficent hand of the Creator has given to her more

natural advantages than He has vouchsafed to any other part of

this great Union.19
Chapter II

MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO WESTERN FLORIDA

SLUGGISH BEGINNINGS

The first portion of the present Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to

receive the attention of the federal government lay east of the

Mississippi River. Almost twenty years before Florida and Texas were

admitted to the Union, legislation of March 3, 1826 authorized a

survey of a canal route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of

Mexico. In 1829, Brigadier General Simon Bernard, a member of the

Board of Internal Improvements, and Army Engineer Captain William Tell

Poussin, functioning as an assistant to the board, reported their

survey findings. After discussing in detail possible canal routes

across the Florida peninsula, they cast an eye to the matter of inland

coastal navigation from St. Marks to Lake Pontchartrain, which, they

stated, could be “rendered secure, safe, and commodious”l by means

of certain improvements:

lst. A canal along Crooked creek, from Ocklockony river to a

convenient point in St. George's sound; through this sound and the

canal the Appalachicola will become connected with St. Mark.

Secondly. The clearing and deepening of the Santa Rosa sound, at

the meeting of tides. Thirdly. A canal from the Bay of Pensacola

to that of Mobile, through the Great Lagoon and the river Bon

Secour. Fourthly. The deepening of the Pass au Heron, between

the eastern point of Dauphin island and the main.

Lake Pontchartrain can be connected with the Mississippi by a

canal, which has been projected, at or near New Orleans, and by

Bayou Manchac.2

Their proposed improvements set forth the first suggested route for an

intracoastal waterway from western Florida to New Orleans, but

Congress appropriated no funds for such a projects

A lone appropriation in 1828 provided for one local improvement in

the future waterway. Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne, and Mississippi

Sound afforded protected passage to vessels traveling between New

Orleans and Mobile Bay; however, at Pass au Heron, the natural

controlling depth was about 3 feet over the shoal between Mobile Bay

and Mississippi Sound. This forced ships navigating the inland route

into the open Gulf at Dauphin Island, with increased risk of danger

from the elements and corresponding increased rates of insurance. On

May 23, 1828, Congress appropriated $18,000 to deepen the channel

through Pass au Heron. Available records indiicate this construction

was conducted between 1828 and 1832, when a severe southwest storm

destroyed the work already accomplished and the effort was

discontinued. 4

7
After the United States abandoned the Pass au Heron project, John

Grant sought a monopoly on the pass. In 1838, he obtained a charter

from the state of Alabama authorizing possession of as much of the

shell reef as necessary to construct a channel and granting him the

power to collect tolls at a rate of fifteen cents per registered ton

to defray the cost of the work. By the fall of 1839, he had expended

$100,000 and had completed a channel about 1,300 feet north of Pass au

Heron, adequate for vessels drawing 6 feet. A $25,000 congressional

appropriation on August 30, 1852 for a harbor on Lake Pontchartrain

near the city of New Orleans resulted in construction of a wooden

breakwater that further benefited vessels traversing the entire route

from Mobile to New Orleans. 5 Called "Grants Pass," the dredged

channel north of Pass au Heron was later deepened to 8.5 feet and

maintained at that depth by periodic dredging until 1869.

Considerable traffic plied the inland route between New Orleans, the

Mississippi coastal communities, and Mobile, making Grant's venture a

profitable one until rail competition entered the picture. Revenue

from tolls reached as much as $23,000 the year before completion of a

railroad connecting New Orleans and Mobile. Vessel cargoes consisted

primarily of timber, lumber, cotton, naval stores, and sundry

merchandise. 6

The improvement authorized for Pass au Heron in 1828 appears to

represent the only appropriation for construction of an intracoastal

waterway between Florida and the Mississippi River during the

nineteenth century. The meager funding for this potentially vital

waterway does not reflect a lack of interest in its development,

however. On the contrary, the passing years saw a continuing interest

in an intracoastal canal manifested sporadically with several surveys

being conducted.

In 1830, Engineer Captain William Chase surveyed all the channels

and islands between Mobile and New Orleans, charting the best route

for navigation between the two points and marking sites for needed

lighthouses and buoys. 7 Two years later, a congressional act

identified two reaches of the coastline to the east to be surveyed for

“practicability and cost of canals" to connect the designated bays and

rivers. The segments of coastline selected for this study lay between

“the waters of St. Andrew’s bay and the river and bay of Chattahoochie

Mobile Bay.9 Army officers, led by Lieutenant William G. Williams,

conducted the survey and reported in 1833 on opening navigation

between Mobile Bay and Pensacola Bay to boats drawing 7.5 feet. They

recommended a route up Bon Secour Bay and River, eastward by a cut to

Bear Creek, on throgh Bay La Lanche into Perdido Bay from which, by a

cut, it would proceed either into the Great Lagoon or into Bayou

Grande, an arm of Pensacola Bay. They estimated a cost of $1 million

for the route into Great Lagoon and $2 million for that into Bayou

Grande.10 Sparse political backing for the canal in these coastal

areas resulted again in no funding from Congress.
Federal interest in the inland waterway along the Gulf Coast lay

dormant for another forty-two years, during which the growing nation

concentrated its energies in other directions: pushing back

frontiers, laying out roads and railroads, fighting a disruptive Civil

War, and subduing the native American Indians as they struggled to

preserve their threatened lifestyles. The proposed waterway demanded

fresh attention in the decade of the 1870s along with renewed interest

in many civil. works.

By 1873, the citizens of Savannah, Georgia aspired to secure a

share of the thriving Mississippi River commerce. The mayor and the

Savannah Chamber of Commerce requested a review of the proposed

project for an intracoastal waterway connecting New Orleans with

Savannah. Captains Charles W. Howell and Andrew N. Damrell, stationed

at the United States Engineer Offices in New Orleans and Mobile,

respectively, received instructions to provide the information sought

by the Savannah citizenry. Looking at the reach between the

Mississippi River and the Apalachicola River, these officers

determined a 9-foot-deep channel would be required to accommodate

"first-class grain-barges " that measured 40 feet in beam, 220 feet in

length, and could carry 1,500 tons of bulk corn or a total of 55,000

bushels. Damrell calculated the cost of construction for improvement

between Mobile and Apalachicola at $7 million. Both officers

considered such an inland route (9 by 100 feet) feasible from an

engineering standpoint but agreed that its financial prospects were

dismal. Howell declared it "preposterous to think Savannah could draw

. . . . any portion of the Mississippi commerce, either export or

import." He did, however, recognize potential military justification

for an inland waterway continuing across the Florida peninsula,

stating, ‘In time of war, supposing the Gulf ports blockaded by a

hostile fleet and Savannah not, this inland-water route would be

invaluable.?” i

Still, the concept of safe, land-locked navigation between the

Mississippi River and the Atlantic Coast persisted, giving rise to

authorization in 1875 for the most comprehensive survey of this

stretch to date.12 To encompass a canal across Florida and an

inland route along the Gulf coasts of Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana

to the Mississippi River, the survey met the same fate as did so many

other attempts for waterway improvement--lack of funds.

On April 3, 1876, Chief of Engineers Brigadier General Andrew A.

Humphreys informed Secretary of War Alphonso Taft that the

appropriations were not sufficient to perform the required

examinations and surveys. As a substitute, he submitted extracts of

the reports from the prior surveys authorized in 1826 and 1852 as well

as the reports from Captains Howell and Damrell made in 1873. He also

referred to the two possible routes for moving the Mississippi River

grain trade to the Atlantic; these had been pointed out by the Senate

Committee on Transportation-Routes to the Seaboard in April, 1874.

One route, essentially inland, retraced earlier schemes to run along

the coastline through Lake Pontchartrain or Lake Borgne and continue

by means of short canals and land-locked bodies of water to the
Florida coast and by canal to the Atlantic. The other route ran an

exterior line, along which steamers and their tows passing out of the

mouths of the Mississippi might travel along the shores to a western

terminus of a Florida canal at either the mouth of the Suwannee River

or the Withlacoochee River or at Tampa Bay. For opening a channel

near New Orleans, Humphreys considered the most economical route to

originate at a point about 12 miles below the city, with a lock

required at the connection with the Mississippi River. 13

Most of’ the remaining work necessary to establish a ‘continuous

line of bay, river, and canal navigation" between the Mississippi and

Apalachicola lay within the eastern two-thirds of the 300-mile route,

between Grants Pass and the Apalachicola River. For the inland route

between Mobile Bay and Pensacola Bay, Humphreys referred to the

examination made in 1833 with two possible courses at the Pensacola

Bay end. Continuing eastward from Pensacola, he proposed following

Santa Rosa Sound, Choctawhatchee Bay and River, St. Andrew Bay into

Wetappo Creek, and then proceeding either by canal into Dead Lake and

the Apalachicola River about 30 miles from its mouth, or through

Searcy River and Lake Wimico to near the mouth of this river, about 5

miles from Apalachicola. Humphreys estimated that 21 miles of this

200-mile stretch would have to be cut through a "comparatively flat,

sandy country” and another 35 miles would require widening and

deepening to afford a 9-foot channel.14 He concluded his report on

"Water-Communication Between the Mississippi River and Atlantic Ocean,

Across the Peninsula of Florida" by stating, "Should Congress see fit

to require a full investigation, " a minimum of $20,000 would have to

be appropriated.15 Congress did not "see fit" at that time and, for

all practical purposes, any further progress toward accomplishing an

inland waterway east of the Mississippi was shelved by the federal

government for the remainder of the nineteenth century.

A FRESH START

The first decade of the twentieth century heralded a new dawn for

inland waterway development in the country. Disappointed with the

lack of progress on the inland transportation system, President

Roosevelt began calling for more dynamic federal action. In 1904, he

directed congressional attention to the problems of inadequate

railroad regulation.16 Responding to the demands of the people in

the Mississippi Valley, he appointed the Inland Waterways Commission

in the spring of 1907. Roosevelt viewed development of a

complementary system of water transportation as the “remedy" for the

railmads' inability ‘to keep transportation abreast of production."

He charged the commission to conduct a broad study, considering rivers

as "natural resources of the first rank” and concerning itself with

all aspects of the waterways: navigation, flooding, protection of

bottomlands, water purification and pollution, and construction of

locks and dams.17

The fall of 1907 witnessed an unprecedented crop of conventions

and support for waterway improvements. W. J. McGee, secretary to the

Inland Waterways Commissioner, suggested that sentiments reminiscent

10
of those expressed a century earlier were not purely coincidental:

“We are in the throes of our second waterway agitation . . . . The

first agitation followed hard on the Revolution." He paid tribute to

the viability of the intracoastal concept when he said, “It would seem

easy to return to and perfect Gallatin's great waterway system” to

afford barge passage “from Benton to Boston or to Brownsville."18

On February 26, 1908, exactly 100 years after Gallatin presented

his historic report, President Roosevelt transmitted the preliminary

report of the Inland Waterways Commission to Congress. Underlying the

report was the basic premise that "every waterway should be made to

serve the people as largely and in as many different ways as

possible." 19 The commissioners addressed the nation's water

resources in their fullest sense, recommending plans to improve

navigation but at the same time taking into account purification,

power development, flood control, land reclamation by irrigation and

drainage, and other benefits that might stem from such control.20

The report contained recommendations but no specific plan per se.

Roosevelt laid before Congress the need for, first, "a definite and

progressive policy" and, second, "a concrete general plan."21

The surveys authorized in the landmark Rivers and Harbors Act of

March 3, 1909 included study for "a continuous waterway, inland where

practicable," along the Gulf from St. George Sound in Florida to the

Mississippi River at New Orleans. The Army Engineers charged with

this assignment were instructed to ascertain costs for a channel with

a maximum depth of 9 feet or less where shallower drafts would

suffice. The designated route incorporated St. George Sound, St.

Andrew Bay near Panama City, Choctawhatchee Bay, Pensacola Bay,

Perdido Bay, Mobile Bay, Mississippi Sound, Lake Borgne, and Lake

Pontchartrain.22

The work in the northwestern Florida portion of the survey

included some of the most hazardous features of the entire

undertaking. The Engineer employees encountered swampy terrain

inhabited by wild turkeys, bears, panthers, alligators, and poisonous

reptiles and infested with mosquitoes and deer flies. To conduct the

distasteful task of exploring this unpleasant region, each surveyman

counted among his essential accoutrements rubber boots, snake bite

kits, and side arms.23

The following year, the Rivers and Harbors Act of June 25, 1910

made the gesture that transformed the future Florida-to-Mississippi

River waterway from a figment of the imagination into a credible

project. So long in coming, two appropriations breathed life into the

eastern Gulf waterway. Congress appropriated $100,000 to improve the

channel from Apalachicola River to St. Andrew Bay and specified a

second appropriation of $24,000 to improve Santa Rosa Sound so as to

afford a continuous channel from Choctawhatchee Bay to Pensacola.

Apalachicola to St. Andrew Bay

Little had changed geographically between Apalachicola and St.

Andrew Bay since Lieutenant William G. Williams surveyed this stretch

in 1833. The route favored by the Engineers in 1909 ran from Wetappo

11
Creek via Searcy Creek and Lake Wimico to the Apalachicola River,

about 5 miles above its mouth. Commercial conditions on the adjacent

river system, however, had changed drastically since Williams's survey

and even since the turn of the century. The commercial significance

of this stretch of inland waterway derived largely from its proximity

to the 470-mile navigable system composed of the Flint, Chattahoochee,

Chipola, and Apalachicola rivers. Between 1898 and 1908, the value of

commerce hauled on these rivers rose from $1.5 million to $12

million. Commodities transported included cotton, cotton seed,

cotton-seed meal, fertilizers, lumber, grain, brick, shingles, staves,

turpentine, resin, molasses, and provisions. By 1909, users of the

Apalachicola River system were crying for a deep-water harbor to

realize the fullest potential of its economy. A deep-water outlet was

crucial for cotton growers along the river to compete with planters

using already deepened cotton ports along the Gulf Coast.24

The three candidates for deep-water development were the ports of

Apalachicola, Port St. Joe, and Panama City. Apalachicola was

eliminated because of the large amounts of silt carried down the river

and deposited in Apalachicola Bay. St. Joseph Bay was thought to be

more exposed to the Gulf than St. Andrew Bay and the low, marshy

coastal region north of Port St. Joe was considered a deterrent to

establishing rail connections from the port to the interior. Panama

“City had relatively high ground toward the interior, making it more

accessible. Thus, the Army Engineers selected Panama City for

deep-water port development, enhancing the commercial potential of

this eastern stretch of the future GIWW.25 The advantages of these

improvements indeed appeared so evident to Captain (later Brigadier

General) Harley B. Ferguson that this future president of the

Mississippi River Commission concluded his survey recommendation with

the statement:

With this short canal and the opening of St. Andrews Bay you will

have the engineering problem of a harbor without silt, and a

commercial problem with freight assured and the rate thereon

regulated by 470 miles of navigable rivers following the natural

line of traffic from a rich territory.26

Since the Apalachicola River system supported transportation of

commercial vessels with drafts ranging from 2 to 4 feet, channel

dimensions of 5 feet deep and 65 feet wide were deemed sufficient for

the inland route between Apalachicola and St. Andrew Bay. The channel

was constructed to these authorized dimensions between 1911 and 1915.

Congress authorized dimensions of 9 by 100 feet in 1935 and the Army

Engineers completed this enlargement in 1937.27

Choctawhatchee Bay to Pensacola Bay

The second stretch of the inland waterway along the Gulf provided

for in 1910 ran from Choctawhatchee Bay westward to Pensacola Bay.

These two bays are connected by a 35-mile-long natural waterway, Santa

Rosa Sound, which is protected from the Gulf by a long, narrow sand

island . The commerce of this area, consisting mainly of cattle, wool,

wood, sheep, and cotton, originated along the Choctawhatchee River, by

which it entered the eastern end of Choctawhatchee Bay and was shipped

12
on shallow-draft schooners and barge tows through Santa Rosa Sound to

the ocean port at Pensacola. Numerous large lumbering industries

bordering Choctawhatchee Bay also supplied a major part of Pensacola's

export trade. Shoals, known as "the Narrows," at the eastern end of

Santa Rosa Sound hampered navigation, however. Thus, the

congressional appropriation in this reach provided for a channel 6

feet deep to be dredged across the Narrows. Within a year after

completion of this improvement in 1912, the 85,132 short tons (naval

stores, lumber, hay, feed, and general merchandise) transported on

this route reflected an increase of 34,200 tons.28 Army Engineers

enlarged the channel to dimensions of 9 by 100 feet in 1937.

Mobile Bay to Mississippi Sound

In 1912, with work underway on the first two (noncontiguous)

reaches of the inland waterway, Congress skipped some distance

westward and redirected its attention to Grants Pass, just west of

Mobile Bay. After the Civil War, as railway transport gained

supremacy, Grants Pass had been neglected and the channel had

deteriorated. Rather than pay tolls to navigate the undependable

channel, many vessel operators preferred the "outside" route through

the open waters of the Gulf even though it was longer, more

hazardous, and more costly.

29 In 1882, great increases in timber,

lumber, and coal exports and improvements in Mobile Harbor gave fresh

impetus to coastwise trade, leading to a preliminary examination of

this shoal by the Army Engineers. The number of vessels using Grants

Pass that year increased to 486 and revenues from tolls reached

$4,500. Major Damrell considered channel enlargement "an absolute

necessity." 30 He submitted another favorable survey report in 1894,

recommending improvement at either Grants Pass or Pass au Heron,

depending upon the price that would have to be paid for Grants

Pass.31

By the first decade of the twentieth century, the growth of Mobile

as a commercial deep-water port and the growing traffic (63,929 tons

in 1906 with lumber as the principal commodity) between Mobile and the

ports on Mississippi Sound and New Orleans prompted Congress to

appropriate $50,000 to construct a channel connecting Mobile Bay and

Mississippi Sound. The Rivers and Harbors Act dated July 25, 1912

provided for a 10-by-100-foot channel through Pass au Heron, completed

in 1914.32

World War I interrupted the revived thrust for national waterways

by diverting appropriations from navigation improvements to pressing

military expenditures. By the war’s end, the eastern portion of the

yet-to-be Gulf Intracoastal Waterway consisted of several segments of

improved channel interspersed with stretches that had not been

improved. Moving westward from Apalachicola to Panama City on St.

Andrew Bay lay the first improved stretch. From the West Bay of St.

Andrew Bay to Choctawhatchee Bay, no improvements had been made,

forcing traffic between the two bays out into the open Gulf. The

stretch from Choctawhatchee Bay to Pensacola Bay was navigable with

the improvements in Santa Rosa Sound. From Pensacola to Mobile Bay,

13
no improvements had been made. The final stretch from Mobile Bay to

the Mississippi River reflected improvements at either end that

afforded continuous navigation between its two termini.

Federal interest in the eastern leg of the Gulf waterway picked up

again in the 1920s. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1925 authorized new

preliminary examinations and surveys for an inland waterway from New

Orleans to the Apalachicola River including the Apalachicola and

Chattahoochee rivers to Columbus, Georgia, "with a view to securing a

depth suitable to the economical operation of self-propelled barges."

The same act also identified the stretch between Pensacola and Mobile

bays for closer examination.33

Pensacola Bay to Mobile Bay

When the Army Engineers examined the stretch between Pensacola and

Mobile bays as part of the comprehensive survey authorized in 1909,

they found loW country with a number of disconnected natural waterways

and no through navigable route. At that time, the principal argument

cited to justify improving this reach was the potential shipment of

coal in barges drawing 6 feet of water from the Birmingham mines via

the Warrior River system and the proposed canal to Pensacola Bay. Such

coal transport was expected to benefit government installations and

private consumers in the Pensacola vicinity. This argument could not

compensate, however, for the fact that both Mobile and Pensacola had

already established ocean trade, the coal traffic on the Warrior River

system had not yet developed; the Board of Engineers for Rivers and

Harbors viewed prospects for commerce through this stretch as not

sufficiently encouraging to warrant improvement.34

By 1929, the commercial justification for improving the stretch

between Pensacola and Mobile remained questionable, but a new

rationale had been introduced. The report of the survey authorized in

1925 indicated that two commercial routes connected Pensacola

(population 38,000) and Mobile (population 100, 000): a 103-mile rail

route serviced by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and a 95-mile

"outside" water route plied by the Pensacola, St. Andrews & Gulf

Steamship Co. vessel Tarpon. This 281-net-ton steamer, operating on a

weekly schedule between Mobile, Pensacola, Panama City, Apalachicola,

and Carrabelle, carried 430 passengers and not quite 12,000 short tons

of freight during the year 1925. About 77 percent of this commerce

was handled between Mobile and Pensacola. The Gulf Division Engineer

estimated the proposed canal between Pensacola and Mobile would

probably not carry commerce exceeding 75,000 tons annually and

predicted that about 90 percent of that would probably move eastward.

Concluding that the project was still not economically justified, he

did, however, point out that excavation of a mere 16 miles of canal in

this stretch would open a continuous waterway westward to Louisiana

and Texas and eastward to the eastern end of Choctawhatchee Bay.35

Advised of the tenor of the Division Engineer's report, interested

parties provided additional information at a public hearing held by

the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors. The commercial traffic

14
projected for the proposed Pensacola-Mobile inland waterway was

revised to 197,000 tons with annual savings in transportation costs

amounting to $130,000. The principal commodities included grain,

coal, sand and gravel, resin, lumber, gasoline, iron, steel, and

fertilizers. The Board of Engineers further noted the economic impact

of the recent entrance of the Frisco Railroad into Pensacola and

anticipated that, in view of the size and importance of the ports of

Pensacola and Mobile and the existing waterway connections to the east

and west, sufficient traffic would develop to justify constructing the

canal. The proposed canal would also furnish a connecting link

between two other extensive waterway systems: to the east, the

Escambia and Backwater rivers, the Narrows, Choctawhatchee Bay, and

the Holmes and Choctawhatchee rivers, and, to the west, the Alabama,

Tombigbee, and Black Warrior rivers. Added to the potential

commercial benefits were those that would result from recreational use

by pleasure craft owners. But despite all these tentative

justifications, one simple sentence seems to be the clincher in the

board's resolve to construct the canal: "A waterway between pensacola

Bay and Mobile Bay is a logical improvement in the development of the

inland waterway system along the Gulf coast." By 1929, the mood of

the country and the Congress was receptive to this kind of logic and

the Rivers and Harbors Act of July 3, 1930 authorized $600,000 for a

9-by-100-foot channel.36

The channel between Pensacola Bay and Mobile Bay was completed

early in 1934 at a cost of $443,000, rather than the $600,000

appropriated. The route followed Big Lagoon, Old River, Perdido Bay,

Bay La Lanche, Wolf Bay, Portage Creek, Bon Secour River, and Bon

Secour Bay. Besides improving these natural waterways, the project

involved two land cuts amounting to about 7 miles in length. In 1939,

repairs were made to an existing jetty at the south side of the canal

entrance into Pensacola Bay to protect the channel against the strong

tidal currents and thereby avoid excessive maintenance costs. The

projected tonnage of 197,000 did not materialize until three years

after completion of the canal. Commerce increased rapidly, however,

during the prewar years, reaching 632,587 tons in 1941. World War II

accounted for particularly heavy traffic, totaling 4,093,595 tons

(more than twenty times the projected tonnage ) in 1944. By the late

1940s, petroleum products represented the major commodity transported

by barges on this waterway.

3 7

Mobile Bay to New Orleans

Besides providing for the Pensacola-to-Mobile canal construction,

the 1930 Rivers and Harbors Act also authorized two improvements in

the adjacent western stretch between Mobile Bay and New Orleans. By

1929, a total of 514,707 tons moved through the Pass au Heron channel

connecting Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound.38 Barges (some as

large as 280 by 49 feet) of the Mississippi-Warrior Service and the

International Cement Corporation carried a large portion of this

commerce. Grounding and collisions of these vessels occurred

frequently within the restricted confines of

channel.39 Under the new appropriation, the

300 feet and straightened by the year 1933.

15

the 100-foot-wide

channel was widened to
At the New Orleans end of the stretch, commerce required greater

depths. The 1930 legislation replaced earlier projects (1852, 1910,

and 1917) for the Lake Pontchartrain Channel. Completed in 1933, the

new project from Lake Pontchartrain to Mississippi Sound provided for

a 9-by-100-foot channel from the 9-foot contour in Lake Pontchartrain

(near the end of the state-owned Inner Harbor Navigation Canal leading

to the Mississippi River) to the 9-foot contour in Grand Island Pass,

connecting Lake Borgne with Mississippi Sound. Thus, the completion

of the Pensacola-Mobile stretch in 1934 afforded a continuous channel

with 9-foot depths extending from New Orleans to Pensacola.40

Finally, the Rivers and Harbors Act of August 30, 1935 cleared the

way for a continuous 347-mile thoroughfare for protected navigation

between Apalachicola and New Orleans. This eastern segment of the

inland waterway would link points between these two termini with such

tributaries as the Tombigbee-Black Warrior River system, the

Mississippi River system, and the Louisiana and Texas Intracoastal

Waterway, opened the preceding year as far west as Galveston.

Specifically, the act provided for enlargement of the two previously

improved reaches from Apalachicola River to St. Andrew Bay and from

Choctawhatchee Bay to Pensacola Bay, resulting in minimum channel

dimensions of 9 by 100 feet, accomplished in 1937. The third project

adopted in 1935 called for construction of the last "holdout"--the

to-date untouched reach from the West Bay arm of St. Andrew Bay to

Choctawhatchee Bay.

West Bay to Choctawhatchee Bay

First authorized in 1935, the project for the reach between West

Bay and Choctawhatchee Bay proved to be the most troublesome.

Extending about 26 west miles from the 10-foot contour in West Bay to

the same depth roughly 3 miles out in Choctawhatchee Bay, the canal

cut through territory composed of almost pure sand. The land cut

began about 7 miles west of the starting point as the channel left

West Bay Creek and ran a northwestward inland course. At 15 miles

west of the starting point, the ground elevation had risen from 10

feet below sea level to a height of 40 feet above mean low tide, at

which peak it continued for another 4 miles” before gradually

descending to the 10-foot depth in Choctawhatchee Bay.41 In other

words, for a distance of 4 miles, the sandy banks of the canal loomed

50 feet above the bottom of the 10-foot channel. This section became

known in local parlance as the "little Grand Canyon."

Construction of the channel went smoothly at both ends of the

reach; private hydraulic pipeline dredges operating under Army

Engineer contracts rapidly completed the sections in West Bay, West

Bay Creek, and Choctawhatchee Bay. The dredge Duplex, belonging to

the Sternberg Dredging Company of St. Louis, worked westward from West

Bay and two dredges belonging to the Shell Producers Company of Tampa,

the Punta Gorda and the Tennessee, worked eastward from Choctawhatchee

Bay ● As the dredges moved toward each other into the higher ground,

the character of the soil combined with the high bank elevations

created a dangerous and time-consuming problem. The sand, rather than

sloping off uniformly, would stand in an almost vertical position and

then suddenly cave in. This necessitated removing sand from the

16
ladder and forward part of the dredge’s hull as well as backtracking

the dredge to a point where the ladder could again be lowered in

water.42

Fortunately, a simple procedure solved the problem. When the

dredges had advanced far enough into the land cut for the banks to be

sufficiently high to function as reservoir walls, the contractors

constructed a dam of earth across the channel. The dams and high

banks acted as a lock chamber, confining all water discharged by the

dredges, seepage water, and water from natural drains to raise the

dredges to an elevation at which caving sand no longer posed a serious

threat. The desired water level was obtained originally by pumping

water from the channel behind the dams into the pools. These

artificial reservoirs also served to facilitate handling and connecting

pipeline to the shore as well as to prevent a considerable amount of

bank erosion that would normally be caused by the water discharged from

the dredge.43

The initial cut was made by a small dredge with a short ladder,

followed by a larger dredge to provide greater depth. After partially

completing the cut, the contractors lowered the water level in the

pool and repeated this process. When they had completed the cut, the

contractors removed the dams, allowed the water to return to its

natural level, and made their final clean-up cut. 44

Despite the technical difficulties encountered, the Army Engineers

in the Mobile District accomplished construction of this segment of

the inland waterway, spending $303,394 less than the $1,770,000

appropriated. The commercial projections on which digging the canal

was justified amounted to 535,000 tons per year, to consist of

miscellaneous coastwise traffic of St. Andrew Bay, raw material for

paper manufacture, and other commodities. These projections were

exceeded in 1941, three years after the canal was opened to

navigation, and increased rapidly to the peak war year of 1944, when

commercial traffic totaled 3,578,792 tons.45

The opening of the West Bay-to-Choctawhatchee Bay reach on April

27, 1938 allowed uninterrupted passage along a Protected waterway with

minimum dimensions of 9 by 100 feet between Apalachicola and New

Orleans, connecting with many northern and western points beyond.46

A natural, though shallow, protected connection through St. George

Sound further extended the eastern terminus of the waterway to

Carrabelle. This long-awaited inland waterway between Florida and the

Mississippi River had been 110 years in the making since the first

appropriation for its improvement.

AFTER THE FACT

The story does not end with the accomplishment of the 9-foot

channel. Each waterway assumes its own character, fashioned by the

impact of often unforeseen physical, social, political, and economic

forces that impinge upon it and direct further changes in its

development. Certainly this has been true of the Gulf Intracoastal

Waterway.

17
Almost as soon as the "little Grand Canyon" section between West

Bay and Choctawhatchee Bay was opened to navigation, bank erosion

became a problem. The land cut crossed several natural drains that

continued to discharge water into the newly cut channel after its

completion. Because the flowline elevations of these streams were

considerably higher than the water level in the channel, the canal

banks eroded and caused excessive shoaling at their mouths. After

experimenting with retaining levees (vertical cut-off walls made of

steel sheet piling) located between the inlet control structures for

the drains, Army Engineers in the Mobile District adopted a new design

with levees composed of earth fill. Water collected in each upright

intake structure ran through a corrugated metal pipe down to the canal

level, where it could be discharged without damaging the banks. The

Engineers completed this erosion protection system in May, 1941.

Later, they planted grass on the levee slopes to stabilize the earthen

fill. In 1944, while some of the structures were undergoing repair,

unusually heavy rainfall exceeded the capacity of this system,

resulting in destruction of three control structures, two breaks in

the retaining levee, and a completely blocked channel. The Mobile

Engineers returned to their drawing boards and modified the system to

increase its discharge capacity. They completed their modifications

early in 1946 and the system has functioned satisfactorily since that

time.47

Port St. Joe had been bypassed when the intracoastal canal was

dredged from Apalachicola to St. Andrew Bay. This segment of the

waterway ran in-land to the north of Port St. Joe’s fine natural

harbor, which had been improved to a 27-foot depth. The Rivers and

Harbors Act of August 26, 1937 called for preliminary examination and

survey of a waterway to connect the deep water in St. Joseph Bay with

the intracoastal canal. Between the time this study was authorized

and the Army Engineers reported on it in 1939, local interests in Gulf

County were attempting to revitalize their depressed economy.

Industrial activity in this heavily timbered area consisted mainly of

the manufacture of paper, naval stores, and other forest products. By

October 1938, Gulf County had completed a 9-by-70-foot canal linking

St. Joseph Bay with a point on the inland waterway 6 miles away.

Bonds that were to be retired by revenue collected from toll charges

financed the $200,000 cost of construction. In April, 1939, the Army

Engineers recommended taking over the Gulf County Canal and enlarging

it to the dimensions prevailing along the intracoastal waterway.

Although the local interests had hoped to be reimbursed by the United

States government, the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors noted

that the canal had been constructed primarily for local benefit and

had effectively revived business activity at Port St. Joe, concluding

that such reimbursement would set an undesirable precedent. The Gulf

County Canal was incorporated into the federal waterway project free

of cost to the federal government in 1943 and enlarged to a width of

100 feet.48

The question of how far east the intracoastal waterway should

extend was addressed in a preliminary examination and survey from

Apalachicola Bay southeast to Withlacoochee River authorized in 1935.

The resultant legislation in 1937 provided for a 9-by-100-foot channel

as far as St. Marks on Apalachee Bay. The project called for the

18
Apalachicola end of the reach to be dredged to a point in St. George

Sound where natural. depths accommodated vessels through to Carrabelle;

the eastern end of the authorized route involved an inland channel

through Crooked River and Ochlockonee River and Bay. Dredging at the

Apalachicola end was eventually accomplished, but at the Apalachee Bay

end funding was revoked in 1939 after local interests failed to alter

a Georgia, Florida & Alabama railroad bridge across the Ochlockonee

River near McIntyre. In 1945, Congress assumed the responsibility for

construction of a movable span so that the railroads inability to

alter this bridge would not postpone completion of the intracoastal

waterway. By 1952, this railroad had been abandoned, the rail

disposed of and the bridge removed along with the requirement for a

49 new bridge. Army Engineers restudied the project in the 1960s,

and found an alternative route, continuing from Carrabelle through St.

George Sound into Alligator Harbor and cutting across the land into

Ochlockonee Bay, economically feasible but environmentally damaging.

This modification was rejected in 1974.5° The original

authorization still stands, but the channel between Carrabelle and St.

Marks remains unimproved; vessels traveling eastward from Apalachicola

exit St. George Sound through East Pass, between St. George Island and

Dog Island, and continue through the open waters of the Gulf into

Apalachee Bay and the channel to St. Marks.

At the outbreak of World War II, the waterway east of the

Mississippi was complete to Carrabelle, Florida. The military value

of this waterway was quickly recognized as enemy submarines entered

the Gulf of Mexico and oceangoing tankers were diverted to overseas

shipping lanes. Vital shipments of aviation gasoline to air bases and

other military establishments, as well as oil to relieve the critical

shortage in the Northeast, were hauled on the inland waterway.

Pipelines were laid from Carrabelle to Jacksonville and from Port St.

Joe to Chattanooga, Tennessee; gasoline from refineries on the GIWW in

Texas and Louisiana was shipped by barge to these pipelines. At the

Jacksonville terminus of the pipeline, this precious commodity was

again loaded onto barges and shipped via the Atlantic Intracoastal

Waterway to the New York-Philadelphia area.51

To accommodate the increased demands of wartime traffic, Congress

passed legislation on July 23, 1942 authorizing enlargement of the

inland canal from Apalachee Bay, Florida to Corpus Christi, Texas,

with extension to Brownsville at the Mexican border and construction

of the pipelines mentioned above. From the Mississippi River to

Florida, Army Engineer and private dredges accomplished the new

project dimensions of 12 feet in depth by 125 feet in width (150 feet

through the open waters in Mississippi Sound) between December 22,

1942 and September 24, 1943. Tonnages carried on the canal during the

war years far exceeded even the most optimistic projections used to

justify construction of the waterway.52

During the peak war year, 1944, the channel between Apalachee Bay

and New Orleans supported transport of 20,735,834 tons. Traffic

dropped off considerably after the war (in 1949, this section of the

waterway carried only 5,563,171 tons) but has built up steadily since

that time to more than 27 million tons in 1969 and to 40,618,351 tons

19
in 1978. Ranging from slightly over 3 million tons along the sparsely

developed reach between Apalachee Bay and Panama City to 22.6 million

tons along the heavily industrialized reach between Mobile Bay and New

Orleans, this traffic represented large shipments of gasoline, crude

petroleum, fuel oils, coal, and lignite as well as a vast array of

other commercial items. Except for large quantities of phosphate rock

destined for manufacture into fertilizer, movement of most commodities

tended to be predominantly eastbound, providing raw materials and

vital sources of energy to the eastern section of the country. 53

20
Chapter III

THE LOUISIANA AND TEXAS INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY

The Louisiana and Texas coastlines were not even considered in

congressional planning for an inland canal tying together the Gulf and

Atlantic waterways until almost the last quarter of the nineteenth

century. Fifty years earlier, when the first appropriation was made

to improve Pass au Heron, the Mexican flag flew over Texas. This

state, with its vast expanses of land and enormous resources, was

admitted to the Union in 1845. Louisiana had gained statehood in 1812

and enjoyed the tremendous geographic advantage of its location on the

Mississippi River as well as the benefits of 4,000 miles of natural

waterways. The fact that no survey was authorized for the

intracoastal waterway west of the Mississippi River until 1873 is

striking. Also striking is the fact that the first appropriation made

for the western leg of the intracoastal waterway and, indeed, the only

appropriation made during the century for a stretch of inland canal 1 along the entire Gulf Coast was designated for Texas. Ironically,

the intracoastal waterway west of the Mississippi was conceived many

years after its eastern counterpart but, once underway, moved somewhat

more swiftly toward the accomplishment of a continuous waterway.

A LOOK TO THE WEST

The first step toward creation of the western inland waterway was

taken when the Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1873 provided an

appropriation “not to exceed twenty thousand dollars" to conduct a

survey "For connecting the inland waters along the margin of the Gulf

of Mexico, from Donaldsonville, in Louisiana$ to the Rio Grande river,

in Texas, by cuts and canals." From his post in the United States

Engineer Office at New Orleans, Captain Charles W. Howell delegated

the field chores to three civilian engineers. The Louisiana segment

was divided between J. A. Hayward, who began working westward from the

Mississippi River on December 6, 1873, and H. C. Ripley, who in

February of the following year began working eastward from Sabine

Lake. The two survey parties met at a point midway between Vermilion

Bay and White Lake, concluded their field work on June 6, and then

returned to New Orleans to plot their work. Hayward and Ripley found

their levels only differed by one-tenth of a foot, considered by

Howell “gratifying evidence of the correctness of their work."2

The formidable task of surveying the entire Texas coast was

assigned to Assistant Engineer James S. Polhemus. With a party of

three men, he ran his transit line a distance of 50 miles from East

Galveston Bay to Sabine Lake between January 23 and April 1, 1873.

(Curiously, the survey appears to have begun before passage of its

authorizing legislation.) Characterize by an average elevation of 2

feet, this territory led them through marshy swamplands, infested with

"clouds of mosquitoes" and covered with a "dense growth of sea-cane.”

The remainder of the Texas coast, from West Galveston Bay to the Rio

21
Grande, was surveyed between November 20, 1873 and August 1, 1874.

Accompanied by one assistant and four men, Polhemus measured 242 miles

as the East Texas swampland gradually gave way to "wide and shallow

bays, along a wild and almost uninhabited coast."3

Two stretches along their route in Texas had been altered by man

about twenty years earlier. The Galveston and Brazes Canal,

connecting the waters of West Galveston Bay and the Brazes River,

remained navigable with depths ranging from 3 to 6 feet. Further down

the coast, a stream known as Caney Creek, which at one time emptied

into the Gulf, had been rechanneled into Matagorda Bay by a

2,850-foot-long ditch. The outlet to the Gulf disappeared and the

small ditch gradually enlarged to dimensions of 15 by 80 feet, earning

for itself the name of "The Big Canal." Polhemus and his party also

traversed several "cuts" connecting bays along the 77 miles between

Indianola on Matagorda Bay and Corpus Christi.4

Howell based his survey report, dated 1875, upon the extensive

fieldwork of these "young gentlemen," who "suffered hardships rarely

met in the line of their profession.” He explained the guiding

principle in selecting the route for the proposed 6-by-60-foot canal:

to utilize the navigable bayous, lakes, bays, and sounds or

lagoons, near the coast, and make the cuts connecting them along

the shortest lines available.

In this report, Howell presented the first plan for an inland waterway

beginning at the Mississippi River and terminating at the Rio Grande

where he deemed necessary a lock with a double gate and 5-foot lift. 5

The eastern terminus of the proposed waterway to be surveyed was

Donaldsonville, located 25 miles south of Baton Rouge where Bayou

Lafourche joined the Mississippi River. Howell astutely pointed out

that if commercial traffic between the Mississippi River and the Rio

Grande were to justify developing an inland waterway, more elaborate

surveys might suggest an initial point on the Mississippi below

Donaldsonville. Perpetually plagued by funding problems, he had

prefaced his report by stating the work had been performed under a

“scant appropriation" so that some parts of the survey “only reached

the dignity of a reconnaissance."6

Howell designated the section from Donaldsonville to the head of

Vermilion Bay as the most important commercially, offering southern

Louisiana a water connection with the Mississippi River that would

replace the long or obstructed routes available during only certain

seasons of the year through the Atchafalaya and Lafourche or the

outside Gulf route. He noted the southeastern Louisiana parishes that

would be served by this section of the proposed waterway covered some

of the most fertile agricultural land in the state and contained much

good timber. At the point where the Mississippi River and Bayou

Lafourche converged, the bayou was to be closed to permit its

dredging. A connection could be maintained either by a lock, by

inclined planes over which vessels might be transferred between river

22
and bayou, or by transfer of freight across the levee. Howell

preferred the clearly less expensive third alternative involving a

solid dam across the head of the bayou.7

The proposed route descended Bayou Lafourche from Donaldsonville

to Napoleonville, then proceeded through a new canal to Lake Verret

and on through Bayou Long and Flat Lake to Brashear (Morgan) City.

West of Morgan City, in keeping with the congressional requirement to

utilize navigable bodies of water near the coast, the recommended

route continued coastward through the Lower Atchafalaya River and

along the coast through Atchafalaya, Cote Blanche, and Vermilion

bays. Howell found this route deficient because the wide shallow

bays, subject to storms from the south, would not afford truly

protected inland navigation for ordinary river steamboats and coal

boats. Preferring a more inland course, Howell proposed two

alternative routes via Bayou Teche and dredged cuts to reach Vermilion

Bay.8

Howell justified the section between Vermilion Bay and Galveston

more on the basis of potential than on existing commerce. An inland

channel along this stretch would connect the Mermentau, Calcasieu,

Sabine, and Neches rivers with the Mississippi and Galveston

seaports. Howell predicted considerable lumber movement westward,

great development of sugarcane production due to reduced coal costs in

the sugar distillation process, improved transport of cotton to

market, and enhanced development of the Calcasieu sulphur mines. The

route surveyed lay no more than a few inches above tidewater and

incorporated Vermilion Bay and White, Grand, Calcasieu, and Sabine

lakes, believed by Howell to have been formerly connected by natural

passes that were ‘gradually obliterated by the action of the Gulf

tides." Expecting the same causes that destroyed the original passes

to fill in excavated cuts, he anticipated maintenance costs would be

high. In addition, the reach extending west of Calcasieu Lake posed

another problem. This swampy territory, described by surveyor Ripley

as terre tremblante, consisted of a soft mud foundation covered by the

matted roots of a heavy, 5-foot-high growth of "broad-bladed, threeedged grass." Ripley noted a slight agitation of this matted surface

could be felt several feet away. To counteract the unstable character

of what Ripley called the *trembling prairie,” Howell proposed

depositing material excavated from the cuts at some distance from

their sides. This, of course, would entail greater cost.9

The prospects of dredging an inglorious ditch through an often

desolate, 725-mile stretch of sand and swampland did not fire the

imagination or loosen the purse strings of Congress. This western

two-thirds of the future GIWW fared little better than the one-third

east of the Mississippi River during the last quarter of the

nineteenth century. The vision was there, but the time was not

right. Renewed interest in this waterway would have to wait another

thirty years for stimulation from a growing population, the discovery

of oil, and more vocal rumblings from the local captains of

industry. 10 The only improvement made during this

isolated stretch several hundred miles west of the

time was on an

mighty Mississippi.

23
The first segment of canal improved by the federal government lay

in West Galveston Bay, Texas. The state had dredged a channel 5 feet

deep across obstructing reefs in 1859, but this passage had

deteriorated drastically after the cyclone of 1875 and sustained still

more damage from a severe storm in 1886. In 1892, Congress authorized

a project for enlarging and straightening the channel to afford depths

of 3 to 3.5 feet and widths of 100 to 200 feet. Dredging was begun

under contract on January 19, 1893 and completed October 2, 1895. The

improvement terminated at Christmas (also called Christian's) Point in

Oyster (also called Christmas) Bay.ll

Next, attention shifted immediately southwestward to the canal of

the Galveston and Brazes Navigation Company. This n-mile-long

stretch represented the only obstruction to a federally improved,

continuous channel between Galveston and the Brazes River. Tolls

levied on the river steamboats carrying cotton to market, fishing

schooners, and other small craft rendered the canal ineligible for

improvement by the federal government. Recognizing the value of this

route as an alternative to the troublesome bar at the mouth of the

Brazes River, Army Engineer Major Oswald H. Ernest had raised the

possibility of acquiring the canal in 1887. Nine years later, his

successor in the Galveston Engineer Office, Major Alexander M. Miller,

recommended making this purchase. On February 11, 1897, the

navigation company offered the canal to the government for $50,000.

Congress authorized the purchase at $30,000 and the transaction was

completed in December, 1902, providing an improved federal channel

from West Galveston Bay to the Brazes River. Meanwhile, in 1900, Army

Engineers reported their surveys and examinations of certain “adjacent

streams"--Caney Creek, the San Bernard River, and Oyster Creek--with a

view toward incorporating them into a network of protected

waterways.12

ROUND TWO

Slowly but steadily the idea of an inland navigation system was

taking hold. Several factors significantly boosted the impetus for

the waterway along the Gulf Cosst during the first decade of the

twentieth century. An event on a salt dome south of Beaumont, Texas

dramatically altered the region's economy and greatly influenced

development along its waterways. For several years, test drilling had

been conducted at the Spindletop oil field. On January 10, 1901, a

well blew in with a spectacular gusher, which ran wild for several

days before being capped. The birth of the Texas petroleum industry

ushered in a new future for the navigable waters along the Gulf

Coast.13 Also, the new century produced a ground swell of public

support for waterway improvement from which emerged a comprehensive

naticnal policy by the end of the decade.

Amidst the spin-off from this policy-making process came

authorization on March 3, 1905 for the first in a second round of

surveys, this one for the "Louisiana and Texas Inland Waterway."

Major (later Lieutenant General) Edgar Jadwin, from his post as

24
District Engineer in the Galveston Engineer Office, reported on the

renewed Louisiana and Texas waterway studies late in 1906. This

distinguished Army Engineer, an alumnus of the Panama Canal

construction who would later become Chief of Engineers and sponsor of

the Mississippi River flood-control plan adopted by Congress in 1928,

retraced the steps of the 1873 survey, finding a considerable portion

of Howell's report still applicable. Jadwin's examination included

two additional surveys: one from Aransas Pass through Turtle Cove to

Corpus Christi and the other from Aransas Pass to and up the Guadalupe

River. His assessment of potential commerce for the proposed

Mississippi River-to-Rio Grande waterway included coal, rice oil,

sugar and molasses, lumber, cotton, and general merchandise.

1 4

One development since Howell's time influenced Jadwin's thinking

in regard to the point at which the inland canal and the Mississippi

River should be joined. A project adopted in 1888 provided for

dredging a channel and constructing a lock to connect Bayou Plaquemine

and the Mississippi River. This project would afford through passage

for boats from Bayou Teche and the Atchafalaya River via Bayou

Plaquemine and the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Rather than

joining the inland waterway to the Mississippi River at Donaldsonville

and utilizing Bayou Lafourche as Howell had been instructed, Jadwin

proposed taking advantage of the Plaquemine improvements. His

proposal would have been advantageous for nearby Baton Rouge but

offered little appeal to New Orleans, 100 miles downriver from the

Plaquemine Lock. 15 By 1909, the Plaquemine Lock was completed, but

a special board of engineers responsible for the entire Gulf Coast

section of the extensive set of surveys authorized in 1909 left little

doubt that New Orleans should indeed become the site where the inland

canal and the Mississippi River should come together. The board's

report, published in 1914, explained:

Both economy of construction and saving of time in movement of

freight make desirable a waterway as nearly direct as can be

obtained; it should preferably join the Mississippi River as near

the business portion of the city of New Orleans as practicable.

The recommended terminus lay at Harvey, Louisiana (just across the

river from New Orleans), to be reached by a number of possible routes

involving privately constructed canals. The Harvey Canal would place

the point of entrance to the Mississippi nearer the business center of

New Orleans, while that of the Company Canal joined the river about 4

miles upstream and would be that much more advantageous for traffic to

points above the city.16

During the first decade of the century while the eastern terminus

of the canal remained indefinite, a start was made on the canal's

midsection. Jadwin's report in 1906 had anticipated a heavy

water-freight traffic in the region between Franklin on Bayou Teche to

the Vermilion River and on to Lake Misere, west of the Mermentau

River. The region contained two large salt mines and was the meeting

ground of the rice and sugar areas of the state; its western portion

bordered the largest rice section in Louisiana. Prospective commerce

25
also included extensive outputs of oil and lumber. The Army Engineers

concluded the inland waterway between Franklin and the Mermentau River

was worthy of improvement and Congress appropriated an initial $89,292

in the Rivers and Harbors Act of March 2, 1907. The Rivers and

Harbors Act of June 25, 1910 appropriated $100,000 to improve the

adjacent western reach from Mermentau River to Sabine River. Congress

authorized the final segment of this 5-by-40-foot canal in Louisiana,

from the Mississippi River west to Bayou Teche, in 1919, incorporating

the Harvey Canal-Lake Salvador route recommended by the Engineers five

years earlier. By 1922, cargoes totaling 171,000 tons were

transported on the existing channels of this eastern segment between

Bayou Teche and New Orleans even though the federal improvements had

not yet been accomplished.17

At the Texas end of the line, Jadwin's surveys of 1905-06 gave

rise to more fragmented legislation, providing only for 5-by-4O-foot

channels from Corps Christi to Aransas Pass, from Aransas Pass to

Pass Cavallo, and from the Brazes River to West Galveston Bay, all

dredged by 1909. Also, legislation authorized a tributary channel up

the Guadalupe River to Victoria. Jadwin advised reconsidering the

southwestern extremity from Corpus Christi to Point Isabel at a future

date. 18

In 1908, reexamination of Jadwin's report focused on the

unimproved segment between the Brazes River and Matagorda Bay. This

review prompted Gulf Division Engineer Lieutenant Colonel (later Major

General) Lansing H. Beach, a future Chief of Engineers, to make a

statement that seems to reflect a shift toward a more flexible

approach:

Even should local conditions not be such as to demand the

improvement of this portion of the inland waterways, . . . the

fact that it is one link in the chain of waterways paralleling the

shore of the gulf is of sufficient importance to cause the

improvement to be made at as early a date as possible.19

Congress authorized improvement of this segment in 1910, thereby

clearing the way for an uninterrupted charnel from Galveston to Corpus

Christi. Still, despite the more embracing national policy explicity

underscored by the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1909, which ordered

surveys for a ‘continuous waterwayW from Boston to the Rio Grande,

appropriations did not keep pace with the enthusiastic spirit

endorsing this enormous project. As late as 1924, the Board of

Engineers for Rivers and Harbors admitted that "No complete project

. . . . exists for the proposed waterway as a whole, nor for any

improvement in the stretch between Port Arthur and Galveston Bay. "

2 0

THE 7-MILLION-TON JUSTIFICATION

"Round three," as it were, followed the interruption of World War

I. Although diverting appropriations from civil to military

undertakings, the war had also pointed up the value of water

26
transportation. Another far-reaching survey was authorized on March

3, 1923, designating the region "from the Mississippi River at or near

New Orleans . . . to Corpus Christi" as the locale to be studied for

the intracoastal waterway. The Engineers now pleaded for a continuous

waterway, observing that the ports from Mobile to Galveston that would

thus be connected were handling an annual commerce of nearly $2

billion.21 Actually, two issues were involved, one dealing with the

continuity and length of the inland canal and the other with its

dimensions.

By 1923, the Corps of Engineers was not the only group taking

exception to the manner in which the Louisiana and Texas Intracoastal

Waterway was being strung together. Eastern steel and iron products

enjoyed great demand in Texas oil fields and Texas industrialists were

eager to enhance their booming economy by transporting these products

at the reduced water rates. The disconnected links placed along the

coastline bore little resemblance to the continuous waterway chain so

eagerly sought. The fragmented congressional action that seemed to

many to be stifling incipient economic development vexed many business

and political leaders in the burgeoning industrial cities along the

Gulf Coast. Frustration was reaching a feverish pitch. Sensing that

the canal's time had come, the Interstate Inland Waterway League

prepared to strike.

The canal associations origin dated back to 1905. Early that

summer, announcements appeared in local newspapers throughout

Louisiana and Texas calling for a convention to discuss "the

feasibility, plans and final construction on an intercostal canal

from Brownsville, Texas, to Donaldsonville, La., and for the special

purpose of organizing an intercostal canal league." The

announcement, signed Very respectfully, C. S. E. Holland, President,

Business Men's Association, Victoria, Texas," stressed the advantages

to be derived from construction of the proposed canal as compared to a

railroad at "a ratio of about 20 to l." Holland urged "every board of

trade, chamber of commerce and business men's organization" in both

states to send delegates to the convention. 22 This appeal,

emanating from a cowtown remarkable mainly for its obscurity, set in

motion the formation of an association that has endured to the present

day ●

The convention called by Clarence Holland, a Victoria banker, gave

birth to the Interstate Inland Waterway League on August 8, 1905. A

yellow fever epidemic prevented the participation of interested

parties from Louisiana, but newspaper accounts of the day indicate

that "what is lacking in attendance is more than made up in enthusiasm

and the prominence of the delegates. "

23 Despite the absence of

Louisiana representation, more than 200 Texas delegates including

congressmen, judges, and prominent businessmen assembled in the

Victoria opera house and laid the foundations for a permanent

organization. 24 These far-sighted men recognized the potential

value of an inland waterway to the economy of a region extending many

miles beyond their respective locales.

27
The new league reconvened a year later in Lake Charles, Louisiana,

and the following year (1907) in Houston. At that time, a dynamic

young man named Roy Miller became the "active" vice president of the

organization. Only a few years out of college, Miller had worked

briefly as a junior reporter for the Houston Post and then moved to

South Texas to serve as advertising agent for the St. Louis,

Brownsville & Mexico Railway. In his capacity as an advance man for

the railroad, which was then being extended toward Brownsville, Miller

became well acquainted with civic leaders in the various coastal

communities. If Clarence Holland provided the inspiration for the

association, Roy Miller furnished the perspiration. Miller

energetically launched its activities and spearhead its program,

becoming a persuasive advocate of the canal and devoting his capable

leadership to this cause for the remaining forty years of his life.25

During the early years of the league's existence, Roy Miller

scored some modest successes in selling the inland canal to Congress.

By securing needed rights-of-way from local interests, the

organization facilitated passage of the 1910 legislation providing for

the Mermentau-to-Sabine River segement; nevertheless, Congress

continued to parcel out authorization for the 5-by-40-foot channel

segments in piecemeal fashion. Meanwhile, industrial development

mushroomed along the Gulf Coast and deep-water ports proliferated.

Miller was instrumental in obtaining appropriations for the port

facility at Corpus Christi and served a five-year stint as the city’s

"boy mayor“ during the war years. His legislative efforts on behalf

of the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company led to improvement of the reach

between Galveston and Matagorda Bay, facilitating movement of a large

volume of tonnage destined for export from the island port.26

"The Intra-Coastal Canal will put Houston on the Mississippi

river," declared Miller as he moved the association office to that

city in March, 1923. At that time, a 9-foot depth prevailed on the

Mississippi River between New Orleans and St. Louis and on the Ohio

River between Cairn and Pittsburgh. Pushing for a continuous waterway

with a comparable depth along the Gulf Coast, Miller envisioned

traffic through 6,627 miles to connect points along this coast with

such distant ports as Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Birmingham. 27 T h e

March 23 Galveston Dail y News reported his reaction to announcement of

the new federal survey:

According to Mr. Miller, this is the first time the association

has been able to get the government to act on the canal as a

whole. Heretofore, it has been considered section by section.

● ● O After the preliminary survey, a report will be made as to

whether a commercial necessity exists for the waterway.

Miller was not content to leave the commercial case for the

waterway to chance. Leaders of his organization, now renamed the

Intracoastal Canal Association of Louisiana and Texas approached Major

General George W. Goethals and asked him to recommend a bright young

engineer to study the commercial potential of a continuous canal

through Louisiana and Texas. The retired Army Engineer, whose name

28
was synonymous with accomplishment of the Panama Canal, had a

more-than-passing interest in the proposed canal; his consulting firm

had recently supervised construction of the Inner Harbor Navigation

Canal Lock at New Orleans. When he met with the canal association

officials the next morning, Goethals declared, "I believe I will take

that job myself." Announcing Goethals's retention by the association, 

the July 5 Beaumont Enterprise described this "move" as a "master

stroke" and predicted that "Employment of General Goethals will have a

very impressive bearing on the canal's future."29

While Goethals conducted his investigation, Miller raced up and

down the Louisiana and Texas coastline, flamboyantly garnering support

for the proposed project and leaving a flurry of stirring

pronouncements in his wake. "Sell It" Says Miller," reported the New

Orleans States on July 18, 1923. Miller had been in New Orleans to

raise $30,000 for a three-year campaign to promote the canal project

between the Mississippi River and Corpus Christi. The newspaper

reproduced a portion of his effective oratory:

The transportation demands of this country increase 100 per cent

every ten years. Railroads have not increased their facilities a

particle during the past 10 years. . . . What we are here today

for is to sell the intracoastal canal project to the people of

Louisiana and Texas. Make ‘em buy it; it's the best investment I

know. The real job before us is to work up public sentiment to

back up this project before Congress. . . . Let's strike.30

In his report submitted on November 27, 1923, Goethals estimated

the present tonnage possibilities of the combined Louisiana-Texas

inland waterway between 5 million and 7 million tons annually,

indicating, “this statement is conservative." He rejected the

aggregate 12,315,953 tons compiled in the statistics for 1922 because

of duplication, but he did conclude his report by stating:

With the maintenance of a 9-foot channel in the Mississippi River;

with the completion of the Ohio River improvement; and with the

enlargement of the Chicago-Mississippi Canal, the tonnage

possibilities of the canal will exceed the 12,000,000 tons

annually, which in the early part of this report are mentioned but

not accepted, and the intracoastal canal will become a vital part

of the great inland waterway system of the country. 31

The Army Engineers estimated construction costs for the waterway

from New Orleans to Corpus Christi at $16 million. On March 3, 1925,

Congress appropriated the lesser sum of $9 million for a 9-by-100-foot

intracoastal waterway to extend only as far as Galveston. Learning of

the departure from the original proposal to Corpus Christi, Roy

Miller, with his penchant for pithy phrases, declared, "I am not

satisfied, but gratified. Indeed, despite its shortcomings, this

piece of legislation finally provided for the long-awaited continuity

as well as for enlarged project dimensions.

29
The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1925 also authorized preliminary

examinations and surveys to the east, from New Orleans to the

Apalachicola River in Florida, for an inland waterway deep enough to

accommodate self-propelled barges. Authorization in 1927 further

extended continuous inland navigation along the Texas Coast as far

west as Corpus Christi, and provided for the larger project dimensions

throughout. The Plaquemine waterway to Morgan City offered an

expedient Mississippi River outlet while the Harvey Lock and existing

5-by-40-foot waterway from New Orleans were being enlarged. Direct

access between New Orleans and Texas was achieved in 1934 when the

segment between the Sabine River and Galveston Bay, was completed,

uniting the Louisiana and Texas portions of the waterway, and the new

Harvey Lock was opened to navigation.33

Another development in June of 1923 carried profound implications

for the route of the future intracoastal canal. In proposing the

course of the channel from Sabine to Galveston, Gulf Division Engineer

Colonel George M. Hoffman departed from the earlier principle of

dredging through the open bays. He defended the notion of a

landlocked channel, to run along and inside the shoreline, stating:

This route while a little longer and requiring more excavation

will cost less for maintenance than other routes previously

proposed through the bays. . . . Experience has demonstrated the

difficulty and cost of maintaining the entrance of a canal into a

large bay, especially where this entrance lies across the normal

currents of the bay. . . . Boats using this route will be less

exposed to storm conditions in the open bay. . . .

This change in philosophy led to the eventual relocation of many older

channels as the project for the 9-foot channel terminating at Corpus

Christi was pushed forward to its completion in 1942.35

As work on the main channel progressed, the desirability of

constructing certain tributary channels became apparent. Branch

channels by which cargoes could travel directly to terminals farther

inland would enhance the advantages afforded by the growing

intracoastal waterway. In 1938, Congress authorized feeder channels

up the San Bernard and Colorado rivers plus channels to Palacios,

Rockport, and the town of Aransas Pass. By that time, the nature of

the commerce evidenced considerable change. petroleum, petroleum

products, iron, and steel constituted the bulk of the traffic,

displacing the agricultural commodities for which the canal had been

envisioned originally.36

The spirit of the Texas frontier prevailed on the San Bernard

River for some time after completion of the tributary channel.

Occasionally, towboats moving too quickly or carelessly along the

channel would scrape the banks with the barges they pulled. Viewing

this as a threat to their property, individual property owners along

the channel resorted to stationing themselves on the banks, armed with

rifles, to keep the towboat captains in line. Several incidents

occurred in which the irate landowners literally took potshots at the

recalcitrant navigators. 37

30
The 9-foot project, authorized in 1925, provided for construction

of locks or guard locks where necessary. Two Texas rivers of

sufficient magnitude to cause problems intersected the waterway. At

the Brazes and Colorado river crossings, the intracoastal waterway was

subjected to large intrusions of sediment that washed down the rivers

during periods of high discharge and to excessive currents when the

river stages rose. Funds for the necessary protective structures did

not become available until the 1942 fiscal year. The Brazes River

floodgates were completed in 1943, followed within the next year by

the Colorado River floodgates.38

Next, Army Engineers working in the Galveston District conducted

studies to determine the advisability of converting the floodgates

into locks. At the Brazes River crossing, the velocity of the river

flowing toward the Gulf posed the major threat to navigation. But

while these currents often caused restrictions to be placed on traffic

at this point, the Brazes floodgates did not require as frequent or as

prolonged closure as did those at the Colorado River.39

For many years, the Colorado River has been plagued by an enormous

log raft, about 25 miles long, in the vicinity of Bay City. Between

1925 and 1929, Matagorda and Wharton counties broke up this

obstruction to obtain relief from severe flooding upstream. River

currents carried debris from the raft downstream, where it soon formed

a massive delta in Matagorda Bay and created a new flood hazard to the

lands adjacent to the intracoastal waterway. To alleviate this

problem, the Matagorda County Conservation and Reclamation District

No. 1 in the mid-1930's dredged a channel across the bay and across

Matagorda peninsula, furnishing the river an outlet to the Gulf about

7 miles away. Maintenance of this channel as a flood discharge

channel was incorporated into the intracoastal canal project in 1937;

however, this channel did not offer a definitive solution to the

problems created by the Colorado River. When floods swelled the

river, its flow still remained partially confined and the water level

in the river would rise as much as 12 feet above mean low tide at its

crossing with the canal. Because of this troublesome head

differential, the Corps of Engineers concluded that lock structures at

the Colorado River must become essential features of any plan to

minimize delays to navigation on the waterway. Between the early

1950s and 1957, the Engineers converted the Colorado River floodgates

into locks.40

All of the remaining locks on the GIWW are located in

Louisiana. 41 Those at Algiers, Harvey, and Port Allen overcome the

differences in elevation between the water in the Mississippi River

and that in the adjacent GIWW. The lock in the Inner Harbor

Navigation Canal at New Orleans serves this purpose between the river

water level and that in the canal. Locks at Bayou Boeuf and Bayou

Sorrel overcome elevation differences between the Atchafalaya Basin

Floodway and the main and alternate routes of the intracoastal canal.

31
Other locks in Louisiana prevent intrusion of salt water into the

waterway. Operated in concert, the Vermilion and Calcasieu locks

protect a large freshwater reservoir used largely for rice irrigation

in the adjacent wetlands. The lock at Freshwater Bayou was also

constructed to prevent saltwater intrusion from the Gulf.

THE CRUCIAL CONNECTION

Exigencies of wartime hastened the next significant step in the

growth of the main channel. Under the plea of national defense,

Congress authorized enlargement of the entire waterway and its

extension from its eastern terminus at Apalachee Bay in Florida to

“the vicinity of the Mexican border." The Second Supplemental

National Defense Appropriation Act of October 26, 1942 funded the

work, which was prosecuted with such dispatch that by 1945 a

continuous waterway with minimum dimensions of 12 by 125 feet extended

from Carrabelle to Corpus Christi.42

The 1942 legislation provided not only for the western extremity

of the inland waterway but also for an improved connection of its

eastern and western halves. During the 1930s, as the main channels on

either side of the Mississippi River were being joined into continuous

thoroughfares, no "federal channel" connected the two. Westbound

barges passing through Lake Pontchartrain arrived at the state-owned

Inner Harbor Navigation Canal. To reach the Mississippi River, they

had to travel through this canal and pay the toll of five cents per

gross ton levied by the Port of New Orleans to go through the lock

affording entrance to the river.

The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (also called the Industrial

Canal), constructed between 1918 and 1923, created a long-sought

connection between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. A

lock was required at the Mississippi River end of the 5.5-mile-long

canal to admit the waters of the river into the lower level of the

canal. The state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans constructed

the Industrial Canal to cut off approximately 40 miles of water

distance from New Orleans to the Gulf, to provide an inner harbor with

leaseable waterfront property, and to furnish an indispensable link in

the intracoastal canal by connecting the inland waterways lying to the

east of the Mississippi River with those to the west.43

As early as 1921, efforts were underway to induce the federal

government to take over the canal so the lock could be freed of tolls

and coastwise traffic of small craft could be encouraged. At the

twentysixth annual convention of the Intracoastal Canal Association in

November, 1930, Louisiana Senator Edwin S. Broussard called for the

United States government to take over the Industrial Canal and to

reimburse the state the $20 million expended on its construction.

Only a few months earlier, however, the Board of Engineers for Rivers

and Harbors had rejected such a proposal. because the inland waterway

traffic at that time did not justify federal takeover of the canal.

Furthermore, incorporation of the Industrial Canal into the federal

intracoastal waterway project had become caught up in another issue

involving construction of an alternate deep-water outlet from the

32

Mississippi River to the Gulf, also not considered necessary at that

time. The Chief of Engineers, Major General Lytle Brown, acknowledged

the "prospective value" of the Industrial Canal as part of the inland

waterway system, but he added that the extent of the private

improvement exceeded that required by the inland waterway. Thus if

the federal government chose to acquire this canal, Brown urged that

it offer to pay only a portion of the total construction cost.44

The wartime act passed in 1942 modified the inland waterway

project to provide a new eastern approach to New Orleans. The

modification involved a land cut through the marsh from the Rigolets

to a point on the Industrial Canal, about 2.25 miles from the

Mississippi River. The federal government agreed to lease that

portion of the state-owned canal from the point where i t was

intersected by the intracoastal canal, through the lock, to the

Mississippi River. This change eliminated passage through Lake

Pontchartrain and five drawbridges, saving 30 miles in travel distance

and offering the further advantage of easier, cheaper channel

maintenance. Since the lease went into effect on April 1, 1944, this

portion of the Industrial Canal has been operated by the United States

government, free of tolls, representing the vital link between east

and west in a continuous federal Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. 45

Unusual circumstances attended the lease agreenent for the

Industrial Canal. The 1944 lease arrangement with the Board of

Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans (commonly known as the "Dock

Board") was viewed as a temporary measure until the United States

could acquire fee simple title to the canal facilities. Construction

of the Industrial Canal had been financed by funds covered by bond

issues; under the restrictions imposed by the bond indentures, the

state could not relinquish any portion of the canal or lock before

maturity of the bonds in 1960. Although these impediments to transfer

of title were subsequently removed, the United States has never

acquired this canal but continues to operate it as a link in the GIWW

under the lease agreement, which has been renegotiated over the years

to keep pace with inflation and escalating maintenance costs. 46

Shipping essential supplies for the war effort revived the issue

of creating a more direct Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) by

making an alternate route to the Gulf appear somewhat more attractive

in the interests of national defense than it had when viewed purely in

economic terms. By 1946 the large and growing sea borne commerce of

New Orleans provided economic justification for the improvement in the

view of Major General Robert W. Crawford, Lower Mississippi Valley

Division Engineer. Crawford also argued that the port capacity at NeW

Orleans for emergency war service would be enhanced by an additional

outlet and the resulting expansion of terminal facilities available

for embarkation of defense-related personnel, material, and

supplies.47 Nevertheless, construction costs were estimated at a

whopping $67 million, economic justification remained qualified, and

broad-based political backing was sorely needed to secure

congressional authorization for the project. A decade later,

far-reaching support together with a national climate favorable to

transportation development convinced Congress that the proposed outlet

34
would not merely offer local benefits but would affect a large area of

trade. Authorized finally in 1956, the MR-GO was opened to navigation

in 1963. Although it is not actually part of the GIWW project, this

artificial., deep-draft outlet runs 5.5 miles along the route of the

eastern leg of the GIWW before turning southeast across the

intervening marshlands to reach the Gulf.48

The legislation authorizing the main MR-GO channel also dealt with

the problem of the Industrial Canal Lock$ which was becoming

inadequate to handle the increasing volume of traffic through the New

Orleans port. Specifically, the 1956 act provided for replacement of

the existing lock at the Industrial Canal. or for construction of an

additional lock in the vicinity of Meraux, east of New Orleans in St.

Bernard Parish. Access from the Mississippi River to the inner

tidewater area being developed as a " Centroport" at the juncture of

the Industrial Canal. and the MR-GO required passage through the

Industrial Canal Lock. Determining how to relieve the critical

bottleneck at the antiquated lock involved approximately twenty years

of bitter contrivers y. The powerful Dock Board, representing shipping

and commercial interests, favored an alternate route (with ship lock)

that would bisect St. Bernard Parish. Incensed residents

and political leaders of this parish voiced strenuous objections. The

alternative course, replacing the existing lock on the Industrial

Canal, entailed enormous social, financial, and technical

difficulties. The New Orleans Army Engineers found themselves caught

in the midst of the heated dispute. Tempers flared over issues of

local self-determination , political power, jurisdiction over the

proposed channel, cost allocation, hurricane-flood protection, and

projected social and ecological impact. In 1977, after literally much

ado, President Jimmy Carter resolved the dilemma in a directive to the

Corp of Engineers that removed the option of an alternate channel

location. Within a year, the New Orleans Engineers were well into

planning for replacement of the Industrial Canal Lock on its present

site.49

The desirability of alternate routes for the GIWW led in the

middle 1940s to provision for two main connecting channels. A 9-milelong route joining the western section of the inland waterway with the

Mississippi River through a lock at Algiers, downstream from NeW

Orleans, was authorized in 1945 and completed in 1956. This route

diverted sane of the GIWW traffic away from the congested passage near

New Orleans. The Morgan City-Port Allen route, authorized in 1946 and

opened to navigation in 1961, offered a shorter course for traffic

moving between the upper Mississippi and Ohio rivers and the western

portion of the intracoastal waterway. This alternate route

incorporated the earlier Plaquemine-Morgan City waterway and added the

new lock at Port Allen, which replaced the older Plaquemine Lock as

the point of entrance to the Mississippi River .5°

The last and extreme western segment in the main channel of the

GIWW was charted through the Laguna Madre, a 150-mile-long, shallow

body of water paralleling the coast from Corpus Christi to Brazos

Santiago Pass (the pass between Brains and Padre islands, through

which the channel to Brownsville rum). Separated from the Gulf by

35
Padre Island, the Laguna Madre itself forms two natural bays that are

divided in the middle by an area of mud flats. Dredging of this final

extension did not begin until the existing waterway had been enlarged

to Corpus Christi. Operations began on December 12, 1945, as pipeline

dredges started from Corpus Christi and from Port Isabel, working

toward a meeting that would join the two sections of the Laguna Madre

and mark the accomplishment of an undertaking far more vast. At the

remote mud flats, the McWilliams dredge Caribbean moved north to meet

the Standard Dredging Corporation dredge Miami. The final cut was

made and the channel was opened on June 18, 1949, affording a

continuous inland water route from Carrabelle, Florida to Brownsville,

Texas.51

BRANCHING OUT

The main channel of the Louisiana and Texas

had been seventy-five years in the making. Its

Intracoastal Waterway

completion, however,

signifies only a portion of the total GIWW story. Subsequent

improvements have involved various modifications and enlargements,

relocation of channels, and the addition of many branch channels. As

segments of the main channel were opened to navigation, commercial

interests worked vigorously to establish tributary connections.

Numerous rivers flowing into the Gulf crossed the GIWW and naturally

became offshoots of it. Where nature failed to provide an existing

stream, man could create an artificial channel. By 1961, almost

ninety tributaries had been incorporated into the GIWW system, more

than half of them in Louisiana and Texas.52

The addition of each tributary channel enhances the value of the

main channel while, in turn, linkage with the vast GIWW system endows

a minor stream or out-of-the-way location with new commercial

relevance. Many tributary channels provide outlets to the Gulf,

making it easier for the oil industry to service offshore rigs by

water and greatly benefiting shrimping and fishing fleets as well as

waterborne trade in general. Other tributary channels reach inland

and furnish water access to the hinterland. Some offer pathways to

major industrial centers and provide water avenues along which raw

materials can be shipped directly to the point of production. Still

others may contribute to improved ecological balance, flood control,

and drainage.

One example of tributary advantages can be seen at Port Mansfield,

Texas. Situated 38 miles above Port Isabel on the lower part of the

Laguna Madre, this isolated spot was known as "Red Fish Landing" until

1950. As the GIWW was extended to Brownsville, a tributary channel at

Port Mansfield quickly was joined to it. During the 1950s, the Army

Engineers dredged an artificial channel across Padre Island, giving

Port Mansfield its own Gulf outlet. Prosperity at Port Mansfield

(population 731) depends heavily upon commercial and sport fishing.

Creation of the artificial inlet yielded benefits in addition to

navigation. Opening of the channel improved tidal exchange, reducing

salinity in the bay and thereby enabling it to support more marine

life. Resulting ecological changes in the adjacent bay area have

nurtured more abundant populatioms of redfish, brown shrimp, flounder,

and spotted trout, as well as other saltwater species.53

36
In contrast to the remote tributary at Port Mansfield are major

deep-water channels leading to thriving ports in Corpus Christi,

Freeport, Houston, Texas City, Galveston, Port Arthur, Beaumont,

Orange, Lake Charles, Morgan City, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.

Their articulation with the GIWW has stimulated and facilitated

enormous economic development and industrial expansion in these port

communities ● Each tributary channel adds to the dimension and

magnitude of the remarkable inland waterway to which it is linked.

Since 1949 when through inland navigation was established between

New Orleans and Brownsville, traffic has risen and commerce has

increased dramatically. Cargoes include crude petroleum, fuel oil,

petroleum products, marine shells for cement manufacturers , nonmetallic

minerals, and chemicals. Figures for tonnage handled on the section

of the GIWW between Galveston and the Louisiana border topped 46

million tons in 1972; on the main channel of the Louisiana section,

they exceeded 70 minion tons in 1971. These are spectacular

statistics in the light of the 5-7 million tons estimated by Goethals

as justification for constructing this western leg of the intracoastal

waterway. 54

37
Chapter IV

THE FLORIDA PENINSULA

The Florida peninsula forms a natural barrier separating the Gulf

of Mexico from the Atlantic Ocean. Extending approximately 340 miles

south of the Florida panhandle, the peninsula ranges in width from 100

to 140 miles. Except for a ridge that runs downits axis from the

north, the peninsula is characterized by coastal marshlands and low

elevat i ons. 1 The 1,197-mile coastline of the state presents a

cumbersome and often hazardous course for vessels traveling between

the two major bodies of water. The notion of a direct water route

crossing the peninsula originated as early as the sixteenth century

and played a key role in the development of the Gulf Intracoastal

Waterway.

"THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST"

Advocates of political causes have never been reluctant to employ

holy scripture when it serves their purpose. Henry H. Buckman of

Jacksonville, Florida, president of the National Rivers and Harbors

Congress, resorted to the Gospel according to St. Matthew in an

impassioned address to the Intracoastal Canal Association in 1959:

"...it is written," he said, "The first shall be last." His

biblical reference alluded to the moribund cross-Florida barge canal

project, "The first reach (of the national intracoastal waterway) to

be conceived and seriously advocated" and “the last reach remaining to

be constructed."2

Indeed, the history of the long-desired

cross-Florida canal recounts a succession of unsatisfactory studies,

political controversies, heated opposition from various quarters, two

abortive attempts at construction, and lack of funding.

The concept of a water route across Florida dates back to 1567,

when Pedro Menendez de Aviles received instructions from his king,

Philip II of Spain, to explore the peninsula and to determine a

suitable route for crossing the isthmus. The route he recommended

largely anticipated the one authorized by the United States Congress

for a canal more than 300 years later. After Spain ceded Florida to

England in 1763, British naval officers assigned to the territory

reiteratd the desirability of a cross-peninsula waterway to the Lords

of the Admiralty. Late in 1818, Army Engineer Captain James Gadsden

wrote Secretary of War John C. Calhoun recommending investigation of a

route from the St. Marys River on the Georgia-Florida border to the

Suwannee River in Spanish Florida. (Eastern Florida had reverted to

Spain in 1783.) U.S. acquisition of the territory in 1821 quickly

generated more immediate interest in developing a route by which

circumnavigation of the Florida peninsula could be avoided. At the

end of 1824, Florida's legislative council urged Congress to consider

constructing a canal from the Suwamee River to the St. Johns or any

other appropriate eastern terminus. The three objectives cited in

support of such a canal have been presented repeatedly to Congress

39
ever since: to develop the land, to benefit commerce, and to enhance

troop and supply movements during wartime. Soon after the council's

appeal, Richard Keith Call, Florida's first territorial delegate to

Congress, wrote the chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals

regarding the advantages of an inland waterway between the Mississippi

River and the Atlantic Ocean. 3

Congress responded on March 3, 1826 by authorizing the first in a

long series of surveys for a canal route across Florida. Chief of

Engineers Major General Alexander Macomb instructed Brigadier General

Simon Bernard to arrange for a survey brigade directed by an Army

Topographical Engineer to examine the two routes specified in the

act. Survey parties began their fieldwork in July, braving the summer

sun and troublesome incidents with the Seminole Indians. Early in

1827, Bernard and his assistant, Captain William Tell Poussin,

personally toured the routes, and they combined their findings with

these of the various survey parties into the report submitted to

Congress in 1829.

Although Bernard and Poussin observed that " both routes will

require expensive excavations to supply the summit level with water ,“

they preferred the shorter and more southerly "St. Johns route, "

utilizing the St. Johns, Santa Fe, and Suwanee rivers. The canal the y

envisoned would rise more than 100 feet above the Atlantic but still

require a cut of 60 feet beneath the summit of the mid-Florida

divide. The Engineers also proposed extending this canal westward

from the Suwanee River to St. Marks, from whence they believed an

intracoastal waterway could feasibly be constructed. The total length

of the trans-Florida canal would be 168 miles.4

A major problem identified by Bernard and Poussin was the

questionable adequacy of the water supply along the ridge the canal

would have to cross. To quell this uncertainty, Congress passed a

second act on May 31, 1830, appropriating $10, 400 to complete the

survey and estimate for the canal. A new survey team initiated

studies of the infiltration properties of the terrain, but funds ran

out before conclusive results could be obtained and Congress tabled

the matter of the proposed canal.5

Congress rekindled the fire for the project with the Rivers and

Harbors Act of August 30, 1852, providing $20,000 to complete the

previous survey or to run a new line if necessary. Topographical

Engineer Lieutenant Martin Luther Smith drew this assignment and

directed his attention to a tours e between the headwaters of the St.

Johns River and Tampa Bay. He concluded that at least two other

routes across the peninsula might be preferable and recommended they

be surveyed before any selection was made. For the third time,

investigation of the proposed canal yielded inconclusive results. 6

After the Civil War, navigation improvements commanded fresh

attention from Congress, which once again focused on the Florida canal

issue. The Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1875 authorized a new

40
survey "to ascertain the most eligible line on which a canal across

the Isthmus of Florida can be constructed ." This survey produced a

recommendation for further study. An act dated June 18, 1878 provided

for yet another survey, this time for a deep-draft "ship-canal" rather

than a shallow-draft barge canal. Transit and level lines were run

along a 170-mile route from the St. Marys River to St. Marks,

including 60 miles across the summit. The Engineers concluded that

the Okefenokee Swamp could meet demands for water to supply the canal

and eleven locks would be needed to lift and lower ships using the

waterway. They reviewed previous survey records, but for the fifth

time in fifty years, the Army Engineers did not enthusiastically

endorse the proposed canal project.7

Private enterprise entered the picture in 1878 when the Atlantic

and Gulf Transit Canal Company was chartered with a $30 million

capitalization to construct a canal across the state. This venture,

however, came to naught. Several private surveys merely underscored

the inordinate expense such a canal would entail. On June 14, 1880,

canal proponents secured congressional authorization for a survey " to

open steamboat communication" from the St. Johns River via

Tohopekaliga Lake and Peace Creek to Charlotte Harbor. Once again,

the Army Engineers rendered a " not practicable" verdict. 8

Federal interest in a water route across Florida revived again

under President Theodore Roosevelt. The survey conducted under the

Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1909 considered five routes for a

barge canal but failed to generate a positive recommendation. The

report of this survey, entitled "Intracoastal Waterway - Across

Florida Section ," was published in 1913. Responding to a request from

the Senate Committee on Commerce eight years later, the Board of

Engineers for Rivers and Harbors reviewed it and confirmed its

negative findings in 1924. Two more surveys authorized in 1927 and

1930 also found economic justification for the canal lacking.9

Economic justification of a different type came indirectly,

however, from the devastating financial conditions of the Great

Depression in the early 1930s. Suddenly, the proposed canal offered

new appeal as a salve for the pervasive problem of reemployment

plaguing the country. In 1932, the mayor of Jacksonville and Henry H.

Buckman went to New Orleans and joined with other Gulf Coast leaders

to form the National Gulf-Atlantic Ship Canal Association, installing

former Army Chief of Staff General Charles P. Summerall at its helm.

Sensing that a century of discussion might now conclude with an actual

canal project, the canal's major competitors began to organize

opposition. Early in 1933, representatives of the Atlantic Coast Line .

Railroad, the Florida East Coast Line Railway, the Seaboard Airline

Railway, and the Southern Railway testified before the Special Board

of Engineer Officers who were preparing a report on the surveys

authorized in 1927 and 1930. These canal opponents introduced for the

first time the possibility that the proposed project might endanger

the underground water supply of central and south Florida.10
The members of the Special Board of Engineer Officers reported

late in 1933 on the investigation of no less than twenty-eight routes,

seven of which they studied in detail. Selecting a route through the

St. Johns, Oklawaha, and Withlacoochee river valleys known as "13-B,"

they concluded either a barge or ship canal could be built.

Presumably influenced by the testimony of the railroad interests, they

advised that any canal design should incorporate locks to protect the

Florida aquifer; however, in the end, their report stated that the

proposed canal was not economically justified and should not be

undertaken.

The findings of the special board were, of course, unpalatable to

the growing corps of canal advocates who requested action be deferred

until they could present new data to justify the project. Using his

political clout, General Summerall persuaded President Franklin D.

Roosevelt to form another board to reconsider the sensitive matter.

In April, 1934, the President directed appointment of an

Interdepartmental Board of Review which, in its report of June 28,

recommended a 30-foot-deep sea-level ship canal. In August, 1935,

sixty canal boosters went to Washington to press their cause to the

President through Florida Senator Duncan Upshaw Fletcher.12

A natural disaster added to these political pressures probably

turned the tide. On Labor Day, a hurricane struck the Florida Keys

and grounded the Morgan liner S. S. Dixie on French Reef for almost

two days.13 With his shrewd sense of timing, President Roosevelt

announced the next morning that he would allocate $5 million of relief

money for the canal to ‘forever make it unnecessary for seagoers to

risk their lives in circumnavigating Florida's long, hurricaneblistered thumb.w14 Two days later, work began on the sea-level

project recommended by the Interdepartmental Board under provisions of

the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935.15 In this

extraordinary manner, the long-unauthorized cross-Florida canal

obtained its first funding.

Shocked by the sudden turn of events, canal opponents rallied,

playing on the public anxieties over the underground water supply.

Alarmed truck farmers and fruit growers formed the Central & South

Florida Water Conservation Committee. The published advertisements

asking, "What Will You Do Without Water?"16 Disturbed by the

growing opposition, Roosevelt announced on December 15 that he would

not apply any more relief money to the carol but instead would ask

Congress to fund it, thereby divesting himself of the responsibility

for proceeding with the controversial project. Congress, however,

chose not to appropriate funds for the project. In September, 1936,

after $5.4 million had been expended and three percent of the project

completed, operations were discontinued.17

Even the Army Engineers were unable to reach any consensus on the

canal issue. The Chief of Engineers appointed a Revisory Board to

review the various conflicting reports submitted to date. On November

1, 1936, the Revisory Board recommended the sea-level canal be

completed to a 33-foot depth at an estimated additional cost of

42
$157,585,000. A month later, the Board of Engineers for Rivers and

Harbors held a public hearing after which its members determined a

ship canal would shorten the route by "somewhat less than 1 day’s

steaming time, " preferred a lock canal instead in view of potential

damage to underground water supplies , estimated its cost at

$263,838,000, and concluded the canal was not economical y justified.

In April, 1937, Chief of Engineers Major General Edward M. Markham

disagreed, stating he considered a sea-level 33-by-4OO-foot ship canal

worthy of favorable consideration based on the combined justification

of unemployment relief and navigation improvement. Markam based his

divergent recommendation on the timely notion that "employing those

who would otherwise require relief" would, when labor expenditures

were deducted from the capital investment in the canal, yield a

"handsome profit in benefits to shipping."18

Congress took no further action on the canal issue until World War

II, when German U-boats began sinking American vessels traveling along

the coast. Early in 1942, Congress asked the Corps of Engineers to

review the project in light of the military situation. By June, the

Chief of Engineers and the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors

agreed that the value of a 12-by-150-foot barge canal across Florida

would “in time of war, together with the prospective benefits to be

anticipated in normal times, " be " sufficient to warrant its

construction. "

19 Route 13-B remained the preferred course,

following the St. Johns River to Palatka, the valley of the Oklawaha

River to the divide, and the Withlacoochee River to the Gulf. Locks

along this route would protect the ground water supply. On July 23,

1942, the cross-Florida canal was authorized at long last in the

interests of national defense as a high-level lock barge canal. This

approval was included in the same act that authorized the enlargement

and extension of the existing Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the $93

million appropriation provided was applied to other features of the

act, rather than to the cross-Florida canal project .20

Gradually, wit bout funding, the project fell into the "inactive"

category. In 1958$ the Army Engineers reported that an economic

restudy yielded economic justification for the first time. Two years

later, more hope for the cross-Florida canal appeared as presidential

candidate John F. Kennedy came out in its favor. Appropriations

finally began in 1962, plans were revised , and construction resumed on

February 24, 1964.21

Still more problems lay in store for the controversial canal. As

work across Florida continued through the 1960s, an urgent concern to

preserve the environment swept across the country, giving

long-standing canal opponents a restocked arsenal of ammunition and

adding opposition from new quarters. The rail roads and the

conservationists joined forces, claiming the 12-by-150-foot barge

canal would drown a hardwood forest, threaten vegetation and wildlife

dependent on an annual flooding cycle, and upset the hydrologic

equilibrium. Further, they predicted the formation of "a series of

stagnant, weed-clogged ponds" that would lead to use of herbicides and

pesticides, in turn, polluting the aquifer. In 1969, the

43
Environmental Defense Fund, a legal action group, filed suit against

the Corps of Engineers on behalf of a local organization, the Florida

Defenders of the Environment. On January 15, 1971, U.S. District

Judge Barrington Parker ruled the Corps had not complied with the

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and issued a preliminary

injunction. Four days later, citing the advice of the Council on

Environmental Quality, President Richard M. Nixon stopped the

project .22

By canceling a congressionally authorized project to which $50

million in federal funds and $12 million in state funds had already

been committed, the President's order “broke with precedent" and

“violated political protocol. "

23 Nevertheless, new work on the

canal halted abruptly on January 20, 1971, with about one-third of the

107 -roil e waterway completed. No further work has been undertaken

since that time and prospects for the future of the cross-Florida

canal seem dismal at this writing. Indeed, whether "The first shall

be last” remains to be seen.

DRAINAGE AND NAVIGATION

Ironically, before shovels unearthed the first cubic yard of dirt

for the controversy al cross-Florida barge canal excavation,

developments in the southern part of the state actually led to the

creation of an inland waterway between the Atlantic and the Gulf. The

Okeechobee Waterway, however, came into existence more for purposes of

drainage and land reclamation than for navigation .24

The Florida peninsula ranks as somewhat of a geological newcomer,

having thrust its land mass above the sea a relatively short 19

million years ago. Sane time after that, huge covers of ice blanketed

much of North America. Although these glaciers did not reach Florida,

their great thaws washed melting ice water over much of the land,

leaving an indelible mark on the geography of the peninsula.

Okeechobee remained as a large, circular depression in the limestone,

filled with fresh water. When rains filled the lake beyond capacity,

they overflowed its low southern shores to nourish the unique,

50-mile-wide river of grass called the Everglades. This saw-grass

marsh sweeps 100 miles southward in a dense, broad curve to the tip of

the peninsula .25

The Indians named the lake "Okeechobee" which means "big water ."

Indeed, the great lake contained more water than the Everglades alone

could carry off, so the water seeped and spilled eastward to fill a

swamp called Loxahat thee Slough and westward to form the headwaters of

the Caloosahatchee River. When flood waters swelled within its hanks,

the Caloosahatchee rose and overflowed the surrounding country to the

north and to the south. In its natural state, this extreme

southeastern appendage to the United States offered few enticements

for human habitation; nevertheless, its history shows that , one way or

another, man was determined to make it fit .26

44
Florida gained statehood in 1845. Over the next five years, its

population grew from 57,951 to 87,455. In June, 1847, scholarly

Buckingham Smith gathered information on the Everglades. His report,

published by Congress in 1848, naively presented the feasibility of

drainage. The year 1850 saw passage of the Swamp and Overflow Land

Grant Act that provided for states to reclaim "swamplands" within

their borders. Five years later, the Florida legislature empowered a

Board of Internal Improvements to secure the federal grants and handle

disposition of the swamplands. Proceeds from sales formed an Internal

Improvement Fund to be applied exclusive y to land reclamation by use

of levees and drains. At that time, however , the Everglades

wilderness had attracted few settlers and the matter of drainage

demanded less attention than continuing Indian problems and growing

sectional strife within the country.

After the Civil War, the state's Internal Improvement Fund was

heading into receivership, its money lest in interest guaranteed on

prewar bonds for dilapidated railroads. Everglades property was being

offered for thirty to forty cents per acre and no one was buying.

During the 1870s, various s themes and scandals arose over the

Everglades. Involved in one shady deal, Republican Lieutenant

Governor William H. Gleason was ousted from office. He went on to

petition the Internal Improvement Fund's Board of Trustees for

swamplands that he intended to drain and he set up the Southern Inland

Navigation & Improvement Company to claim free grants from the state.

Gleason's accomplishments did not match his expectations , however, and

nothing came of this scheme.

In 1878, unusually heavy rains fell throughout South Florida,

inundating the Caloosahatchee valley for most of the year. Settlers,

driven from their homes and tropical fruit placations on the rich

hummock lands lining the river, asked the government to investigate

drainage possibilities for the valley and the feasibility of lowering

the water level in Lake Okeechobee. Assistant Army Engineer J. L.

Meigs led a survey party up the Caloosahatchee River in March, 1879.

Floating masses of water-lilies, wild lettuce, and "careless weeds"

impeded the survey boat? s progress and the party reluctantly abandoned

its attempt to enter Lake Okeechobee. Meigs recognized that the

greatest advantage to be derived from draining the saw-grass marsh

along the lake and the river would be reclamation of rich, black loam,

particularly desirable for growing sugar cane. He concluded the sparse

population along the river, largely engaged in raising cattle, did not

provide commercial justification for improvement along the length of

the river; he advised instead dredging between the mouth of the river

and Fort Myers (population 150), indicating this "would satisfy all

the needs of commerce for many years to come. "

29 In 1882, Congess

adopted his recommendation and authorized a project for a 14-mile-long

channel from the Gulf to Fort Myers. This 7-foot-deep canal was

completed by August , 1885.30

Still striving for drainage, state officials approached Hamilton

Disston, a wealthy Philadelphian who was interested in Florida's

undeveloped resources. Governor William D. Bloxham, president of the

45
Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund, persuaded Disston

to purchase 4 million acres of swamplands for $1 million, thereby

rescuing the insolvent fund from receivership. Disston and his

friends formed the Atlantic and Gulf Coast Canal and Okeechobee Land

Company to drain and improve this acreage west of Lake Okeechobee .31

Disston's engineers went to work in 1882, starting at Fort Myers,

dredging up the Caloosahatchee River to its headwaters, and cutting

through the dense marsh to Lake Okeechobee. Although this improvement

was not specifically designed to benefit navigation, it opened a

300-mile-long water route from the Gulf to the interior via

Caloosahatchee River, Lake Okeechobee , and on up the Kissimmee

River .32 By 1887, the Army Engineers reported that steamers

navigated the route at “irregular intervals" and regular trips were

anticipated within the coming year. 3 3

Disston's company dredged only the one canal. Even before 1882

had ended, an agent for the Internal Improvement Fund reported to the

trustees in Tallahassee that Disston's two dredges would not be able

to drain all the Everglades. In 1885, the trustees appointed a

committee to study Disston's results. This committee produced the

classic statement: "The reduction of the waters is simply a question

of sufficient capacity in the canals which may be dug for their

relief."34 Future experience would show that the matter was by no

means so simple.

Residents of the Caloosahatchee valley sought improvement of the

upper reaches of the river by removal of snags and overhanging trees.

Congress appropriated $4,000 for this purpose on August 5, 1886. By

this time, however, sane local citizens had grown fearful that the

increased volume of water in the river resulting from Disston's canal

company operations threatened to overflow their lands and they urged

the federal government to make no improvements that would increase

this danger. In response, the Army Engineers modified the federal

project for the upper river and completed the work in 1891. The

threat from the Disston company when the financial depression of 1893

put a halt to further operations, and three years later Disston

died.35

Meanwhile, another set of participants had joined the unfolding

drama of the Everglades. Land value was approaching seventy cents an

acre in 1879, when the state legislature decided to grant sections of

swampland to railroad and canal companies along with the purchased

rights-of -way. With Henry B. Plant and Henry M. Flagler leading the

way, an era of intensive railroad building began. By the early 1900s,

the rail roads controlled the Everglades, the Internal Improvement Fund

had no money, and Everglades lands were not selling. Governor William

S. Jennings sought a legal remedy to this situation, maintaining that

the rail roads had received swamplands to which they were not entitled

and the present trustees should not be bored by unfulfilled

obligations assumed by former trustees. The trustees declared the

previous issues of land to the railroads and canal companies invalid.

On April 23, 1903, the United States government issued a patent to the

Internal Improvement Fund trustees for more than two million acres of

46
Ever glades land. The rail roads promptly filed suit, but the Supreme

Court five years later decided the superior title vested in the

trustees. 36

A local sheriff, and gunrunner in the Spanish-American War,

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, succeeded Governor Jennings. In his

dramatic campaign, Broward swore that all the Everglades could be

drained at a cost of one dollar per acre. After his election* he

requested that the state legislature create a Board of Drainage

Commissioners. Consisting, as did the Board of Trustees of the

Internal Improvement Fund, of the state governor, comptroller,

treasurer, attorney general, and commissioner of agriculture, this

board was established on May 27, 1905. The commissioners were

empowered to drain and reclaim swamplands, levy drainage taxes, and

create drainage districts. In November, 1905, two new dredges

constructed by the state went to work on the New River. The

Everglades Drainage District was created on May 28, 1907, and

empowered to levy taxes on the land around Lake Okeechobee. The

following year, Governor Broward announced plans to build four more

dredges. Everglades land value rose to five dollars an acre.

Speculators jumped into the act, settlers flocked to the banks of the

Caloosahatchee, land prices soared to a range of twenty to fifty

dollars an acre, and soon 15,000 people inhabited an area where

formerly there had been 12 landowners.37

The Everglades Drainage District based its operations on plans

contained in a report known as the I sham Randolph Report, submitted by

the Florida Everglades Engineering Commission to the drainage district

board of trustees on October 25, 1913. Althuogh drainage was the name

of the game, navigation received incident al benefits. Dredging of the

St. Lucie Canal east from Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie River

quietly provided the final cut in a waterway crossing the Florida

peninsula. By January 1, 1927, the district had constructed 486 miles

of canals and levees plus fourteen concrete locks and dams. A levee

skirted the southern, southwestern, and southeastern shores of Lake

Okeechobee; four main drainage canals extended from the lake to the

Atlantic Ocean and several auxiliary drainage canals had been

dredged. Florida had spent more than $14 million, but drainage of the

Ever glades continued to present a persistent and unsolved problem .38

Two natural disasters demonstrated the inadequacy of these local

protective measures. A hurricane on September 17-18, 1926, blew water

across the southwestern rim of Lake Okeechobee, smashing the muck

dikes built to keep Moore Haven dry. Several hundred people lost

their lives. Another storm in the fall of 1928 lashed out even more

savagely, inflicting more extensive property damage and killing

approximately 2,000 persons. Whet her this unique swampland was meant

for human use and habitation was no longer the point at issue.

Everglades land was now valued at ninety-two dollars an acre. The

struggling local interests sought help from the federal government to

protect their considerable investment in the area .39

47
Navigation had long been a fringe benefit of the drainage efforts

in southern Florida. In 1888, Army Engineers recognized that the

inhabitants of the Caloosahatchee River valley were "entirely

dependent on the river for the carriage of all heavy freights and

bulky products." 40 Citrus growers, sugarcane farmers, and cattlemen

had used the river for years. Thus, when federal aid for the

Caloosahatchee valley and Lake Okeechobee area finally came, Congress

attempted to achieve a combination of flood control and navigation

objectives. Under provisions of the Rivers and Harbors Act of July 3,

1930, a shallow-draft channel dredged along the southern shore of Lake

Okeechobee furnished material used to build a 31-foot-high levee; the

levee was designed to provide the long-sought protection for the

flood-prone areas around the lake's southern borders. Project

modification under the Rivers and Harbors Act of August 30, 1935

called for the United States to maintain the completed works and to

bear the cost of drainage structures except for $500,000 to be raised

locally. By 1937, a navigable channel with minimum dimensions of 6 by

80 feet connected the Gulf with the Atlantic Ocean.

41 A

beneficiary of the demand for relief from flooding, the Okeechobee

Waterway constituted a potential link in the growing system of inland

waterways.

THE FLORIDA GULF COAST

The next part of Florida logically begging for intracoastal

waterway development ran along the western coast of the peninsula. By

the middle of the 1930s, with the Atlantic Inland Waterway completed

and the connecting Okeechobee Waterway nearing completion, operators

of commercial barges, pleasure and excursion boats, and fishing

vessels sought a suitable western exit from which they could continue

protected passage northward. With a population of more than 300,000,

the coastal area seeking the waterway improvements included the cities

of Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Fort Myers, Clearwater, Bradenton,

and Tarpon Springs. Catering to a large tourist trade, this region

produced citrus fruit, vegetables, livestock, lumber, fish, lime, and

phosphate rock. Local interests requested the improvement of an inner

waterway “as a link in the Intracoastal Waterway from Boston to Corpus

Christi." Although some scattered improvements had been accomplished

earlier, no comprehensive project existed for Florida's Gulf coast.

In 1935, Congress authorized the first preliminary examination and

survey for an intracoastal waterway from the Caloosahatchee River

north to the Withlacoochee River.

Geographical features tended to divide the Gulf coastline of the

peninsula into two naturally distinct sections. Directly north of the

Caloosahatchee River, a chain of inlets or passes between the barrier

islands and the coastline composed an almost continuous "inside"

waterway, extending 148 miles north to the Anclote River. Above the

Anclote River, the shoreline lay directly exposed to the action of the

Gulf; however, because the water deepened very gradually along this

reach and waves dissipated far offshore, small vessels could navigate

safely in the open waters under normal weather conditions. In stormy

weather, entrances at the mouths of the Homosassa, Crystal, and

Withlacoochee rivers afforded refuge.43

48
The first federal project for intracoastal navigation along

Florida's Gulf coast consisted of dredging a 5-by-100-foot channel in

Sarasota Bay, to run south from Tampa Bay to Sarasota. In 1890, when

Congress appropriated $5,000 for this purpose, channel limitations

restricted exportation of the region's rich abundance of agricultural

products. Below Sarasota, farmers required only a 3-foot-deep channel

to carry their goods to Little Sarasota Pass or to Sarasota, where

they could connect with the Tampa Bay steamers. A modification of the

Sarasota Bay project in 1896 extended the improvement south to Caseys

Pass with a 3-by-75-foot channel. In 1907, this project was extended

further to Venice. By 1917, two-thirds of the 3,841 tons (brick,

canned goods, groceries, cement, corn, feed, fertilizer, fish, flour,

grain and hay, ice, lumber, refined oils, shingles, and miscellaneous

merchandise) transported on this waterway moved between Sarasota and

Tampa. Two years later Congress provided for a relocated 7-foot-deep

channel above Sarasota.14

Northward along the coast, Boca Ciega Bay, the Narrows, and

Clearwater Harbor formed the basis for an inland waterway from Tampa

Bay to the Anclote River. In 1910, Congress adopted a project to

improve this stretch with a 7-by-100-foot channel from Tampa Bay into

Boca Ciega Bay and a 5-by-50-foot channel on to Clearwater Harbor.

Legislation in 1919 provided for channel dimensions of 8 by 100 feet

from Boca Ciega Bay to Tampa Bay. Army Engineers completed this

channel enlargement in 1920.45

In 1939, the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors recommended

an intracoastal project, 9 feet deep and 100 feet wide, reaching from

the Caloosahatchee River north to the Anclote River. The Board saw

the proposed waterway as a connecting link in the Boston-to-Corpus

Christi intracoastal system and argued that it would facilitate

economical collection and distribution of freight for the deep-water

harbors on the western coast of Florida. As proposed, the

Calootsahatchee-to-Anclote waterway would incorporate the improvements

already made in Sarasota Bay, Caseys Pass, and the channel from

Clearwater Harbor to Tampa Bay. For the 45 miles from the Anclote

River to the Withlacoochee River, the only recommendation for

improvement consisted of marking a route along the 12-foot depth in

the Gulf and constructing and maintaining suitable harbors of refuge.

The South Atlantic Division Engineer, Colonel Jarvis J. Bain,

estimated the potential commerce of the waterway would be at least

202,000 tons annually.46

World War II delayed funding for Florida's intracoastal waterway

until 1945, and its authorization then included the usual provision

that local interests furnish all lands needed for the project.

Accordingly, in 1947, the Florida legislature created the West Coast

Inland Navigation District, empowered to levy taxes for land

procurement. During the interim, however, a number of fine homes and

apartment houses had been built on or near the originally authorized

route through Venice, raising land values considerable. Moreover,

local interests objected that the original route would cut off the

rapidly growing population of Venice from the Gulf and its beaches.

49
The desirability of adopting an alternate route and revising the

cost-sharing arrangement between the federal government and local

interests generated modifying legislation in 1948, 1950, 1954, and

1957. Terms of local compliance were resolved in 1959 and dredging

began in June, 1960. The final segment dredged in the 151-mile

waterway was the alternate route known as C-1. Completed in January,

1967, this 5-mile alternate passageway cut inland, encircled most of

the city of Venice, and then rejoined the original route north of

Lemon Bay.47

Project modification in 1962 incorporated maintenance of the

Sunshine Skyway Channel that had been created from a borrow pit for

bridge fill and ran parallel to the bridge, across the entrance to

Tampa Harbor. The following year, another modification provided for

construction of a channel for small craft, 6 by 80 feet, in Boca Ciega

Bay ● Called Cats Point Channel, this smaller channel was designed

primarily to serve recreational vessels, affording a shorter route to

the harbor of refuge at St. Petersburg. Within two years after its

completion, the Florida intracoastal waterway carried 418,268

tons--more than twice the tonnage estimated when the Army Engineers

first recommended the project. Commerce has risen steadily since

then, totaling 1,568,618 tons in the year 1978. AS may as 152,986

passengers have traveled on this waterway in a single year.48

With completion of the main channel of the Florida intracoastal

waterway in 1967, the only stretch on the Gulf Coast not incorporated

into the existing 25,000-mile network of inland waterways lay between

the Anclote River and St. Marks. In 1968, Congress authorized a

waterway 12 feet deep and 150 feet wide to extend from St. Marks to

Tampa Bay, overlapping the upper 43 miles of the Florida intracoastal

waterway. Shortly after passage of this legislation, however, growing

concern over environmental preservation cast a new light on the impact

of many waterway projects. As a result, construction of the

cross-Florida barge canal ceased in 1971 and the GIWW segment between

Carrabelle and St. Marks, authorized in 1937, has still not been

constructed. Work on the final connecting link, south of St. Marks,

never began. Disposal of excavated material along the shoreline posed

major environmental problems, giving Floridians cause to reconsider

their local sponsorship. Lack of progress on the Carrabelle-to-St.

Marks channel, directly to the north, and discontinuation of the

cross-Florida barge canal further detracted from the proposed

channel. In the end, the state decided not to sponsor it. Vessels

continue to ply the open waters of the Gulf south of St. Marks and the

project between St. Marks and Tampa Bay remains authorized but not

funded.49

Unlike other portions of the inland waterway system intended to

connect far-distant points, the Florida intracoastal waterway

functions mainly for short hauls. Along this route, barges carry

commodities to the nearest seaport, where they can be transferred to

ocean-going vessels.50 Recreational use of the channel is heavy and

commerce continues to increase. Meanwhile $ the fate of the continuous

waterway as originally conceived awaits resolution.

50
Chapter V

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

For the past thirty years , a continuous inland waterway along the

Gulf Coast has been a practical reality. Undergoing occasional

modification, realignment, enlargement, and extension into new

tributary channels, the GIWW has functioned as a full-fledged member

of the system of national waterways. Whether or not this inland

waterway has justified its creation poses an appropriate question.

Numerous yardsticks and complex formulae are applied to measure the

ramifications of the GIWW. Assessments are couched in terms of the

canal’s economic, social, recreational, and environmental effects.

While some consequences of the waterway are subtle and indirect,

others point clearly to distinctive trends and incontestable

conclusions. Still others raise fresh concerns and questions for the

future of water resources development in general and for the GIWW in

particular.

AN UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS

Because the earliest justifications for embarking on waterway

projects were based on economics, an evaluation of the GIWW should

first consider its economic impact as seen in the quantities of cargo

transported along the main channel from Apalachee Bay to Brownsville.

Here, the GIWW has greatly surpassed, by a factor exceeding twenty,

the most optimistic original projections for its potential. Tonnage

statistics tell the waterway’s success story in no uncertain terms.

In 1949, the year this channel was completed, the GIWW carried 1 slightly more than 28 million tons. By 1972, this channel carried

almost 109 milliom tons with the Morgan City-Port Allen alternate 2 route accounting for an additional 19 million tons. Through the

remaining years of the 1970s, tonnages decreased slightly and leveled

off, possibly due to such phenomena as energy shortages, changes in

patterns of petroleum distribution and importation, and national

economic difficulties.

The ratio between the benefits the waterway produces and the cost

of its construction offers another evaluation of a navigation

project. Construction costs for inland waterways vary greatly,

depending on such factors as extent of local cooperation, availability

of rights-of-way, and technical considerations related to specific

geographical conditions of the area. The average construction cost of

the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, less than $300 thousand per mile,

presents a modest contrast to portions of the upper Mississippi and

Illinois waterways that cost $7.2 million and $8.1 million per mile,

respectively. Estimated at 26 to 1, the GIWW benefit-cost ratio places

this waterway in a truly enviable position.3
Analyzing GIWW usage by channel segments generates still another

perspective on the impact of the waterway. Each channel segment has

developed trade patterns individually suited to its unique commercial

characteristics. As a result, economic development along the GIWW

does not occur uniformly. Tonnage statistics for the year 1979 (Table

1) show the differences among the three major reaches of the main

channel. 4 These figures leave little doubt that the portion of the

waterway west of the Mississippi River has had the greatest impact on

commercial. activity.

Table 1

CARGO TRANSPORTED BY SECTION OF

By Weight

(in millions

Channel Section of tons)

Apalachee Bay to Panama City 3.0

Panama City to Pensacola Bay 5.0

Pensacola Bay to Mobile Bay 7*9

Mobile Bay to Mississippi River 21.2

Mississippi River to Sabine River 55.9

Sabine River to Galveston 42.9

Galveston to Corpus Christi 22.4

Corpus Christi to Mexican Border 2.5

GIWW IN 1979

By Weight and

Distance (in million

of ton-miles)

310

510

371

2,167

8,446

2,725

2,451

306

Cargo transported into two or more sections is counted

in the weight total for each section.

THE GIWW IN TEXAS

Texas contains the longest section of the waterway. More than 400

miles of the GIWW are located in Texas, connecting the state’s

deep-water ports and industrial complexes with the markets of the

Midwest. Commercial growth on that section has been striking, with

the 5,481 million ton-miles carried on the GIWW in Texas in 1979

representing a doubling of the combined weight and distance figures of

1961.5 The direct economic contribution of the GIWW to the state of

Texas has been calculated at an annual $1.8 billion. This includes the

value of cargo to ports, expenditures on the waterway itself, and the

economic impact of water transportation and water transportation

industries. The combined direct and indirect economic impact of he

GIWW for Texas has been estimated at nearly $19 billion annually.6

Many factors reflect the influence of the GIWW on the Texas

economy. Its contributions include more jobs, greater income,

increased tax revenues for local communities, energy savings, and

reduced prices of consumer products. Between 1950 and 1975,

industrial interests established nearly nine thousand waterside plants

along the banks of the GIWW, attracted by the proximity to raw

materials, good transportation, and the availability of skilled labor

52
supply, land, and water resources. At a time when unemployment was

rising and many plants were cutting back production, 301 new plants

and expansions appeared along the waterway.7

Unlike many other states, Texas exports more goods than it

imports. The fact that almost 75 percent of these goods are shipped

from the state by water reveals how heavily the Texas economy relies

on water transportation. Overall, the impact of the GIWW on Texas

port activity is clearly considerable, but the extent to which the

GIWW accounts for total commerce at selected Texas ports varies widely

(Table 2).9 If this range of commercial activity is viewed as a

microcosm for the waterway as a whole, comparable fluctuations may be

assumed among other ports along the entire 1,000-mile length of its

course.

Table 2

GIWW PERCENT OF TOTAL COMMERCE* AT SELECTED TEXAS PORTS IN 1974

Port Per cent

Houston 33.1

Corpus Christi 23.4

Beaumont 30.7

Port Arthur 18.7

Texas City 55.3

Freeport 41.6

Galveston 12.4

Matagorda Ship Channel 13.9

Victoria 100.0

Brownsville 62.1

Orange 94.6

Sabine Pass 98.7

*Total commerce at these ports amounted to 273,507,212 tons.

Ports are listed by tonnage in descending order.

Recreation adds one further dimension of economic impact.

Pleasure craft make approximately 1.5 million trips on the GIWW

annually. Because sports fishing, residential development, and

tourism all generate benefits for the coastal area, the recreational

boating public constitutes another meaningful class of GIWW users.10

PEROLEUM AND THE GIWW

Petroleum merits special mention in any discussion of the GIWW.

The discovery of oil at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901

shaped the twentieth century development of the Gulf coastal region.

The interdependence between the petroleum industry and the GIWW

commands attention historically, economically, socially, and

ecologically. Refineries and related industries situated their

facilities along the coast to be near the source of supply and the

availability of water transportation. Impetus provided by the

petroleum and, later, the petrochemical industries has changed the

53
character of the coastal region, causing the emergence of major cities

and transforming the Texas coast into an urbanized area.11

Petroleum and petroleum products have long dominated the commodity

movement along the length of the GIWW. In Texas, petroleum products

(33.3 percent), chemicals (21.9 percent), and crude Petroleum (21.6

percent) account for 76.8 percent of total GIWW tonnage. On the

bustling channel segment between the Sabine River and Galveston Bay,

these petrochemical products compose an even higher 87.2 percent of

the total.12

The profound upheavals that rocked the petroleum industry during

the 1970s are bound to carry implications for the GIWW as well. ‘High

prices have tamed the industrialized world's appetite for petroleum,

restructured traditional energy and economic growth relationships, and

triggered an unprecedented search for oil and gas."13 Price-induced

conservation, a frantic scramble for alternate sources of energy, and

widespread recession, primarily in industrialized nations, have led to

a ‘*marked decline in free world oil consumption since 1979."14

The lag-range effects of these shifts in petroleum prices and

consumption are at present uncertain. "Economic forecasts . . . may

take second place to political considerations over the coming decade

in determining the course of energy balances. "

15 Whatever happens

probably will be reflected in some changes of commodity flow along the

waterway and in changes in waterside plant facilities. Petroleum will

almost certainly continue as the predominant commodity, but other

commodity groups may well show appreciable relative increases.

Channel and lock dimensions are the limiting factors determining

what vessels can travel on the GIWW. In turn, innovations in vessel

technology exert demands to improve the capacities of the waterway.

New designs have led to production of larger barges and more powerful

tugboats. The standard 900-ton hopper barges of the 1940s gave way to

the 1,400-ton-capacity jumbo hopper barges introduced in the 1950s.

Today, barges transport cargoes exceeding 2,000 tons on some of our

inland waterways. 16 Advances such as containerization and

assemblage of barges into integrated tows have further revolutionized

waterway operations.

For water carriers to take advantage of these technological

breakthroughs, however, the channels must be sufficient to accommodate

the new vessels. Currently, navigational restrictions on the GIWW

preclude the use of some of the larger barges already in service on

other waterways. Lock restrictions present problems for the Louisiana

canal. Width restrictions particularly handicap the busiest segment

of the waterway--that between the Sabine River and Galveston Bay. The

present width of 125 feet restricts maximum tows on the GIWW while

other waterways wider than 200 feet can handle barge tows containing

as many as forty barges. Congress recognized these limitations as

early as 1962 when it approved legislation authorizing enlargement of

54
the GIWW segment between the Sabine River and the Houston Ship Channel

to dimensions of 16 by 150 feet, but a snag in local sponsorship has

delayed prosecution of the enlargement.17

Ordinarily, a local sponsor assumes responsibility for providing

all land needed for construction and maintenance of the project at no

cost to the federal government. Further requirements call for the

local sponsor to alter pipelines, cables, and other utilities and to

construct and maintain containment facilities for dredged material.

Whatever requirements are involved, the federal government must be

held free from any damage that might result from construction and

maintenance of the project.18

Before 1975, the GIWW in Texas had no single local sponsor;

diverse navigation districts and river and port authorities attempted

to coordinate their local efforts with those of the federal sponsor,

the Corps of Engineers. The Texas Coastal Waterway Act of 1975

authorized the state to act as local sponsor of the GIWW and

designated the State Highway and Public Transportation Commission to

act on behalf of the state in fulfilling the attendant

responsibilities. The act further mandated the commission to carry

out the state's coastal policy, emphasizing the importance of

protecting the environment in conjunction with supporting

shallow-draft navigation improvements.19

The Flood Control Act of 1979 (P.L. 91-611) required a written

contract committing a local sponsor for a water resources project to

have full authority and capability to pay damages incurred by the

project, if necessary. This statutory requirement would pledge the

credit of the state, thereby violating the Texas constitution. This

conflict between state and federal law has delayed implementation of

full state sponsorship in Texas. Senator Lloyd Bentsen attempted to

resolve the dilemma by introducing an amendment that would make the

payment of damages contingent on the state's legislative

appropriations process, but the amendment failed.

action makes possible the formal conclusion of the

the state cannot assume full local sponsorship and

Texas GIWW cannot proceed.20

Until remedial

necessary contract,

enlargement of the

THE THIRD WATERWAY AGITATION

If the focus on national waterways policy during the first quarter

of the nineteenth century and again during the first decade of the

twentieth represented the first two ‘waterway agitations, "the United

States may now be experiencing its third such agitation. In 1976,

Congress authorized a large-scale, five-year study of the waterways,

the first study of its scope since Theodore Roosevelt's

administration. Meanwhile, the political climate surrounding

navigation improvements and waterways policy has changed dramatically.

The crux of the change relates to the financial question of who

will pay for the waterways. Historically, the

of the United States has been operated free of

inland waterway

tolls or other

system

55
charges. Federal costs of construction and maintenance have been

funded from general tax revenues with no special contribution from the

users of the navigation improvements. This policy was based on the

rationale that not only the waterways operators but also the consumers

and, thus, the entire country benefited from inexpensive water

transporation. Today, an insistent effort to enable the federal

government to recover at least a part of the project costs has resulted

in the imposition of a four cent users' tax on marine fuel, first

levied October 1, 1980.21

A bill (S. 1692) passed in November, 1981 by the Senate Water

Resources Subcommittee calls for all harbor deepening projects to be

financed locally with the federal government paying 75 percent of the

operating and maintenance costs. This bill may presage the attitudes

of congressmen in 1982 when they grapple with the issue of user

charges to recovery similar public investments on the inland

waterways. Various forms of cost recovery suggested include the

marine fuel tax already in effect, lockage fees, license fees, freight

surcharges, and waterway segment tolls. Some authorities claim that,

for a waterway like the GIWW, localized fees associated with

individual locks or waterway segments could be far more destructive to

commerce than broad-based cost-recovery measures.22

Beyond these financial considerations, other changes lie ahead for

the GIWW. Some mercely pose unanswered questions right now.

Construction continues on the tremendous project to connect the

Tennessee River with the Tombigbee River despite opposition in

Congress, court suits, and huge cost increases. The "Tenn-Tom"

waterway would provide the Tennessee Valley with an outlet to the Gulf

through Mobile rather than via the virtually parallel Mississippi

River, reducing the distance of probable shipments by an average of 40

percent. Proponents insist the Term-Tom, if completed late in the

1980s as projected, could drastically alter current traffic patterns

and relieve some of the load on the lower Mississippi River. Also, it

might bring some economic activity to the depressed Mississippi and

Alabama backwoods through which it is being dug. Opponents argue the

potential usage is trivial compared to the less costly Panama Canal.

Meanwhile, some signs point to a relaxation of the stringent

environmental regulation that have hamstrung so many waterways

projects during the last decade. In any event, the movement of

greater quantities of coal, as the nation's energy-use patterns

respond to higher petroleum prices, may be expected to be a vital

component in the development of this probable future tributary to the

GIWW.23

Local sponsorship may become a more compelling issue in the

future. Even if Texas resolves its current conflict, other problems

remain ahead. Because almost all Texas exports travel the Louisiana

portion of the waterway to the Mississippi River and on to the

Midwestern trade markets, conditions on the Louisiana segment of the

GIWW directly influence the commodity flow from Texas. The political

atmosphere in Louisiana that

strenuously in the 1920s has

prompted Roy Miller to campaign so

not disappeared. Louisiana's major ports

56
are located on the Mississippi River, not on the GIWW; therefore,

Lousiana does not share the same degree of enthusiasm for promoting

the canal that Texas does. Recognizing this problem, the Texas State

Highway and Public Transportation Commission has announced plans to

establish a permanent formal working relationship with its neighboring

state to provide the impetus for improvements to the entire GIWW

regardless of the state in which they are located.24

In the final analysis, the 1,000-mile "ditch" that is the GIWW, so

unimposing as it runs quietly along the Gulf coastline, has profoundly

affected regional and national economies. The many facets of its

impact defy enumeration, much less precise measurement. The complex

interrelationships among economic, political, social, and

environmental factors that have contributed to the waterway's history

will continue to fashion its future. In the face of the almost

insurmountable obstacles that long blocked its creation, the

transformation of this waterway from an extravagant concept into an

invaluable reality may seem miraculous. Now that it is there and

adaptable, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway promises a future that

should be fully as fascinating as its past.

57
CHRONOLOGY

1808 April 4 - Albert Gallatin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury,

submitted his historic report on "Public Roads and Canals" to

the U.S. Senate. This important statement of national policy

for internal improvements contained a long list of proposed road

and canal projects to tie the young nation together.

1824 April 30 - General Survey Act authorized the president to survey

routes for roads and canals that he judged to have national

import and to employ Army Engineers in this work.

1826 March 3 - Congress authorized first survey for a canal between

the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

1828 May 23 - Congress authorized the first improvement on the future

GIWW, appropriating $18,000 to deepen the channel through Pass

au Heron near Mobile Bay.

1830 May 31 - Congress appropriated $10,4OO to complete the survey of

a canal to connect the waters of the Atlantic with the Gulf of

Mexico.

1832 July 4 - Congress authorized survey for canals to connect bays

and rivers from St. Andrew Bay to Apalachicola Bay and from

Pensacola Bay to Mobile Bay under a $3,000 appropriation.

1845 Florida and Texas admitted to the Union.

1852 August 30 - Congress appropriated $20,000 for a survey for a

ship canal. across the Florida peninsula. In the same act,

Congress appropriated $25,000 for construction of a harbor on

Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans.

1873 March 3 - Congress authorized a survey for connecting the inland

waters slag the margin of the Gulf from Donaldsonville,

Louisiana, to the Rio Grade river, appropriating $20,000. This

was the first survey for an inland waterway west of the

Mississippi River.

1875 March 3 - Congress authorized a survey for a cross-Florida canal

and for an inland waterway to connect that canal to the

Mississippi River.

July 10 - Army Engineer Captain Charles W. Howell, reporting on

the survey authorized in 1873, presented the first plan for an

inland waterway west of the Mississippi River.

1878 June 18 - Rivers and Harbors Act authorized a survey for a "shipcanal" from the St. Marys River to the Gulf of Mexico.

59
1880 June 14 - Congress authorized another cross-Florida survey, this

one for "steamboat communication" from the St. Johns River via

Tohopekaliga Lake to Charlotte Harbor.

1887 Project adopted to improve Bayou Plaquemine with dredging and

lock construction.

1888 Caloosahatchee Canal opened, linking Lake Okeechobee with the

Gulf of Mexico.

1890 Congress authorized construction on Florida's Gulf coast of a

5-by-l00-foot channel from Tampa Bay to Sarasota and a

3-by-75-foot channel from Sarasota to Venice.

1892 Congress authorized a project to enlarge and straighten channel,

previously dredged by the state of Texas in 1859, through West

Galveston Bay. The new channel, terminating at Christmas point

in Oyster Bay, was dredged to dimensions of 3-3.5 feet deep and

100-2OO feet wide between 1893 and 1895.

1897 February 11 - Galveston and Brazes Navigation Company offered

its n-mile canal from the Brazes River to Oyster Bay to the

federal government. Congress authorized the purchase at

$30,000, and the federal government completed the transaction in

December, 1902.

1900 Reports of surveys and examinations of certain adjacent streams

in Texas-Caney Creek, the San Bernard River, and Oyster

Creek--were made with a view toward incorporating them into a

network of protected waterways.

1901 Oil discovered at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas.

1905 March 3 - Rivers and Harbors Act authorized a second

comprehensive round of surveys, thirty years after those of

1873, for an inland waterway from the Rio Grande to the

Mississippi River. Future Chief of Engineers Edgar Jadwin,

looking at conservative dimensions of 5 by 40 feet, proposed

taking advantage of the Bayou Plaquemine improvements and found

much of Howell's earlier report still applicable. Jadwin cited

coal, rice, oil, sugar, lumber, and cotton as products for which

the waterway was likely to prove important.

August 8 - Convention in Victoria gave birth to the Interstate

Inland Waterway League, pledged to the goal of a continuous

system that would tie together the 18,000 miles of navigable

waters extending from the Great Lakes, through the Mississippi

Valley, and along the Louisiana and Texas coastlines. The

league grew into the Intracoastal Waterway League of Louisiana

and Texas, then changed its name to the Intracoastal Canal

Association of Louisiana and Texas, and eventually became the

Gulf Intracoastal Carol Association, as it is known today.

60
1907 March 2 - Congress appropriated $89,292 to connect the Bayou

Teche at Franklin with the Mermentau River, providing for the

first Louisiana segment in the GIWW Main Channel.

President Theodore Roosevelt established the Inland Waterways

Commission in response to public pressure for a comprehensive

plan to improve and control U.S. river system.

1908 November 30 - Statement by Gulf Division Engineer Colonel

Lansing H. Beach favoring improvement of the segment between

Brazes River and Matagorda Bay reflected a shift toward a more

liberal approach:

"Even should local conditions not be such as to demand the

improvement of this portion of the waterways, . . . the fact

that it is one link in the chain of waterways paralleling the

shore is sufficient . . . to cause the improvement to be made.”

1909 March 3 - Rivers and Harbors Act contained a broad, new national

policy on coastal navigation by ordering surveys for

intracoastal waterways from Boston, Massachusetts to the Rio

Grande. The surveys examined the feasibility of a 12-foot-deep

channel across Florida and a 9-foot-deep channel along the Gulf

of Mexico from St. George Sound, Florida to the Rio Grande.

1910 June 25 - Congress authorized several improvements along the

Gulf Coast: from Clearwater Harbor to Tampa Bay, from the

Apalachicola River to St. Andrew Bay, and through the Narrows in

Santa Rosa Sound between Choctawhatchee Bay and Pensacola. West

of the Mississippi River, the act authorized construction of the

reach from the Mermentau River to the Sabine River and from the

Brazes River to Matagorda Bay.

1912 July 25 - Congress appropriated $50,000 to complete the

improvement to the channel connecting Mobile Bay and Mississippi

sound ●

1919 March 2 - Rivers and Harbors Act carried authorization and

appropriation for waterway from the Mississippi River to Bayou

Teche, providing the intracoastal waterway with a direct route

west from the Mississippi to the Sabine.

1923 March 3 - Rivers and Harbors Act authorized examination and

survey of the intracoastal waterway from the Mississippi River

at or near New Orleans to Corpus Christi, Texas.

June 1 - In proposing the course of the channel from the Sabine

River to Galveston, Gulf Division Engineer George M. Hoffman

departed from the earlier principle of dredging through the open

bays, defending instead the notion of a landlocked channel to

run along and inside the shoreline. This change in philosophy

led to eventual relocation of many older channels.

61
In July, the Intracoastal Canal Association of Louisiana and

Texas engaged retired Army Engineer Major General George

Goethals to study the commercial potential of a continuous canal

through Louisiana and Texas. On November 27, Goethals reported

that "the present tonnage possibilities of such a waterway are

between 5 million and 7 million tons annually, and this

statement is conservative.”

1925 March 3 - Congress authorized construction of the "Louisiana and

Texas Intracoastal Waterway" to extend as a continuous 9-by-100-

foot channel from New Orleans to Galveston Bay. This was the

first legislation that treated the waterway as a whole rather

than addressing disconnected, discrete segments. At the same

time, Congress also called for preliminary examinations and

surveys east of the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the

Apalachicola. River.

1927 January 21 - Congress authorized extension of the Louisiana and

Texas Intracoastal Waterway as far west as Corpus Christi.

1930 July 3 - Rivers and Harbors Act contained the first

appropriations for a 9-foot-deep intracoastal waterway east of

the Mississippi River. This would afford improved continuous

passage from Pensacola Bay to New Orleans. The act also

authorized a number of examinations and surveys for various

carol routes across Georgia and Florida to connect the Atlantic

Intracoastal Waterway with the proposed Gulf Intracoastal

Waterway, including a route from Stuart on the Atlantic coast of

Florida via the St. Lucie Carol, Lake Okeechobee, and the

Caloosahatchee River. Still. another survey called for study of

a waterway from Pensacola along the western coast of Florida to

the Caloosahatchee River.

1934 Completion of the Galveston-to-Sabine River segment united the

Louisiana and Texas portions of the intracoastal waterway.

1935 August 30 - Rivers and Harbors Act provided for 9-foot

construction on the remaining segments in the eastern leg of the

GIWW, from Apalachicola River to Pensacola. Congress also

authorized preliminary examinations and surveys along the

western coast of the Florida peninsula from Apalachicola Bay to

the Withlacoochee River and from the Withlacoochee River to the

Caloosahatchee River "with a view to securing a waterway . . .

for the purpose of affording suitable exit to the north for

craft using the Okeechobee Cross-Florida Canal."

On Labor Day, a hurricane grounded the S.S. Dixie on French Reef

in the Florida Keys. Within a day or two, President Franklin D.

Roosevelt allocated $5 minim in relief funds to begin

construction of a cross-Florida canal, a project still not

authorized by Congress. On December 15, Roosevelt announced he

would use no more relief monies for the canal and that Congress

could determine the fate of the project.

62
1936 September - Work on the cross-Florida canal was discontinued as

funds were exhausted.

A continuous 9-by-100-foot channel was completed between the

Apalachicola River and New Orleans.

1942 The 9-by-100 foot project from New Orleans to Corpus Christi was

completed.

July 23 - Congress authorized a high-level lock barge canal

across Florida from the St. Johns River to the Gulf of Mexico

and provided for enlargement of the existing GIWW to project

dimensions of 12 by 125 feet. It also approved “the extension of

the GIWW to the Mexican border.

1949 June 18 - Channel completed between Corpus Christi and

Brownsville, affording a continuous waterway from Apalachee Bay

to the Mexican border.

1962 Appropriations began for construction of the cross-Florida barge

canal.

Congress authorized the enlargement of the GIWW between

Galveston Bay and the Mississippi River to a 16-foot depth and

150-200-foot widths.

1964 Actual construction resumed on the cross-Florida barge canal.

1968 Waterway from St. Marks to Tampa Bay authorized but not funded.

1971 Work stopped on cross-Florida barge canal for environmental

reasons.

1980 October 1 - First fee for GIWW users levied in form of a tax on

marine fuel.

63
NOTES

CHAPTER 1

1. Forest G. Hill, Roads, Rails & Waterways: The Army Engineers and

Early Transportation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957),

PP. 37-38.

2. Ibid., p. 38.

3* Ibid., pp. 6-10 and 38-42; Leland R. Johnson, "The Fourth Pillar

of Defense: Waterways, " National Waterways Roundtable Papers:

Proceedings on the History and Evolution of U.S. Waterways and Ports

(Institute for Water Resources, 1980), pp. 24-25 and 28-29.

4. Hill, Roads, Rails & Waterways, pp. 40-41.

5. Act of April 30, 1824; Hill, Roads, Rails & Waterways, pp. 42-44,

49 ●

6. Act of March 3, 1826; Report of the Board of Internal Improvement,

19 February 1829, printed in John Quincy Adams, Message from the

President of the United States . . . A Canal to Connect the Atlantic

with the Gulf of Mexico, H. Exec. Doc. 147, 20th Cong., 2nd Sess.

(1829) , pp. 2-52.

7. Lynn M. Alperin, Custodians of the Coast: History of the United

States Army Engineers at Galveston (Galveston: Galveston District,

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1977), pp. 37-55. The events

surrounding the port improvement at Galveston Harbor illustrate this

change in congressional appropriations.

8. Russell E. Westmeyer, Economics of Transportation (Englewood

Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1952), p. 43.

9. Ibid., PP. 81-82, 126, 453.

10. Ibid., pp. 452-53.

11. Ibid., pp. 110, 454; “The Inland Waterways Commission," Science 25

(5 April 1907): 556-57.

12. W. J. McGee, "Our Inland Waterways," Popu

(April 1908): 295.

lar Science Monthly 72

13.

14.

Gulf

15.

Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1909.

Alperin, Custodians, p. 154; W. D. Hornaday, "Canal to Follow

Coast," Technology World 17 (August 1912): 664.

Alperin, Custodians, p. 155.

65
16. Rivers and Harbors Acts of March 3, 1925 and January 21, 1927 and

An Act to promote the national defense, July 23, 1942.

17. Henry H. Buckman, "Cross-Florida Barge Canal," Proceedings of the

Fifty-fourth Annual Convention, Intracoastal Canal Association of

Louisiana and Texas, 27-28 September 1959, Corpus Christi, Tex.

(Houston: Intracoastal Canal Association of Louisiana and Texas,

1959), pp. 12-13; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval

Operations in World War II, Vol. 1: The Battle of the Atlantic,

September 1939 - May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), pp. 135-44;

American Waterways Operators, Big Load Afloat (Washington, D.C.:

American Waterways Operators, 1966), p. 48.

18. Ibid.

19. J. F. Ellison, ‘The Inland Waterways of the South,"

American Academy 35 (January 1910): 114.

Annals of the

CHAPTER 2

1. H. Exec. Doc. 147, 20th Cong., 2d Sess. (1829), p. 52.

2. Ibid.

3. Virgil S. Davis, A History of the Mobile District 1815 to 1971,

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Mobile: Mobile District, U.S. Army

Corps of Engineers, 1975), p. 61.

4. William L. Dolive, "Gulf Intracoastal Waterway," typescript report

(Mobile: Mobile District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1950), copy in

Technical Liaison Office, Mobile District, p. 2; Annual Report of the

Chief of Engineers to the Secretary

(Washington:

of War for the Year 1884

Government Printing Office, 1884), pp. 1227-34

(hereafter cited as ARCE, followed by date of fiscal year covered in

report).

5. Major James F. McIndoe, “Preliminary Examination" and "Plan and

Estimate of Cost of Improvenent, “ in Secretary of War, Lake

Pontchartrain, Louisiana, H. Dec. 881, 60th Cong., 1st sess. (1908),

pp. 4, 7.

6. Dolive, “Gulf Intracoastal Waterway," pp. 2-3.

7. Davis, Mobile District, p. 61.

8. This must be a misstatement for the river and bay of

Choctawhatchee, for the Chattahoochee River does not reach the Gulf of

Mexico, nor is there any bay by that name.

9. Act of July 4, 1832.

10. ARCE, 1876, pt. 1, p. 509.

66
11. Davis, Mobile District, p. 61; ARCE, 1876, pt. 1, p. 508-14. The

quotations are on page 513.

12. Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1875.

13. ARCE, 1876, pt. 1, pp. 508-09. The quoted sections are on page

508.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid. , pp. 509-12.

16. Westmeyer, Economics of Transportation, p. 118.

17. "The Inland Waterways Commission," Science 25 (5 April 1907):

556-57.

18. W. J. McGee, "Our Inland Waterways, " Popular Science Monthly 75

(April 1908): 295, 289, 299.

19. "Inland Waterways: Message from Theodore Roosevelt to the Senate

and House of Representatives,?? Science 27 (13 March 1908): 418.

20 . "The Inland Waterways of the United States: Report of the Inland

Waterways Commission, " Engineering Magazine 35 (May 1908): 270-71.

21. "Inland Waterways: Message from Roosevelt,” p. 420.

22 ● US Statutes at Large, 35: 822 and 835-36. The quoted section is

on page 835.

23 . U. L. Perry, "Report on intracoastal waterway development in the

Mobile area," typescript (Mobile: Mobile District, U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, 1950), copy in Technical Liaison Office, Mobile District,

p. 2.

24. Captain Harley B. Ferguson, ‘Preliminary Examination of Channel"

and “Survey of Channel, " in Secretary of War, Channel from

Apalachicola River to Saint Andrews Bay, Florida, H. Dec. 670, 61st

Cong., 2d sess. (191O), pp. 3-4, 7-8.

25. Davis, Mobile District, p. 61; Dolive, "Gulf Intracoastal

Waterway," pp. 4-5.

26. Ferguson, "Preliminary Examination of Channel," in H. Dec. 670,

61st Cong., 2d sess. (1910), p. 5.

27. Davis, Mobile District, p. 62; H. Dec. 670, 61st Cong., 2d sess.

(1910), p. 9; Dolive, "Gulf Intracoastal Waterway," p. 5.

28. ARCE, 1914, p. 660.

67
29. Dolive, “Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, n p. 3.

30. ARCE, 1884, p. 1228.

31 ● ARCE, 1894, p. 1717.

32. Dolive, "Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, " p. 3.

33. Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1925.”

34 ● Report of the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, in

Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway, St. Georges Sound to the Rio

Grande Section, H. Doc. 610, 63d Cong., 2d sess. (1914), pp. 13-14.

35* Reports of the Chief of Engineers; the Board of Engineers for

Rivers and Harbors; and the Division Engineer, Gulf Division, in

Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway from Pensacola Bay, Fla., to

Mobile Bay, Alabama. H. DOC. 42, 71st Cong., 1st sess. (1929), PP. 2,

4, 8-9.

36. Reports of the Chief of Engineers and the Board of Engineers for

Rivers and Harbors in H. Dec. 42, 71st Cong., 1st sess. (1929), PP.

1-5. The quotation, printed on p. 5, is from the latter report.

37. ARCE, 1938, p. 705; Perry, "Report on intracoastal waterway

development," pp. 3-4.

38. ARCE, 1930, p. 908.

39* Letter of the Chief of Engineers, 19 June 1929, in House

Committee on Rivers and Harbors, Channel between Mobile Bay and

Mississippi Sound, Alabama, H. Comm. Doc. 4, 71st Cong., 1st sess.

(1929), p. 2.

40. Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway, Mobile Bay, Ala., to New

Orleans, La., H. Dec. 341, 71st Cong., 2d sess. (1930); ARCE, 1930, p.

909.

41 ● I. L. Campbell, "The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway: Northwest

Florida Secticn," typescript report (Mobile: Mobile District, U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers, 1950), copy in Technical Liaison Office,

Mobile District, Army Corps of Engineers, p. 3.

42. Ibid., pp. 3-4.

43. Ibid., p. 4.

44 ● Ibid. ; Davis, Mobile District, p. 62.

45. Report of the Chief of Engineers, in Secretary of War, Waterway

from Choctawhatchee Bay to West Bay, Fla, H. Doc. 259, 72d Cong., 1st

68
sess. (1932) , p. 2; Perry, "Report on

development," p. 3.

46. ARCE, 1938, p. 702.

47. Campbell, “The Gulf Intracoastal

pp. 5-9*

intracoastal waterway

Waterway: Northwest Florida,"

48. Reports of the Chief of Engineers, the Board of Engineers for

Rivers and Harbors, and Colonel Richard Park, H. Doc. 257, 76th Cong.,

1st sess. (1939), pp. 2-8; Dolive, "Gulf Intracoastal Waterway," p. 7.

49. Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway from Apalachicola Bay to

Withlacoochee River, Fla., H. DOC. 291, 75th Cong., 1st sess. (1937),

ARCE, 1939, p. 758; Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway from

Apalachicola Bay to St. Marks River, Fla., H. Doc. 442, 76th Cong.,

lst sess. (1939); ARCE, 1952, p. 654.

50. Lawrence Green, Planning Division, Mobile District, Corps of

Engineers, to Al Bishop, Florida Department of Enviromental

Regulation, 18 May 1976, copy in files of Mobile District, Corps of

Engineers.

51 ● Dolive, "Gulf Intracoastal Waterway,” PP. 7-8; Perry, "Report on

intracoastal waterway development," p. 5.

52. Ibid.

53 ● ARCE, 1950, p. 1639; Waterborne Commerce of the United States,

Calendar Year 1978, 5 pts. (Fort Belvoir, Vs.: U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, n.d.), pt. 2, pp. 36-41.

CHAPTER 3

1. Alperin, Custodians, pp. 151-54.

2. Ibid., pp. 151-52; ARCE, 1875, pt. 1,

quotation is from the latter source.

p. 876. The concluding

3* Ibid., pp. 876-77 and 895-90I. The first and third quotation are

on page 876 and are drawn from the report of the Chief of Engineers.

The second quotation, drawn from Polhemus' report, is on page 896.

4. Alperin, Custodians, p. 153; ARCE, 1875, pt. 1, pp. 897-99.

5. Ibid., PP. 876-77, 882, 900-01. The quotations are from pages 876

and 877.

6. Ibid., pp. 876-77. The quoted words are on page 876.

7. Ibid., pp. 877-79.

69
8. Ibid., pp. 877-86; Albert E. Cowdrey, Land's End: A History of the

New Orleans District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and its Lifelong

Battle with the Lower Mississippi i and Other Rivers Wending Their Way

to the Sea (New Orleans: New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, 1977), p. 62.

90 Ibid.; ARCE, 1875, pt. l, pp. 880-81, 889-90. Howell's quoted

observation is on page 881.

10. Cowdrey, Land's End, p. 62-63.

11. Rivers and Harbors Act of July 13, 1892; ARCE, 1896, p. 1544.

12. ARCE, 1888, p. 1298; ARCE, 1897, p. 1810; ARCE, 1900, p. 2422;

Rivers and Harbors Act of June 13, 1902.

13. Alperin, Custodians, p. 67.

14. Ibid., pp. 155-562, 102; Major Jadwin's report in Secretary of

War, Interior Waterway from the Rio Grande to the Mississippi H. Doc.

640, 59th Cong., 2d sess. (1907), pp. 3-4, 7.

15. Ibid., pp 8-9. Forty years later, such a route was authorized.

It became the Morgan City-Port Allen alternate route and was opened to

navigation on July 14, 1961.

16. The special board's report is printed in Secretary of War,

Intracoastal Waterway, St. Georges Sound to the Rio Grande Section, H.

DOC. 610, 63d Cong., 2d sess. (1914), pp. 21-58. The quoted section

is on page 36.

17. H. Dec. 640, 59th Cong., 2d sess. (1907), Secretary of War,

Intracoastal Waterway from the Mississippi River at or near New

Orleans, La. to Corpus Christi, Texas, H. Doc. 238, 68th Cong., 1st

sess. (1924).

18. Alperin, Custodians, p. 156; H. Doc. 640, 59th Cong., 2d sess.

(1 907), pp. 4-5, 23; Rivers and Harbors Act of March 2, 1907; ARCE,

1909, p. 1510; ARCE, 1910, pp. 549-50.

19. Beach's endorsement, dated November 30, 1908, of a letter of

November 19, 1908, from Captain John C. Oakes to the Chief of

Engineers, printed in Chief of Engineers, Inland Waterway, Rio Grande

to the Mississippi i River, in House Committee on Rivers and Harbors

Docunent 3, 61st Cong., 2d sess. (1908), p. 5.

20. Rivers and Harbors Act of June 25, 1910; Rivers and Harbors Act

of March 3, 1909; H. Dec. 238, 68th Cong., 1st sess. (1924), p. 7.

21. Ibid.

22 ● Unidentified newspaper clipping in files of Gulf Intracoastal

Canal Association, Houston, Tex.

70
23. Houston Post, morning edition, 8 August 1905.

24. Ibid., 9 August 1905.

25. Interview with Dale Miller, 24 September 1981; Tom Lea, The King

Ranch (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1957), p. 548. In 1946 Dale

Miller succeeded his father as executive vice president of the league,

perpetuating his dedicated leadership.

26. Cowdrey, Delta Engineers, p. 47; Alperin, Custodians, p. 155;

Houston Press, 23 March 1923.

27. Ibid.

28. Galveston Daily News, 23 March 1923.

29. Alperin, Custodians, pp. 156-57; Hearings before Committee on

Rivers and Harbors, House of Representatives, 77th Cong., 1st sess.,

on The Improvement of the Louisiana and Texas Intracoastal Waterway

from Corpus Christi, Tex. to the Rio Grande, October 7, 1941, from

testimony of C.S.E. Holland, p. 7; Beaumont Enterprise, 5 July 1923.

30. New Orleans States, 18 July 1923.

31. H. Doc. 238, 68th Cong., 1st sess. (1924), pp. 98, 102.

32. Ibid., p. 5; Houston press, 2 January 1925.

33. Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1925; Rivers and Harbors Act

of January 21, 1927. Alperin, Custodians, pp. 157-58.

34. H. Doc. 238, 68th Cong., 1st sess. (1924), p. 45.

35 ● ARCE, 1942, p. 865.

36. Alperin, Custodians, p. 159; Secretary of War, Louisiana-Texas

Intracoastal Waterway, New Orleans, La., to Corpus Christi, Tex., H.

DOC. 230, 76th Cong., 1st sess. (1939), p. 14.

379 Alperin, Custodians, p. 159.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid., pp. 159-60.

40 ● Ibid., p. 160.

41 ● Thomas A. Sands, "The New Orleans District," Proceedings of the

Seventy-fifth Annual Convention, Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association,

7-8 August 1980, Victoria, Tex. (Houston: Gulf Intracoastal Canal

Association, 1980), p. 6.

71
42. P. L. 675, 77th Cong.$ 2d sess.; ARCE, 1943, p. 4; ARCE, 1944, p.

3.

43. "New Orleans Seeks Shorter Route to Gulf," Illustrated World 35

(July 1921): 875-76.

44 ● Ibid. ; New Orleans States, 15 November 1930; Chief of Engineers,

Mississippi i River-Gulf Outlet, H. Committee on Rivers and Harbors Dec.

46. 71st Cong., 2d sess. (1930), pp. 2-3.

45 ● Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway from Mobile, Ala., to New

Orleans, La., including the Violet Carol Route, Louisiana, H. Dec. 96,

79th Cong., lst sess. (1945), p. 8; ARCE, 1945, p. 871.

46.

47.

245,

48.

49.

H. Doc. 96, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (1945), pp. 2-8.

Secretary of the Army, Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, H. Dec.

82d Cong., 1st sess. (1951), pp. 12, 40.

Cowdrey, Land's End, pp. 71-72.

Daniel A. Mazmanian and Jeanne Nienaber, Can Organizations

Change?: Environmental Protection, Citizen Participation, and the

Corps of Engineers (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution,

1979), pp. 79-100.

500 Information provided by the Army Engineers in the New Orleans

District.

51 ● Alperin, Custodians, pp. 161-64.

52. Ibid., p. 164; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The Intracoastal

Waterway, Gulf Section (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,

1961) .

53 ● Alperin, Custodians, p. 164.

54. Waterborne Commerce of the United States, Calendar Year 1972, 5

pts ● (Fort Belvoir, Vs.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, n.d.), pt. 2,

pp. 37, 390

CHAPTER 4

1. Secretary of War, Atlantic-Gulf Ship Canal, Fla., H. Doc. 194,

75th Cong., 1st sess. (1938), p. 1.

2. Henry H. Buckman, "Cross-Florida Barge Canal," Proceedings of the

Fifty-fourth Annual Convention, Intracoastal Canal Association of

Louisiana and Texas, 27-28 September 1959, Corpus Christi, Tex.

(Houston: Intracoastal Canal Association of Louisiana and Texas,

1959), p. 11.

72
3* Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Florida: The Long Frontier (New York:

Harper & Row, 1967), p. 82; Buckman, “Canal, " p. 11; George E. Buker,

Sun, Sand and Water: A History of the Jacksonville District, U.S. Army

Corps of Engineers, 1821-1975 (Jacksonville, Fla.: Jacksonville

District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, (1981), pp. 155-56.

4. Ibid., pp. 28, 31; H. Exec. Doc. 147, 20th Cong., 2d sess. (1829),

pp. 41-46. The quoted phrase is on page 45.

5. Secretary of War, Canal-Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, H. Dec.

l85, 22d Cong., 2d Sess (1832), pp. 1-7, 49-51; Buker, Sun, Sand and

Water, p. 159.

6. ARCE, 1876, pt. 1, p. 543; Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, p. 159.

7. ARCE, 1880, p. 1006; Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, pp. 161-62.

8. Ibid., p. 163; ARCE, 1882, p. 1205.

9. Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway, Across Florida Section,

H. DOC. 233, 63d Cong., 1st sess. (1913), pp. 7-9; Secretary of War,

Intracoastal Waterway - Across Florida Section, S. Doc. 179, 68th

Cong., 2d sess. (1924), p. 2; Rivers and Harbors Act of January 21,

1927; Rivers and Harbors Act of July 3, 1930; H. DOC. 194, 75th Cong.,

1st sess. (1938), p. 6.

10. Luther J. Carter, The Florida Experience: Land and Water Policy

in a Growth State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974),

p. 270; Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, pp. 164-65.

11. H. Doc. 194, 75th Comg., 1st sess. (1938), p. 2.

12. Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, p. 165; "Florida: Sore Thumb," Time

27 (17 February 1936): 11-12.

13. “Catastrophe: Wind, Water & Woe," Time 26 (16 September 1935):

12-13; "Florida: Sore Thumb," pp. 11-12.

14. Ibid, p. 11.

15. H. Doc. 194, 75th Cong., 1st sess. (1938), p. 2.

16. "Florida: Sore Thumb," p. 12.

17. H. Doc. 194, 75th Cong., 1st sess. (1938), p. 9; Buker, Sun, Sand

and Water, pp. 166-67.

18. H. DOC. 194, 75th Cong., 1st sess. (1938), pp. 3-5, 9, 11, 28-29.

Markham's quoted statements are on page 5.

19. The quotation is from a letter from Major General Eugene Reybold,

Chief of Engineers, to Joseph Mansfield, Chairman of the House

Committee on Rivers and Harbors, dated June 12, 1942, and printed in

Secretary of War, Waterway Across Northern Florida for Barge Traffic,

H. Doc. 109, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (1945), p. 1.

73
20 . Ibid., p. iii.

21. ARCE, 1954, p. 401; Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, p. 170; “Blocking

Florida’s Ditch,” Newsweek 77 (1 February 1971): 55-56; ARCE, 1963, p.

435; ARCE, 1964, p. 415.

22 ● J. Walsh, “Florida: Nixon Halts Carol Project, Cites

Environment," Science 171 (29 January 1971): 357; "Blocking Florida's

Ditch,” pp. 55-56; “End of the Barge Canal, “ Time 97 (1 February

1971): 61.

23. Walsh, "Nixon Halts Project,” p. 357.

24. Chief of Engineers, Caloosahatchee River and Lake Okeechobee

Drainage Areas, Fla., S. Doc. 115, 71st Cong., 2d sess. (1930), p. 1.

25. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass (New

York: Rinehart & Co., 1947), pp. 10, 36-38.

26. Ibid., pp. 9, 20-210

27. Douglas, Everglades, pp. 251-53 and 258-59; George

Ugly Duckling: The Beginnings of Florida's Intracoastal

E. Buker, "The

Waterway,”

National Waterways Roundtable Papers: Proceedings on the History and

Evolution of U.S. Waterways and Ports (Fort Belvoir, Vs.: Institute

for Water Resources, 1980), p. 102; Secretary of War, Caloosahatchee

River and Lake Okeechobee Drainage Areas, Florida, H. Doc. 215, 70th

Cong., 1st sess. (1928), p. 15-16. The Buckingham Smith Report was

published in S. Doc. 242, 30th Cong., 1st sess. (1848).

28. Douglas, Everglades, pp.

29. ARCE, 1879, pp. 864-70.

reports, are on p. 864.

30 ●

31 ●

32.

33 ●

34 ●

35 ●

Duckling,” p. 103.

ARCE, 1915, p. 1828.

Douglas, Everglades, pp.

ARCE, 1888, p. 1094.

ARCE, 1887, p. 1235.

Douglas, Everglades, pp.

ARCE, 1887, pp. 1235-36;

268-69, 275-76.

The quotations, taken from Meigs'

282-83.

284-86. The quotation is on p. 286.

ARCE, 1915, p. 1828; Buker, "Ugly

36. Douglass, Everglades, pp. 283-88, 309.

37 ● Ibid., pp. 312, 314, 316-18, 322-23; H. Doc. 215, 70th Cong., 1st

sess. (1928), p. 16; and Baker, “Ugly Duckling," p. 104.

74
38. H. DOC. 215, 70th Cong., 1st sess. (1928), p. 16-17; Douglas,

Everglades, pp. 341-42. S. Doc. 379, 63d Cong., 2d sess. (1914)

contains the Isham Randolph Report.

39. Ibid., PP. 339-40, 345; Buker, "Ugly Duckling," p. 104.

40 ● ARCE, 1888, p. 1094.

41. Buker, "Ugly Duckling,” p. 105.

42. Secretary of War, Intracoastal Waterway from Caloosahatchee River

to Withlacoochie River, Fla., H. Doc. 371, 76th Cong., 1st sess.

(1939), Pp. 3, 4, 10; Rivers and Harbors Act of August 30, 1935.

43. H. Doc. 371, 76th Cong., 1st sess. (1939), pp. 3-4, 6-7.

44 ● Rivers and Harbors Act of September 19, 1890; ARCE, 1890, p.

1618; Rivers and Harbors Act of June 3, 1896; ARCE, 1918, p. 776;

Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1907; ARCE, 1918, p. 778; Rivers

and Harbors Act of March 2, 1919.

45 ● Rivers and Harbors Act of June 25, 1910; Secretary of War,

Clearwater Harbor and Boca Ceiga [sic] bay to Tampa Bay, Florida,

H. Dec. 1190, 60th Cong., 2d sess. (1908); ARCE, 1921, p. 797.

46. H. Dec. 371, 76th Cong., 1st sess. (1939), pp. 2-5, 26-27.

47. Rivers and Harbors Act of March 2, 1945; Secretary of the Army,

Local Contribution Toward Alternate Route C-1, Navigation Improvement

at Venice, Fla., H. DOC. 109, 85th Cong., 1st sess. (1957), pp. 5, 7,

and 8, including the quoted words in page 7; ARCE, 1961, pp. 492-93;

Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, p. 128.

48. ARCE, 1967, p. 432; Waterborne Commerce of the United States,

Calendar Year 1978, pt. 2, p. 50.

49. Letter, Randolph Hodges, Director, Florida Board of Conservation,

to the Chief of Engineers, June 12, 1968, printed in Secretary of the

Army, Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, St. Marks to Tampa Bay, Florida, H.

DOC. 386, 90th Cong., 2d sess. (1968), p. vii; Rivers and Harbors Act

of August 13, 1968; information on the recent status of this project

provided by Army Engineers in the Jacksonville District.

50. Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, p. 128.

1.

2.

2,

CHAPTER 5

ARCE, 1950, p. 1639.

Waterborne Commerce of the United States, Calendar Year 1978, pt.

pp. 36, 92.

3. John Miloy and Christian Phillips, Primary Economic Impact of the

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas (Texas Engineering Experiment

75
Station: Texas A&M University, 1974), p. 8; Allen J. Ellender, “Water

Conservation, " Proceedings of the Sixtieth Annual Convention, Gulf

Intracoastal Canal Association, 19-20 September 1965, Victoria, Tex.

(Houston: Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, 1965), p. 10.

4. Waterborne Commerce of the United States, Calendar year 1979, 5

pts. (Fort Belvoir, Vs.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, n.d.), pt. 2,

pp. 36, 92. pt. 2, pp. 32-44.

5. Ibid., 1979, pt. 2, pp. 41-44; ibid., 1971, pt. 2, pp. 38-40; and

ibid., 1961, pt. 2, p. 43.

6. Christian Phillips, “Economic Impact of the Gulf Intracoastal

Waterway in Texas," Summary Report: Analysis of the Role of the Gulf

Intracoastal Waterway in Texas (Texas Ports Association, Texas Coastal

and Marine Council, and Sea Grant Program, Texas A&M University,

1975), pp. 9-11.

7. John Miloy, “Introduction, " and Phillips, "Economic Impact,”

Summary Report, pp. 1, 9.

8. Ibid., pp. 9-10. This percentage is based on the weight of the

goods exported. Natural gas and oil exported from Texas by pipeline

was not considered in these calculations.

9. From Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation,

The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas, Summary, 1976 (Austin: State

Department of Highways and Public Transpiration, 1976), p. 8.

10. Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, The

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas, 1980 (Austin: State Department of

Highways and Public Transporation, 1980), pp. xxix-xxx.

11. Texas Department of Highways, Summary, 1976, p. 3.

12. Ibid., p. 6.

13. Robert T. Tippee, "The Oil Surplus--A Fleeting Phenomenon?," Oil

and Gas Journal 79 (9 November 1981): 141.

14. Rawleigh Warner, Jr., "A Look into the 1980s," Oil and Gas

Journal 79 (9 November 1981): 218.

15. Ibid.

16. Texas Department of Highways, Summary, 1976, p. 9; Miloy and

Phillips, Primary Economic Impact, p. 96.

17. Texas Department of Highways, Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, 1980,

p. xxvii; Act of October 23, 1962. The Sabine River to Galveston

segment of the GIWW is busiest in terms of the average tonnage carried

per mile. This figure is derived by dividing the total ton-miles

carried in the segment by the length of the segment. See Waterborne

Commerce of the United States, Calendar year 1979, pt. 2, PP. 32-44.

76
18. Texas Department of Highways, Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, 1980,

p. xxi.

19 . Ibid., pp. xxi-xxii.

20 . Ibid., pp. xxvii-xxviii.

21. Texas Department of Highways, Summary, 1976, p. 14; Texas

Department of Highways, Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, 1980, pp.

xxxi-xxxii.

22 . Robert F. Morison$ “Panel Passes Bill on Port-funded Dredging,”

Journal of Commerce 350 (19 November 1981): 11A; Texas Department of

Highways, Summary, 1976, p. 14.

23. “The Waterway That Cannot Be Stopped,” Science 213 (14 August

1981): 7410

24. Texas Department of Highways, Summary, 1976, p. 15.

77
BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

To construct a history of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway without

the Annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers and the documents of the

United States Congress would be most difficult. Originally, the

Annual Reports were published as congressional documents. Beginning

in 1866 they were printed and bound separately to form the series that

has continued to present times.

All rivers and harbors acts prior to 1938 may be conveniently

found in the three-volune compilation, Laws of the United States

Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors from August 11, 1790

to June 29, 1938. All Federal legislation appears in the United

States Statutes at Large.

The proceedings of the annual conventions of the Gulf Intracoastal

Canal Association provide a useful record of the waterways progress

and problems in recent years. An interview with the associations

President, Dale Miller, on September 24, 1981 and scrapbooks kept in

its Houston office furnished valuable information on the early

activities of this organization.

GENERAL REFERENCES

American Waterways Operators. Big Load Afloat.

American Waterways Operators, 1966.

Beaumont Enterprise, 1923.

Blake. Nelson Manfred. Land into Water - Water

Washington, D.C.:

. into Land: A History

of Water Management in Florida. Tallahassee: University Presses

of Florida, 1980.

“Blocking Florida’s Ditch.” Newsweek 77 (1 February 1971): 55-56.

Buckman, Henry H. “Cross-Florida Barge Canal.” In Proceedings of the

Fifty-fourth Annual Convention, Intracoastal Canal Association of

Louisiana and Texas, 27-28 September 1959$ Corpus Christi, Tex.

Houston: Intracoastal Canal Association of Louisiana and Texas,

1959.

Carter, Luther J. The Florida Experience: Land and Water Policy in a

Growth State. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

‘Catastrophe: Wind, Water & Woe." Time 26 (16 September 1935):

12-14.

79
Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. The Everglades: River of Grass. New

York: Rinehart & Co., 1947.

● Florida: The Long Frontier. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

Ellender, Allen J. “Water Conservation.” In Proceedings of the

Sixtieth Annual Convention, Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association,

19-20 September 1965, Victoria, Tex. Houston: Gulf Intracoastal

Canal Association, 1965.

Ellison, J. F. “The Inland Waterways of the South.” Annals of the

American Academy 35 (January 1910): 114-19.

"End of the Barge Canal.” Time 97 (1 February 1971): 61.

“Florida: Sore Thumb." Time 27 (17 February 1936): 11-12.

Galveston Daily News, 1923.

Hill, Forest G. Roads, Rails & Waterways: The Army Engineers and

Early Transportation. Norman: University of Oklahoma press,

1957 ●

Hornaday, W. D. ‘Canal to Follow Gulf Coast."

(August 1912) : 663-65.

Technology World

Houston Post, 1905.

Houston Press, 1923, 1925.

“The Inland Waterways Commission.” Science 25 (5 April 1907):

17

556-57.

“Inland Waterways: Message from President Theodore Roosevelt to the

Senate and House of Representatives.” Science 27 (13 March 1908):

417-21.

"The Inland Waterways of the United States: Report of the Inland

Waterways Commission." Engineering Magazine 35 (May 1908):

270-71.

Lea, Tom. The King Ranch. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1957.

Mazmanian, Daniel A., and Nienaber, Jeanne. Can Organizations

Change?: Environmental Protection, Citizen participation, and the

Corps of Engineers. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution,

1979 ●

McGee, W. J. “Our Inland Waterways.” Popular Science Monthly 72

(April 1908): 289-303.

Miloy, John. “Introduction." In Summary Report: Analysis of the

Role of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas. Sea Grant

80
program, TAMU-SG-75-203. Texas Ports Association, Texas Coastal and

Marine Council, and Sea Grant Program, Texas A&M University, 1975.

Miloy, John, and Phillips, Christian. Primary Economic Impact of the

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas. Sea Grant Program,

TAMU-SG-74-211. Texas Engineering Experiment Station: Texas A&M

University, March 1974.

Morison, Robert F. “Panel Passes Bill on Port-funded Dredging.”

Journal of Commerce 350 (19 November 1981): 11A.

“New Orleans Seeks Shorter Route to Gulf.” Illustrated World 35 (July

1921): 875-76.

New Orleans States, 1923, 1930.

Phillips, Christian. “Economic Impact of the Gulf Intracoastal

Waterway in Texas." In Summary Report: Analysis of the Role of

the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas. Sea Grant Program,

TAMU-SG-75-203 . Texas Ports Association, Texas Coastal and Marine

Council, and Sea Grant Program, Texas A&M University, 1975.

Sands, Thomas A. “The New Orleans District." In Proceedings of the

Seventy-fifth Annual Convention, Gulf Intracoastal Canal

Association, 7-8 August 1980, Victoria, Tex. Houston: Gulf

Intracoastal Canal Association, 1980.

Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation. The

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas, Summary, 1976. Austin:

State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, 1976.

. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Texas, 1980. Austin:

State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, 1980.

Tippee, Robert T. “The Oil Surplus --A Fleeting phenomenon?" Oil and

Gas Journal 79 (9 November 1981): 141-46.

Walsh, J. "Florida: Nixon Halts Canal Project, Cites Environment."

Science 171 (29 January 1971): 357.

Warner, Jr., Rawleigh. “A Look into the 1980s.” Oil and Gas Journal

79 (9 November 1981): 218-19.

“The Waterway That Cannot Be Stopped.” Science 213 (14 August 1981):

741 ●

Westmeyer, Russell E. Economics of Transportation. Englewood Cliffs,

N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1952.

81
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT’ MATERIALS

Unpublished Sources

Campbell, I. L. “The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway: Northwest Florida

Section. ” T ypescript report. Copy filed in Technical Liaison

Office, Mobile District, Army Corps of Engineers. Mobile: Mobile

District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1950.

Dolive, William L. “Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.” Typescript report.

Copy filed in Technical Liaison Office$ Army Corps of Engineers.

Mobile District. Mobile: Mobile District, U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, 1950.

Perry, U. L. “Report on intracoastal waterway development in the

Mobile Area.” “Typescript. Copy filed in Technical Liaison

Office, Mobile District, Army Corps of Engineers. Mobile: Mobile

District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1950.

Army Corps of Engineers Publications and Reports

Alperin, Lynn M. Custodians of the Coast: History of the United

States Army Engineers at Galveston. Galveston: Galveston

District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1977.

Annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers, 1866-1980.

Buker, George E. Sun, Sand and Water: A History of the Jacksonville

District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1821-1975. Jacksonville,

Fla. : Jacksonville District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,

[1981] .

“The Ugly Duckling: The Beginnings of Florida's Intracoastal

Waterway." In National Waterways Roundtable Papers: Proceedings

on the History and Evolution of U.S. Waterways and Ports, 22-24

April 1980, Norfolk, Vs., IWR-80-2. Institute for Water

Resources, 1980.

Cowdrey, Albert E. Land's End: A History of the New Orleans

District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Its Lifelong Battle

with the Lower Mississippi and Other Rivers Wending Their Way to

sea. New Orleans: New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, 1977.

Davis, Virgil S. A History of the Mobile District 1815 to 1971, U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers. Mobile, Ala.: Mobile District, U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers, 1975.

The Intracoastal Waterway, Gulf Section. Washington, D.C.:

Government Printing Office, 1961.

82
Johnson, Leland R. ‘The Fourth Pillar of Defense: Waterways. " In

National Waterways Roundtable Papers: Proceedings on the History

and Evolution of U.S. Waterways and Ports, 22-24 April 1980$

Norfolk, Vs., IWR-80-2. Institute for Water Resources, 1980.

Waterborne Commerce of the United States, 1953 - . 5 parts. Published

by various offices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

U.S. Congressional Documents

John Quincy Adams, Message from the President of the United States . .

●

A Canal to Connect the Atlantic with the Gulf of Mexico. House

Executive Document 147, 20th Congress, 2d Session (1829).

Secretary of War, Carol-Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, House

Document 185, 22d Congress, lst Session (1832).

Secretary of War. Interior Waterway from the Rio Grande to the

Mississippi, House Document 640, 59th Congress, 2d session (1907).

Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, House Document 881, 60th

Congress, 1st session (1908).

. Clearwater Harbor and Boca Ceiga [sic] Bay to Tampa Bay,

Florida, House Document 1190, 60th Congress, 2d session (1908).

Chief of Engineers. Inland Waterway, Rio Grande to the Mississippi

River, House Committee on Rivers and Harbors Document 3, 61st

Congress, 2d session (1908).

Secretary of Ware Channel from Apalachicola River to Saint Andrews

Bay , Florida, House Document 670, 61st Congress, 2d session (1910).

. Intracoastal Waterway, Across Florida Section, House Document

233, 63d Congress, 1st session (1913).

. Intracoastal Waterway, St. Georges Sound to the Rio Grande

Section, House Document 610, 63d Congress, 2d session (1914).

. Intracoastal Waterway from the Mississippi River at or near

New Orleans, La., to Corpus Christi, Texas, House Document. 238,

68th Congress, 1st session (1924).

Caloosahatchee River and Lake Okeechobee Drainage Areas,

Florida, House Document 215, 70th Congress, 1st session (1928).

Chief of Engineers. Channel between Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound,

Alabama, House Committee on Rivers and Harbors Document 4, 71st

Congress, 1st session (1929).

83
Secretary of War. Intracoastal Waterway from Pensacola Bay, Fla., to

Mobile Bay, Alabama, House Document 42, 71st Congress, 1st session

(1929) .

Chief of Engineers. Mississippi River - Gulf Outlet, House Committee

on Rivers and Harbors Document 46, 71st Congress, 2d session

(1930).

Secretary of War. Intracoastal Waterway, Mobile Bay, Ala., to New

Orleans, La., House Document 341, 71st Congress, 2d session

(1930).

Waterway from Choctawhatchee Bay to West Bay, Fla., House

Document 259, 72d Congress, 1st session (1932).

. Intracoastal Waterway from Apalachicola Bay to Withlacoochie

River, Fla., House Document 291, 75th Congress, 1st session

(1937) ●

Atlantic - Gulf Ship Canal, Fla., House Document 194, 75th

Congress, 1st session (1938).

Louisiana - Texas Intracoastal Waterway, New Orleans, La., to

Corpus Christi, Tex., House Document 230, 76th Congress, 1st

session (1939).

. Canal from Intracoastal Waterway to St. Josephs Bay, Fla.,

House Document 257, 76th Congress, 1st session (1939).

. Intracoastal Waterway from Caloosahatchee River to

Withlacoochie River, Fla., House Document 371, 76th Congress, 1st

session (1939).

Intracoastal Waterway form Apalachicola Bay to St. Marks

River, Fla., House Document 442, 76th Congress, 1st session

(1939) .

. Intracoastal Waterway from Mobile, Ala., to New Orleans, La.,

including the Violet Canal Route, Lousiana, House Document 96,

79th Congress, 1st session (1945).

Waterway Across Northern Florida for Barge Traffic, House

Document 109, 79th Congress, 1st session (1945).

Secretsry of the Army. Mississippi River - Gulf Outlet, House Document

245, 82d Congress, 1st session (1951).

Local Contribution Toward Alternate Route C-1, Navigation

Improvement at Venice, Fla., House Document 109, 85th Congress,

1st session (1957).

84
Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, St. Marks to Tampa Bay, Florida,

House Document 386, 90th Congress, 2d session (1968).

Secretary of War. Intracoastal Waterway - Across Florida Section,

Senate, Document 179. 68th Congress, 2d session (1924).

Chief of Engineers. Caloosahatchee River and Lake Okeechobee

Drainage Areas, Fla., Senate Document 115, 71st Congress, 2d

session (1930).

Miscellaneous Government Publications.

Laws of the United States Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and

Harbors from August 11, 1790 tO June 29, 1938. 3 vols.

Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1940.

United States Statutes at Large

85