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Draining the Everglades: How Canals Remade South Florida

Today, much of South Florida’s water moves through canals, levees and pumps. It was not always so. Visitors to the Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area often think of open sawgrass and shallow water, but the wider Everglades has been shaped by more than a century of efforts to drain it, farm it and control its floods. Those efforts did not share a single purpose. Some canals were meant to open farmland, some to carry boats and some to protect people from flooding. Understanding those differences helps explain the landscape South Floridians live with today.

An 1880s Bet on Drainage and Steamboats

The first large-scale attempt came from a private investor. In 1881, Philadelphia businessman Hamilton Disston bought four million acres of Florida land for $1 million, according to a historic resources study prepared for the Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation. The University of Florida’s special collections describe his overarching goal as draining the Everglades to create agricultural real estate.

Disston’s plan also had a navigation goal. The same historic resources study says he envisioned steamships traveling from the Gulf coast up the Caloosahatchee River into Lake Okeechobee and on up the Kissimmee River. By August 1883, a channel from the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee had been opened. Disston did not succeed in draining the Everglades, and he eventually sold much of his investment, but University of Florida archivists note that his work helped pave the way for later development.

Broward, the Drainage Tax and the Land Rush

In the early twentieth century, draining the Everglades became state policy. The National Park Service’s South Florida collections exhibit credits Governor William Sherman Jennings (1901–1905) with crafting the legislation that led to drainage projects across the state. His successor, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward (1905–1909), campaigned on draining what he called an “abominable pestilence ridden swamp.”

According to the same exhibit, work on the first dredging project in South Florida, the North New River Canal at Fort Lauderdale, began on July 4, 1906. Railroad and canal companies largely paid for drainage through a tax of five cents per acre on land sold to them. The Historical Society of Palm Beach County says the state formed the Everglades Drainage District in 1907 and sold large tracts to land companies between 1908 and 1910. It lists five major canals that carried water from Lake Okeechobee toward the Atlantic:

Miami Canal
North New River Canal
Hillsboro Canal
West Palm Beach Canal
St. Lucie Canal

The society notes that these canals did double duty, draining land and moving farm goods. The National Park Service’s Developing the Everglades page says dredging between 1905 and 1910 turned large tracts of wetland into agricultural land and helped spark the first of several South Florida land booms.

Real estate companies advertised the drained land as extraordinarily fertile. The National Park Service reports that thousands of buyers moved to South Florida, and the vast majority left financially ruined and disappointed. By the 1920s, as towns such as Fort Lauderdale and Miami grew, developers cut more canals and built new roads, and canals, roads and buildings gradually displaced native habitats.

From Drainage to Flood Control

Hurricanes shifted the focus toward flood protection. The South Florida Water Management District says that after damaging hurricanes in 1926 and 1928 struck coastal communities and the Lake Okeechobee region, the need for flood control to protect lives and livelihoods was clear. Construction began on a dike around Lake Okeechobee, along with improvements to waterways connecting the lake to both coasts. The Depression and long cycles of drought broken by hurricanes slowed that work.

In 1947, after years of drought, heavy rains soaked the lower east coast, and two late-season hurricanes brought widespread flooding. Florida asked the federal government for help. In 1948, Congress authorized the Central and South Florida Project, which the district describes as the largest civil works project in the country. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built its system of canals, levees and water-control structures over the following two decades. In 1949, the Florida Legislature created the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District to manage the project. That agency later became the South Florida Water Management District.

Unlike the early drainage schemes, this project had many stated purposes. The National Park Service lists them as water supply and flood protection for urban and agricultural lands, water for Everglades National Park, fish and wildlife habitat, navigation and recreation, and prevention of saltwater intrusion.

A Changed River of Grass

The results were mixed. The National Park Service notes that the project still provides many of its intended benefits. It also concludes that altering regional wetlands, estuaries and bays, along with population growth and changing land use, “has significantly degraded the natural system.”

That conclusion set the stage for a new chapter. Later generations would try to use engineering to repair some of what earlier engineering had changed, a story told in this series’ article on Everglades restoration. The drainage era is a reminder that the canals crossing South Florida were built for specific reasons, and that each generation’s choices about water still shape the landscape.

Knowing this history adds another layer to any trip into the wetlands. If you’d like to see South Florida’s sawgrass country for yourself, you can explore Miami Airboat’s tour options within the Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area.