Mules Wearing Snowshoes, a fascinating (to me) but long posting

My Aunt Hazel, God rest her, collected family ephemera from way back.

She kept these papers in an old candy box.

Years ago, she showed me an 1880s receipt for the sale of alligator hides.

My great-great-great grandfather shot gators in the swamps of South Jacksonville and sold the skins to a local leather company. He earned $50 selling the hides for five cents each.

Looks like my ancestor single-handedly put the Florida alligator on the endangered species list.

I’d forgotten about my aunt’s ephemera collection until this week when I finished reading James Hammond’s book Florida’s Vanishing Trail.

In the midst of his comprehensive history of south Florida, focusing on the area around the Tamiami Trail ( the road which runs east/west across the Everglades between the gulf coast and Miami) Mr. Hammond told me a lot about alligators which, although I’m a Florida native, I never knew before.

“Explorers in the 1700s report thousands of alligators and crocodiles filling every river and stream on Florida’s east coast. These hungry predators line the shores awaiting their abundant prey. The annual mullet run brings great swarms of fish literally swimming into their open jaws, and turning peaceful tributaries into ‘pots of boiling water’ rising 25 feet in the air,” Hammond said.

In 1898 at Roberts Lakes during the dry season 10,000 alligators gathered in the shallow water; when hide hunters began firing their rifles, “the shooting caused the alligators to stampede like cattle”.

Today in Jacksonville if a single alligator shows up on a golf course, or in a storm drain, or in somebody’s swimming pool, the incident makes tv’s 6 o’clock news.

Time has not only diminished Florida’s alligator population but our water resources as well.

The geology of South Florida forms the Everglades as a state-wide slow seepage of water moving south; the abundant marshgrass laced with hammocks above the swamp, give the area the name A River Of Grass.

Hammond says early visitors to this watercourse noted this about the River of Grass:

“Florida’s water supply - then seemingly endless - rises from a reported 2,000 first-magnitude springs, each capable of producing over one million gallons of water per day.

“Historical records by eyewitnesses of the era describe a sudden trembling ground, and a rushing sound like a mighty hurricane, followed by a phenomena that quickly starts spurting great fountains of water, rapidly covering all the available ground. Days of such a flow form a broad river and eventually a lake.

“Modern travelers no longer witness this magical process. Canal dredging, extensive cutting into natural aquifers for roads, drainage ditches, retention ponds, and thousands of miles of irrigation culverts crisscross the entire face of Florida.

“Only 27 such springs remain”.

For five years author James Hammond spearheaded a research project for State of Florida’s Division of Historical Resources; this project was designed “to assemble all relevant data on the Army Forts of Southwest Florida during the Second and Third Seminole Wars through books, journal accounts, State files and records, and historical archives. A survey project to assemble all periods maps from 1835 – 1858 including civilian and military with landmarks, compass and transit recordings with a view of verifying locations, trail junctions and site recorded locations into an accurate map with GPS coordinates to identify ten (8 Army Forts and two (2) army camps in and around modern-day Collier County…to place this information on the Florida Master Site File”.

The project captured Hammond’s interest so much that he exceeded those perimeters into a comprehensive 170-year history of the entire area including information about the unique flora and fauna.

Great reading!

It’s got everything.

Hammond begins by telling about the three Seminole Indian wars from 1817 to 1858. He includes eye-witness accounts from U,.S. soldiers, army records, pioneer memories, and contemporary interviews with Seminole chiefs.

In 1842, one soldier wrote:

“Every leaf seemed to bear some poisonous insect as dangerous as the serpents under foot, and still more dangerous than all the rest, the cunning redskins had slowly retreated before the United States Army; for this war had been going on for years, and they had penetrated the jungles deep, and here and there cleared the hammocks of timber and built themselves comfortable homes from the bark of the cypress tree; and they defended those homes with that fury that only men driven to desperation can do. Concealing themselves under the dense foliage, covered with Spanish moss, they were indiscernible until they revealed their position by a rifle shot. This, of course, was often too late for some poor comrade who was pushing his way determinedly through the tangle, and with death lurking on every hand.

“The night was made hideous by the howl of wolves, the scream of the panther, the bull-like bellow of the alligator and dismal cry of the loon, interspersed here and there by the sweet notes of the whippoorwill, or the song of the American nightingale, that most beautiful of all songsters, the mocking bird.”

In 1850 a band of U.S. soldiers “stumbled into the camp of Chief Hollata Micco, better known as Billy Bowlegs. It was unoccupied at the time so the men took it upon themselves to destroy the gardens and fruit trees just to see, in the words of one soldier ‘how old Billy will cut up’. They slowly removed some of the fruits and journeyed a short distance away before setting up camp for the night”.

Bowlegs cut up by attacking at the start of the Third Seminole War.

“The Army’s scorched earth policy of capturing the women and children, burning villages and crops, taking all the livestock including cattle and hogs to the nearest depot, and if it was not practical, destroy them. The policy to “shoot warriors on sight” began to take its toll and led up to one of the last battles of the 3rd War…. (On November 28, 1857)

“The Indians, indeed, soon found that in open fight they were wholly unable to cope with the whites. They adopted the true policy of scattering themselves in small detachments, striking a sudden blow upon some exposed point, and then taking refuge in the almost inaccessible swamps”.

One army veteran said, “Of all my experience of hardships in three wars, that which I experienced in Florida was the worst”.

As the Third Seminole War wound down, white pioneer families, hunters, trappers, preachers, and farmers, entered the area.

In 1900, planter Walter Langford brought in a special hybridized grapefruit strain. Seedless, tasty and fast growing, Langford’s grapefruit changed the face of South Florida.

To get his crop north to market, Langford lay down 14 miles of rail line between his grove and the town of Everglade. Soon 17,000 wooden crates of grapefruit moved over those rails each season.

“In 1911, land in Southwest Florida was considered swamp overflow lands. The average price going for an acre of land was between 12 and 30 cents”, Hammond says.

In 1915 state legislators along with business men from the east and west coast of Florida formulated a plan to put a highway through the Everglades from Miami to the west coast of Florida. It would be called the Tamiami Trail.

Hammond says, “When the Tamiami Trail was completed in 1928 not enough culverts were placed at the bridge built over the river, and the Turner River Road, Birdon Road, and Wagon Wheel roads built later, reduced the river’s flow and according to one report ‘resulted in several undesirable hydrological and biological consequences affecting about 18,000 acres of wetlands.’

“The report, completed in 1981, went on to state that construction of Turner Road and Turner canal severed the Turner River from its upper drainage basin. Surface water, which normally contributed to the River’s natural stages and discharges, bypassed the River, making much of the natural stream virtually unusable.

“River waters became shallow and stagnant. The stream bed began filling with detritus, promoting the growth of emergent thickets of giant cutgrass. By cutting off much of the Turner River’s water sources, the channel’s depth was decreased. Shallow waters experienced higher temperatures, less dissolved oxygen, and different successional processes in and along the River. All of these consequences also influenced the River’s aquatic fauna’”.

Yes but, transportation availability also opened more agricultural vistas.

For instance, swamp logging operations increased.

In 1926, lumberjacks cut down single bald cypress tree so large it took ten railroad to carry that one tree’s lumber to a sawmill.

Hammond’s book includes photographs of this logging operation as well as photos from all phases of south Florida history and detailed maps contemporary with each era.

One logger, Captain Jaudon, sometimes called the father of the Tamiami Trail, discovered that sugar cane flourished in the rich, drained soil of the Everglades. He intended to distill rum and export sugar to the north. By 1935, his plan included planting 75,000 acres under sugar cane cultivation.

The thick mud and marl of the fields bogged down the mules pulling harvest wagons so Jaudon’s workers outfitted the mules with modified snowshoes to keep them from getting stuck.

Tomato plants also flourished in the drained marl. During the 1930s over 1,200 workers earned $1.25 a day while working in area tomato fields. They were paid in company-issued money called “babitt or Jigaloo,” which was good only for purchases at the company store

Over the years different people entertained different ideas about how South Florida land should be—developed, protected, exploited, preserved—these different ideas generate different tensions which Florida’s Vanishing Trail examines.

Why, in 1902, virtual war broke out between game wardens and plume-hunters who killed birds in Everglades rookeries to sell the feathers to northern milliners to decorate ladies’ hats.

That year, one ounce of gold sold for less than one ounce of feathers!.

I could wish that Hammond told more about the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane in which over 1,800 people drown in the town of Belle Glade, but maybe my geography is hazy and that area lies outside his criteria for this book.

“On December 6, 1947, President Harry S. Truman speaking to the whole nation by radio, dedicated with great fanfare, Everglades National Park from Everglades City, to the people of the United States,” Hammond says.

Everglades National Park was the first Park in the United States established to protect biological resources instead of the usual geological ones.

Hammond says, “Collier County is surrounded by the Picayune Strand State Forest, the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, the Big Cypress National Preserve, and, along the entire southern border, the Everglades National Park”.

Florida’s Vanishing Trail tells about the largest complex of Indian burial mounds ever found in Florida, about pioneer homesteads, outlaw hide-outs, 1800s fortifications, and many other historical and archaeological sites…

But…

Hammond also says that, “Almost no historic structures or sites on the National Register of Historical Places today can be visited by the general public in 5 of the largest State and Federal Parks in South Florida. This encompasses a vast 21,000 square-mile area that can best be described as ‘historically threadbare’. It should also be noted that there is no historical district (an area to incorporate any past place or communities) between Miami on the east coast and Naples on the west coast….

“It is also interesting to note that no development company has ever found any archaeological sites where they were required to look for one by Florida law in Collier County, where eventually a historical marker was placed.

“Most historians familiar with the process of developers hiring “out of town” consultants to do their archaeological surveys before beginning any development see the process as a fast food operation. Opinions are strong in the belief that instead of being paid to find any historical sites some are actually being ‘paid to not find them”.’

Hammond says that in December, 1988, the Tamiami Trail was approved by the State of Florida as a designated “Florida Scenic Highway.” In June, 2000, a 50- mile stretch of the Tamiami Trail was designated on the Federal level as a “National Scenic Byway.”

Yet, he says, “Certain vested interests” without the knowledge of all the people and groups involved, came before the M.P.O. (Metropolitan Planning Organization) Board in early 2005 and requested the State and National designations be removed.

“In May of 2005 the M.P.O. Board voted to remove the Scenic Highway designation. When the State and Federal Authorities received the request to remove the designations they were astonished …. The battle to keep the designation intact was still going strong when on September 14, 2007 the M.P.O. reiterated its position at a public meeting, and proceeded with the motion to “dedesignate” the stretch of highway on the Tamiami Trail. It was not without protest on the part of a large group of organizations.

Yes, James Hammond’s book describes many types of conflict—plume-poachers vs wardens, Indians vs soldiers, loggers vs farmers, developers vs conservationists, mules vs mud—and yet the swamp remains.

But sometimes it looks like the gators—of one kind or another—are winning.

James Hammond’s Florida’s Vanishing Trail is available at http://stores.lulu.com/jameshammond7

You may not have guessed it, but this book really captured my interest.

Florida history interests me.

But, for tomorrow’s posting, I’ll write my critique of Tolstoy’s War & Peace.