Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-03-16

~ AIM BEACH, Fla, March S.-Crossing the
T. everglades used to be thrilling and
dangerous adventure; any tourist
can do it in two days on comfortable boat.
The gladeS used to produce nothing but ALI
gators and magazine StorieS now they are
producing sugar cane, corn and garden truck.
This means that one of the last great Amer
lean wilderneSSeS is about to be tanned. True,
only a small fraction of its area, which is about
the same as that of Connecticut, has been made
habitable for men. Fifteen thousand acres is an
estimate of the area now under cultivation, and
about three thousand people live in the Ever
gladeS including two thousand in MOrehaven,
the glade metropolis. But the drainage canals
which are to pierce the watery heart OF the
great swamp are almost completed The water
lis receding steadily, the area of farm land
creeping farther in There is part of the
glades, perhaps a fifth of the whole area in
the far southern end, which will probably
never be drained because it is too low. This
will remain as 4 mementO of what the gladeS
were, and it should by all means be made into
Il state or national reservation. For the gladeS
as a whole are doomed.
The gladeS are certainly of the most
stubborn and resistant wilderneSSeS on the face
of the earth. Within thirty-Six hours of New
York by rail, surrounded for long time by
populous and cultivated territory, with some
of the most fashionable resorts in the United
States within few miles, the Everglades have
remained almost unexplored until quite recent
~, anu cFeu HOW tHcIc dc pdlto VI lhcHA IAat
no white man has ever seen. A seeker after
contrast could hardly do better than to spend
a day or so at Palm Beach in of the most
luxuriously civilized settings in the United
States, and then 60 ten miles west, into the
wilderness of the saw grass and palmetto, where
bear, deer and alligatorS still abound
Hunters, fishermen, Indians, explorers and
naturalists have traversed the gladeS for good
many years without in any way changing them,
but now an individual has invaded their sacred
silenceS who brings change in his wake. This
individual is the Florida Real Estate Man, than
whom there is no more belligerent, imaginative
and indomitable representative of his ubiquitous
species. Florida real estate agent can sell
you pile of sand or puddle of water with
out half trying. He can take you out and show
you some of the widest and drearieSt spots in
creation and by the sheer power of the spoken
word he can make you that same desert
blooming with orange blossoms and green with
corn. When travelling in Florida it is always
we'll to keep the fingers crossed and make a
resolution not to sign anything
But the real estate man is not supreme in
the gadeS. Of its drainable lands there are
about two million acres in private ownership,
but nearly million and half are still owned
by the state of Florida. The state is doing
the work of cutting the primary drainage canals,
and a settler can buy land direct from the
state.
To understand this work of drainage you
must know that the glades are not swamp in
the usual sense of the term. They consist of
great shallow limestone basin elevated
dozen feet above the sea. This basin is filled
with clean fresh potable water by innumerable
springs in its bottom. The water is always