Readers: Last week’s column about the Everglades mentioned Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
She’s one of two women of the same first name – different spellings and operating at opposite ends of the state – who shaped Florida’s environmental legacy. The other, Marjorie Harris Carr, worked for years to block the Cross-Florida Barge Canal and protect the Ocklawaha River in North Central Florida (see our 2020 column).
Here’s more on the two from my 1998 obituary on Douglas and Carr’s 1997 obituary in our Gannett partner newspaper, the Florida Times-Union:
Marjory Stoneman Douglas came to Florida when the Everglades stretched to the shores of Lake Okeechobee. In her lifetime, she watched it dwindle to a fenced-off polluted jewel, a fraction of its breadth. At a time when most people’s lives were winding down, she started a crusade to save what was left.
Santos in the 1920s was a close community of predominantly African American families, many related, who farmed and had jobs in the area.
The town, which straddles U.S. 441 about seven miles south of Ocala, was dotted with stores and a post office. The community hosted baseball games that attracted both Black and white fans, according to historical accounts.
Irene Damon Donar, 89, was born in Santos in 1931, about four years before President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the start of Cross Florida Barge Canal project.
Ill-fated canal project would cut through community
In The Way It Was, a book focused on major events in Marion County in the 20th century, former Star-Banner editor and columnist David Cook recounts how Roosevelt authorized the start of work on the 195-mile canal, which would start at Inglis and cut a path through south and northeast Marion County on its way to the Jacksonville area.
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EDITORIALS
Let this river run: It s time to finally free the Ocklawaha from the shackles of old folly
The Gainesville Sun Editorial Board
Fifty years ago this month, President Richard Nixon ordered an end to an environmentally destructive barge canal that would have bisected the Florida peninsula.
Yes, Richard Nixon. Before he resigned office in disgrace, Nixon had a respectable environmental record that included creating the Environmental Protection Agency, signing the Clean Air Act into law and canceling funding for the financial boondoggle known as the Cross Florida Barge Canal.
Other Republican leaders who followed took a similar approach when it came to removing the barge canal project s most damaging legacy: a dam that backed up the Ocklawaha River and flooded about 7,500 forested acres, creating the Rodman Reservoir.
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50 years after Nixon halted project cutting canal across Florida, controversy continues
Idea for ‘Ditch of Dreams’ began with Spanish in 1500
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The U.S. Commerce Department image documented construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal in the 1960s. (Photo from Florida Memory)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – If you were asked to describe the legacy of President Richard Nixon, “environmentalist” is probably not one of the first things that would come to mind.
Before a political burglary blew up into a political scandal that toppled the president, Nixon made several progressive decisions, including expanding the Endangered Species Conservation Act, establishing the Environmental Protection Agency and 50 years ago this week ordering an end to a project to dig a canal across the Florida peninsula.