How much do our children here in Florida know about the history of our State? Why don’t they know…. About the Hernando de Soto Expedition- cows, pigs, European disease, war dogs, horses, forced conversion to Catholicism, and enslavement of the native peoples as “Bearers”? The different aboriginal Native American tribes in Florida prior to European contact, their culture, farming, fishing and hunting practices, burial and midden mounds, charnel houses, and trade networks? About the Seminole Indians, their culture, origin, the fact that they migrated into Florida and were not aboriginal here? About William Bartram, his botanical expedition in Florida, how he moved about without road or rail, his peaceful interaction with the Seminole Indians, his writing and drawings of their culture and lifestyles? About the Seminole Indian “reservation and territory” to the south and east of Ocala, the three Seminole Indian Wars, their cause and effect, the remaining military fort sites, and the Fort King Military Road? About Fort King, Fort Brooke, Fort Cooper, Fort Foster, Fort Alabama, and the “Dade Massacre Site”? The history of roads in Florida before and including the Tamiami Trail, Alligator Alley, and that the Cities were linked by ship but not by roads, and that the cities had streets up to the edge of the swamps, but no roads through them until after the Civil War? The history of railroads in Florida, and that they linked the cities and towns long before any through roads were built? That the State bought Flagler’s Railroad south of Miami to build a road on top of the railroad bridges and railbed to link Key West and the Florida Keys to the mainland? That the resort hotels in Miami, Palm Beach, St. Augustine, Tampa, and Clearwater were built (like the great National Park Lodges in the West) to raise traffic on the railroad? The relationship of the railroads to the timber industry, the tall tramways built into the swamps to harvest the Cypress them left abandoned to alter the water flow and ecology forever? The timber industry history in the state including the great red cedar forests on Cedar Key that was clear cut for making pencils, the turpentine industry and the “catfaced” scars left on pine trees? That many State Forests stand where cut-and-run logging took every marketable tree and left only trash trees behind? That today the pines of north Florida are a short term crop tree used for paper pulp for disposable diapers, plates, napkins, and paper towels? That many of those trees are in danger from the boring pine bark beetle who thrives in areas of young trees, in close proximity to each other, in large stands- like the pulp tree farms of north Florida? That John Muir walked from Indiana to Cedar Key through the Civil War ravaged south, mostly along war damaged railroad roadbeds, on a botanical expedition of his own, and wrote “A Thousand Mile Hike to the Gulf” before he went off to California, Yosemite, and Sierra Club Fame? That man straightened the Kissimmee River and drained the Everglades, and is only now working to restore them? That the Big Cypress Preserve was supposed to be a mega-airport until the President instead created the Preserve at the top edge of the everglades? That the Tamiami Trail is a dam from Naples to Miami, killing the flow of water into the Everglades, which is dying of thirst? That 50 years later, when they built “Alligator Alley” from Naples to Miami that they had learned hard lessons and built in overpasses for wildlife migration and enough bridges to allow a more natural sheet flow of water? That just this year they started adding bridges to the Tamiami Trail to restore a more natural flow? That the “Cross-Florida Barge Canal” was perceived as an ecological disaster for North Florida by activist after construction had begun, but was stopped before any great damage was done, and is now a State Greenway Linear Park? Who Archbold, Roebling, Disston, and Collier were, and their impact on Florida?
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:59:53 +0000
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