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The F lorida Surveyor is the official publication of the Florida Surveying and Mapping Society, also known as FSMS. It is published monthly for the purpose of communicating with the professional surveying community and related professions who are members of FSMS. Our award winning publication informs members eleven months out of the year about national, state, and district events and accomplishments, as well as articles relevant to the surveying profession. In addition, continuing educational courses are also available.
PRESIDENT’S Message
February 2025
All,
The end of biennium is just a few days away, hopefully all of you have gotten your necessary credits and have renewed your licenses and not procrastinating to the last day.
I went to the Broward Chapter Meeting last night for the viewing of the Legacy Lecture of Doctor Dave Gibson on “Professional Concepts”. Even though they had a little technical issue to start with, it all worked out and was well attended, not only in the room with a standing room only crowd, but also a packed group on Zoom from around the world. A big thanks goes out to Todd Bates, PSM for starting the process to bring this particular lecture out to the FSMS membership. But we can’t forget it takes a lot of effort, and he had lots of help and assistance from UF’s Katie Britt, Dr. Youssef Kaddoura, Dr. Amr, and others. So many thanks to the Geomatics program at UF.
President Richard Pryce (954) 651-5942
rdpryce@gmail.com
It’s truly amazing the effects this man, this Professor, had on the Surveying Profession in Florida and still has. We were honored that his wife and son also attended by zoom last night, as well as FSMS members and students from across our state. Dr. Gibson’s legacy holds the test of time, and we’re proud to celebrate his life and dedication to our profession. He gave us something special, his heart and soul, which to this day, his name makes people stand up and listen.
“Profession”, that was the main subject of this lecture and his words to his students then, still holds true now for all of us as Surveyors. I hope everyone that attended last night got something important out of that lecture and carry it forward with you. We call ourselves professionals, so we as a Society should
PRESIDENT’S Message
always promote, celebrate, and encourage all Surveyors to act and present themselves as true professionals in everything they do. The term “professional” doesn’t just stop at the doorstep of your place of work, it extends into your whole life. How you present yourself to others, how you treat others, and how you listen to clients, friends and family. Your commitment to doing your job to the absolute best of your abilities, and your ability to admit to and learn from your mistakes. As a professional, your life experiences, not just your education, come into play every day. How you handle yourself under stress with staff, clients, family, and th e general public can make you or break you.
Being a professional is a big commitment and not everyone is cut out for it. Once you go down this path to being one, there’s no short cuts, only a life of commitment and dedication to continue to learn as you go. You should seek out other professionals to meet with, collaborate with, hold open discussions with and even respectfully argue with if needed. True professionals give back to their profession, and are always looking to assist those coming up behind or next to them. And true professionals are not afraid to share their work with their peers, because there’s no better way to justify your professional work than to have other professionals’ critique and hopefully agree with you, and if not provide suggestions or possibilities to make your work better in the future.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard D. Pryce, RLS/PSM
2024-25 Districts and
Directors
District 1 - Northwest
Bay, Calhoun, Escambia, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Taylor, Wakulla, Walton, Washington
Constitution & Resolution Advisory Committee Pablo Ferrari
Annual Meeting Committee Allen Nobles
Legal & Legislative Committee Jack Breed
Surveying & Mapping Council Randy Tompkins
Strategic Planning Committee Bob Johnson
Executive Committee Rick Pryce
Special Committees
Equipment Theft Manny Vera, Jr.
Awards Committee Howard Ehmke
UF Alumni Recruiting Committee Russell Hyatt
Professional Practice Committee Lou Campanile, Jr.
Workforce Development Committee Lou Campanile, Jr.
Liaisons
CST Program Alex Jenkins
FDACS BPSM Don Elder
Surveyors in Government
Richard Allen
Academic Advisory Justin Thomas UF / Todd Bates FAU
FES
Lou Campanile, Jr.
Practice Sections
Geospatial Users Group
Young Surveyors Network
Richard Allen
Melissa A. Padilla Cintrón, SIT
round the State A
FAU Geomatics Engineering Receives 2024 NCEES Survey Education Award at Joint FSMS Meeting
The FAU Geomatics Engineering program celebrated receiving the prestigious 2024 NCEES Survey Education Award during a joint meeting of the FSMS Palm Beach and FAU Student chapters. The event, held at FAU's Boca Raton campus Student Union on January 23, 2025, drew over 30 attendees including alumni, industry supporters, and faculty members.
FSMS FAU Student Chapter President Rene Garza opened the meeting by welcoming distinguished guests, including Mr. Landon "Alfie" Cross, Board Member of Florida Board of Professional Surveyors and Mappers, and Mr. Michael Ross, Vice President of Zeman Consulting Group. Mr. Landon Cross provided updates on Florida Board activities and extended an invitation to FAU students to attend the Board meeting in April 2025.
The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the NCEES Survey Education Award by Mr. Landon Cross. The $15,000 award recognizes programs that advance surveyor licensure and protect public welfare. FAU's Geomatics program was one of only seven programs nationwide to receive this honor in 2024, marking its third recognition following previous awards in 2021 and 2022.
Mr. Michael Ross delivered an engaging presentation on "Geospatial Technologies on Engineering Design Applications," highlighting recent projects that showcase the integration of advanced technologies including LiDAR, drones, and innovative data processing techniques.
Local FSMS directors and chapter officers, including Todd Bates, Earl Soeder, John Liptak, Andrew Beck, and Kelly Stout, participated in productive discussions with current students. The successful event demonstrated the growing impact of FAU's Geomatics Engineering program and the strong support it continues to receive from the FSMS Palm Beach Chapter and local surveying community leaders.
University of Florida Geomatics Student Association
We’d like to thank Jeremy Hallick, James "Hunter" Blair, PSM and David Smith, SIT for coming out to their old stomping ground from CLYMER FARNER BARLEY - CFB, Inc. | CFB Surveying, LLC . We appreciate you all taking the time to talk to our students and answer their questions about CFB and the surveying profession!
of Agriculture and Consumer Services Regulatory Board of Professional Surveyors and Mappers, held in Gainesville, FL.
During the meeting, students were able to sit in and see how litigious and highly-regulated the profession truly is. We greatly appreciate the experience, Go Gator surveyors!
University of Florida Geomatics Student Association
We’d like to thank Troy Wright, PSM, Jason Larson, PLS, and Shelbi Malphurs for coming to speak about JBPro, being a local firm, and exciting growth foreseen!
Board of Directors Dinner Meeting at Glory Days Grill on February 6, 2025
UF Geomatics Extension is hosting a Surveying Merit Badge event where Scouts will complete the badge. Contact Katie Britt (k.britt@ufl.edu) if you would like to volunteer, observe, or get information on hosting an event in your area. The Scout Surveying Merit Badge is a great way to introduce youth to careers in surveying! The event is on April 12 at UF’s Austin Cary Forest in Gainesville.
/ffgs.ifas.ufl.edu/extension/ Are you interested in teaching Surveying to Scouts?
Surveyors in Government
February 2025
Greetings All,
As I find everyone this February, we have been enjoying a big thaw out from our January coldness. I for one am missing the colder weather. In my weather outlook I keep seeing 80’s, I am hoping for som e cooler weather before we hit the hot and humid s ummer. Oh well, now onto business.
The past few legislative sessions o f the Florida House hav e been extremely busy, including those areas involving statutes that pertain to surveying. Initially the impact was trying to change the education requirement for surveyors in Florida Statutes Chapter 472 and in 5J-17 Florida Administrative Code. Next was proposing changes to Florida Statutes Chapter 177 in how subdivision of land should be tied to permitting issuance. The proposed changes to each were annual resubmittals for legislation in some form o r fashion. A s we know the education and experience change to statutes and administrative code did not pass, but the legislation for changes to Florida Statutes has been impacted continually.
The impacted areas that have been changed are now found in C hapter 177.073 o f Florida Statutes. The enacted language states:
177.073 Expedited approval of residential building permits before a final plat is recorded.
(1) As used in this section, the term:
(a) “Applicant” means a homebuilder or developer who files an application with the local governing body to identify the percentage of planned homes, or the number of building permits, that the local governing body must issue for a residential subdivision or pl anned community.
(b) “Final plat” means the final tracing, map, or site plan presented by the subdivider to a governing body for final approval, and, upon approval by the appropriate governing body, is submitted to the clerk of the circuit court for recording.
(c) “Local building official” has the same meaning as in s. 553.791(1).
(d) “Plans” means any building plans, construction plans, engineering plans, or site plans, or their functional equivalent, submitted by an applicant for a building permit.
(e) “Preliminary plat” means a map or delineated representation of the subdivision of lands that is a complete and exact representation of the residential subdivision or planned community and contains any additional information needed to be in compliance with the requirements of this chapter.
(f) “Qualified contractor” includes, but is not limited to, an engineer or engineering firm licensed under chapter 471; a surveyor or mapper or a surveyor’s or mapper’s firm licensed under chapter 472; an architect or architecture firm licensed under part I of chapter 481; a landscape architect or landscape architecture firm registered under part II of chapter 481; or any other qualified professional who is certified in urban planning or environmental management.
(2)(a) By October 1, 2024, the governing body of a county that has 75,000 residents or more and any governing body of a municipality that has 10,000 residents or more and 25 acres or more of contiguous land that the local government has designated in the local go vernment’s comprehensive plan and future land use map as land that is agricultural or to be developed for residential purposes shall create a program to expedite the process for issuing building permits for residential subdivisions or planned communities in accordance with the Florida Building Code and this section before a final plat is recorded with the clerk of the circuit court. The expedited process must include an application
Surveyors in Government
for an applicant to identify the percentage of planned homes, not to exceed 50 percent of the residential subdivision or planned community, or the number of building permits that the governing body must issue for the residential subdivision or planned comm unity. The application or the local government’s final approval may not alter or restrict the applicant from receiving the number of building permits requested, so long as the request does not exceed 50 percent of the planned homes of the residential subdivision or planned community or the number of building permits. This paragraph does not:
1. Restrict the governing body from issuing more than 50 percent of the building permits for the residential subdivision or planned community.
2. Apply to a county subject to s. 380.0552.
(b) A governing body that had a program in place before July 1, 2023, to expedite the building permit process, need only update their program to approve an applicant’s written application to issue up to 50 percent of the building permits for the residential su bdivision or planned community in order to comply with this section. This paragraph does not restrict a governing body from issuing more than 50 percent of the building permits for the residential subdivision or planned community.
(c) By December 31, 2027, the governing body of a county that has 75,000 residents or more and any governing body of a municipality that has 10,000 residents or more and 25 acres or more of contiguous land that the local government has designated in the local government’s comprehensive plan and future land use map as land that is agricultural or to be developed for residential purposes shall update their programs to expedite the process for issuing building permits for residential subdivisions or planned co mmunities in accordance with the Florida Building Code and this section before a final plat is recorded with the clerk of the circuit court. The expedited process must include an application for an applicant to identify the percentage of planned homes, not to exceed 75 percent of the residential subdivision or planned community, or the number of building permits that the governing body must issue for the residential subdivision or planned community. This paragraph does not:
1. Restrict the governing body from issuing more than 75 percent of the building permits for the residential subdivision or planned community.
2. Apply to a county subject to s. 380.0552.
(3) A governing body shall create:
(a) A two -step application process for the adoption of a preliminary plat, inclusive of any plans, in order to expedite the issuance of building permits under this section. The application must allow an applicant to identify the percentage of planned homes or the number of building permits that the governing body must issue for the residential subdivision or planned community.
(b) A master building permit process consistent with s. 553.794 for applicants seeking multiple building permits for residential subdivisions or planned communities. For purposes of this paragraph, a master building permit is valid for 3 consecutive years afte r its issuance or until the adoption of a new Florida Building Code, whichever is earlier. After a new Florida Building Code is adopted, the applicant may apply for a new master building permit, which, upon approval, is valid for 3 consecutive years.
(4)(a) An applicant may use a private provider pursuant to s. 553.791 to expedite the application process for building permits after a preliminary plat is approved under this section.
(b) A governing body shall establish a registry of at least three qualified contractors whom the governing body may use to supplement staff resources in ways determined by the governing body for processing and expediting the review of an application for a prel iminary plat or any plans related to such application. A qualified contractor on the registry who is hired pursuant to this section to review an application, or any part thereof, for a preliminary plat, or any part thereof, may not have a conflict of interest with the applicant. For purposes of this paragraph, the term “conflict of interest” has the same meaning as in s. 112.312.
Surveyors in Government
(5) A governing body may work with appropriate local government agencies to issue an address and a temporary parcel identification number for lot lines and lot sizes based on the metes and bounds of the plat contained in the application.
(6) The governing body must issue the number or percentage of building permits requested by an applicant in accordance with the Florida Building Code and this section, provided the residential buildings or structures are unoccupied and all of the following con ditions are met:
(a) The governing body has approved a preliminary plat for each residential subdivision or planned community.
(b) The applicant provides proof to the governing body that the applicant has provided a copy of the approved preliminary plat, along with the approved plans, to the relevant electric, gas, water, and wastewater utilities.
(c) The applicant holds a valid performance bond for up to 130 percent of the necessary improvements, as defined in s. 177.031(9), that have not been completed upon submission of the application under this section. For purposes of a master planned community as defined in s. 163.3202(5)(b), a valid performance bond is required on a phase -by-phase basis.
(7)(a) An applicant may contract to sell, but may not transfer ownership of, a residential structure or building located in the residential subdivision or planned community until the final plat is approved by the governing body and recorded in the public records by the clerk of the circuit court.
(b) An applicant may not obtain a temporary or final certificate of occupancy for each residential structure or building for which a building permit is issued until the final plat is approved by the governing body and recorded in the public records by the cler k of the circuit court.
(8) For purposes of this section, an applicant has a vested right in a preliminary plat that has been approved by a governing body if all of the following conditions are met:
(a) The applicant relies in good faith on the approved preliminary plat or any amendments thereto.
(b) The applicant incurs obligations and expenses, commences construction of the residential subdivision or planned community, and is continuing in good faith with the development of the property.
(9) Upon the establishment of an applicant’s vested rights in accordance with subsection (8), a governing body may not make substantive changes to the preliminary plat without the applicant’s written consent.
(10) An applicant must indemnify and hold harmless the local government, its governing body, its employees, and its agents from liability or damages resulting from the issuance of a building permit or the construction, reconstruction, or improvement or repair o f a residential building or structure, including any associated utilities, located in the residential subdivision or planned community. Additionally, an applicant must indemnify and hold harmless the local government, its governing body, its employees, and its agents from liability or disputes resulting from the issuance of a certificate of occupancy for a residential building or structure that is constructed, reconstructed, improved, or repaired before the approval and recordation of the final plat of the qualified project. This indemnification includes, but is not limited to, any liability and damage resulting from wind, fire, flood, construction defects, bodily injury, and any actions, issues, or disputes arising out of a contract or other agreement between the developer and a utility operating in the residential subdivision or planned community. However, this indemnification does not extend to governmental actions that infringe on the applicant’s vested rights.
History. s. 1, ch. 2024-210.
As you read the language, it is more about issuance of permits than it is for platting. As was argued in the past, you will notice the definition of what is a preliminary plat is vague. There should be a
Surveyors in Government
statement that says a temporary plat should be in it its complete final configuration with no alteration allowed to the map for permits to be issued. Also, there should be some language pertaining to the issuance of permits where an alteration is necessary to a preliminary plat that there should be some hard stop because of addresses and parcel identification numbers being issued. Really this language should be in another section, because developers are routinely impact ed by the subdivision of land to expedite the review process for the purpose of permitting, and this should be in the rules and requirements that pertain to permitting.
The reason I bring this up yet again, is because there is a new house bill that introduces new changes to Chapter 177 of Florida Statutes to place an enforcement mechanism in to the previously adopted language to provide for penalties for delays in the iss uance of addresses and parcel identification numbers within two weeks of the recording of the subdivision plat. Failing to meet the two week deadline, is proposing the reduction of the permit fees by 10% each business day there is a delay in these being issued. This house bill is H.B. 381.
Section 1. Section 177.1115, Florida Statutes, is created to read: 177.1115 Issuance of address and individual parcel identification numbers after final plat is recorded; penalty. -
(1) Within 2 weeks after the recordation of a plat by the circuit court clerk or other recording officer, the appropriate governing body shall issue the street and mailing address, along with the individual parcel identification numbers, as contained in the plat offered for recording pursuant to s. 177.091.
(2) If the appropriate governing body does not issue the street and mailing address, along with the individual parcel identification numbers, within the 2-week period in subsection (1), the building permit fee shall be reduced by 10 percent for each business day that the body fails to issue such information.
Section 2. This act shall take effect July 1, 2025.
Every time there is a change to Chapter 177, this brings to the forefront the need to update the statue to make it current. Additionally, with the upcoming datum changes it has been necessary. The delays in doing so were issues with COVID, and the sparingl y different needs for the vary diverse regions of the state of Florida. As we look at getting this moving again, I am working to create a ESRI Story Map of where we are today and what has been the major issues. I have gathered information from Gail Oliver (Retired, Formerly St John’s County Surveyor ), Nick Campanile (FDOT District 5 District Surveyor ), Matt Kalus (Orange County Public Works, Senior Project Manager ), Central Florida Surveyors, Palm Beach FSMS Chapter Members, FDEP, and others that submitted comments upon the several times that I
Surveyors in Government
requested responses from this publication and reaching out to the Florida Mapping Council and Surveyors in Government committees. There will be an increased effort to get this moving again and involving more of the body of surveyors involved. Also, I know many attorneys have expressed a desire to be involved in the proposed legislation as it is opened up, as would property appraiser offices. This is just a note to get your comments and suggestions ready if you have some ideas on revisions to the statute. Please remember the purpose of the statut e is for the subdivision of land, we try to remind planners that it is not a place holder for municipal requirements, it is only to show real property, the subdivision of land, appropriation of the various tracts and easement, and to show the encumbrances that impact it.
Until next time my friends, I bid you adieux. Thank you for taking the time to read this article!
Sincerely,
Richard Allen, City Surveyor for Orlando
FSMS Surveyors in Government Liaison President of the Geospatial Users Group ASPRS Florida Region Director
407.246.2788 (O) Richard.Allen@orlando.gov
The Everglades, being the and overflowed lands within following and bounds; States to the 'Swamp within their
Everglades, swamp overflowed within the following metes bounds; reclaim 'Swamp Lands' their limits
In testimony I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of States of America, caused these be made Patent the Seal of the Land Office so hereunto affixed.
testimony whereof, Roosevelt, the United America, have these letters to Patent and the General so be affixed.
Manuel G. Vera Sr.
January 13 th , 1938 – November 7 th , 2024
In Memory of Manuel G. Vera Sr., PSM
It is with sincere sadness that we announce the passing of Manuel G. Vera Sr., affectionately known as “Manolo,” the founder of Manuel G. Vera & Associates. Manolo passed away on November 7, 2024, leaving behind a remarkable legacy of vision, leadership, and dedication.
Manolo founded Manuel G. Vera & Associates in 1973 with a single crew, where he served as both party chief and draftsman. From these modest beginnings, he transformed the company into a renowned surveying and mapping firm with over 70 employees and a strong reputation for excellence and innovation.
Through his leadership and dedication, Manolo not only shaped the company but also positively impacted the lives of countless colleagues, clients, and professionals in the industry. He leaves behind a legacy for the surveying and mapping industry.
Beyond his professional achievements, Manolo served his country in the United States Airforce, was a devoted son, husband, father, and grandfather whose warmth and wisdom deeply touched those around him. Manolo’s integrity, leadership and vision will forever remain a guiding force for Manuel G. Vera and Associates.
As we remember Manolo, let us honor his memory by continuing to uphold the values and principles he instilled in the surveying and mapping community in South Florida.
WIN A PACKET ONE REGISTRATION FOR ANNUAL CONFERENCE!
FSMS is Awarding a Recruitment Bonus for Current Members Bringing in New Memberships
The Bonus will be a Conference Packet One Registration (includes One Wed. BBQ Ticket, One Fri. Exhibitor's Luncheon Ticket, One Fri. Recognition Banquet Ticket, and Six Sat. Seminar CECs) along with a 2 Night Stay at Naples Grande Beach Resort.
• The Recruitment Bonus will be Awarded based on a Point System.
• 6 Points for each New Full Member, Gov. Surveyor, & Sustaining Firm.
• 1 Point for each New Associate, Affiliate, & Student Member.
• Whenever a New Member fills out their membership form they must provide referred current member's name when asked, “Were you referred by a Current Member of FSMS?”
Points will be awarded during Open Enrollment between now and March 31, 2025. The Member with the most points will be deemed the Winner and be announced in April's edition of The Florida Surveyor!
2025 MEMBERSHIP IS OPEN!
Membership for 2025 is open and available for those needing to renew or for those wanting to join The Florida Surveying and Mapping Society. You can Renew your current membership by Clicking Here and logging-in to your FSMS account.
For those New Members wishing to join or rejoin if they were not a member in 2024, Click Here to read about our Membership types and click on the “Join FSMS Today ” button at the top of the page to begin your membership with The Florida Surveying and Mapping Society.
Biscayne Engineering Company, Inc. 305-324-7671
Boatwright Land Surveyors, Inc. 904-241-8550
Bock & Clark Corporation(NV5) 330-665-4821
Bowman Consulting Group 703-454-1000
Braden Land Surveying 727-224-8758
Bradshaw-Niles & Associates, Inc. 904-829-2591
Brown & Phillips, Inc. 561-615-3988 BSE Consultants, Inc. 321-725-3674
Preserving Their Interests: The Seminole and Miccosukee Indians
As the clash between sugar interests and environmentalists threatened the consensus formula for Everglades restoration, the Seminole and Miccosukee Indians were waging battles that many perceived as equally divisive. These people had resided in the Everglades since the 1800s, obtaining state and federal reservations of land, making them especially concerned about water issues in the area. Because the Seminole did not have as much actual land in the Everglades, they generally used conciliatory approaches to promulgate their views. The Miccosukee Tribe, on the other hand, had a land base primarily in the Everglades, making them turn to litigation in the 1990s to protect their interests. Under the guidance of Dexter Lehtinen, the Miccosukee combated what they perceived as lax water quality standards through lawsuits and by setting their own guidelines. They justified their stance by declaring that the push towards ecosystem restoration had not sufficiently provided for their input, thereby threatening their interests.1 The tribe’s actions forced federal, state, and local interests to pay more attention to the Indians in restoration efforts, and, at least in the minds of the Miccosukee, furthered progress towards a restored Everglades.
As explained previously, by the 1960s, the Seminole and Miccosukee had several state and federal reservations in South Florida. In addition to these lands, the Miccosukee obtained a 40year special use permit from the National Park Service in 1964 for a five and a half mile strip of land along the Tamiami Trail, comprising 333 acres and known as the Permit Area (this was later expanded to 667 acres in 1998). The permit allowe d the Miccosukee to build offices, housing, and schools, but made such development subject to NPS approval. Moreover, both tribes obtained a license from the state for the use of a large chunk of land north of the Permit Area and east of the reservation, although Conservation Area No. 3 flooded much of the northern part of this tract as well, and this license eventually transformed into a perpetual lease of the area.2
Because of the implementation of the C&SF Project in 1948, the Seminole and Miccosukee had little control over water policies that affected their land. The Corps of Engineers and the SFWMD made decisions about how much water went into Conservation Area No. 3 and the Everglades, as well as regulating the water in Lake Okeechobee.3 These determinations affected not only the quantity of water flowing to Seminole and Miccosukee lands, but the quality as well. By the 1970s, the Seminole and the Miccosukee experienced the same ecological problems that the Everglades and the conservation areas faced as a consequence of water decisions and growth in South Florida. As Buffalo Tiger, a respected Miccosukee leader, related,
As for Everglades’ water, everything has changed. The water was very clean years ago. Miccosukees would swim in the Glades water and drink it. Today people are saying that the water is not clean. You can tell that is true because it is yellow-looking and does not look like water you would want to drink. You probably get sick from drinking it. That means that fish or alligators in the water are not healthy; white men did that, not Indians. Miccosukees were told that was what was going to happen many years ago, and now it has. We cannot just say that the water is no good or the land is no good and turn our back on that.4
Land holdings of Miccosukee and Seminole Indians. (Source: Joette Lorion, Consultant, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.)
Because of the conviction that the Indians had to do something to improve the quality of their water, even though the degradation was not of their own making, the Seminole and Miccosukee struggled to gain some measure of control over the water flowing over their reservations.
The Seminole’s efforts began in 1973, when the tribe investigated whether or not the state of Florida ever compensated it for 16,000 acres of reservation land flooded by Conservation Area No. 3. The Seminole contacted Governor Reubin Askew, telling him that, in contrast with the state’s practice regarding private land, the tribe had never obtained a fee for the easement. One reason for this was that the easement had actually been granted by the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions in August 1950, rather than by the Seminole themselves, since the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund held title to the land in trust for the Indians.5 R. L. Clark, Jr., chairman of the FCD’s governing board, explained that the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions had determined that the land flooded by Conservation Area No. 3 was worthless to the Seminole, and that its creation actually increased the value of other Seminole lands by making them “suitable for a higher and better use than previously existed.” Besides, Clark noted, if compensation had been warranted, it would have gone to the state, not the tribe, since the state held title to the land.6
The controversy soon extended into litigation. Alleging that they wanted to regain control over land that was rightfully theirs, the Seminole filed a civil action in 1974 against the state of Florida to establish their rights to the acreage flooded by Conservation Area No. 3. Over the next 13 years this suit languished in the courts, with settlement talks proceeding intermittently, including proposals to exchange state land outside of reservation boundaries for the Seminole’s 16,000 acres. The state especially wanted Seminole land known as the Rotenberger Tract in order to allow for additional impoundment as a part of Governor Bob Graham’s Save Our Everglades program. Finally, in 1985, the Seminole declared that unless a reasonable settlement was negotiated, they would oppose construction of the Modified Hendry County Plan, a $20 million flood control project planned by the Corps of Engineers and to be built by the SFWMD. This project was supposed to drain lands west of the EAA in order to provide acreage for citrus groves, placing the excess water in Conservation Area No. 3A. Because of this threat, the SFWMD and the state had more reason to resolve the litigation.7
In September 1986, the Seminole and the state finally reached a settlement. Under the agreement, the state would pay over $11 million to the Seminole for the Rotenberger Tract, the title and easement to other land flooded by Conservation Area No. 3, and for compensation for past projects conducted in Conservation Area No. 3A. The tribe, in turn, would withdraw its objections to the Modified Hendry County Plan. In addition, the settlement recognized that the Seminole wanted to develop a compact detailing its water rights and its responsibilities to preserve water quality.8
After state and tribal officials agreed to the settlement, the Seminole began work on the water rights compact. According to one source, the compact was “a way for the Tribe to integrate its own water use operations with most provisions of Florida water and environmental law.”9 It required the creation of a tribal water department and the development of a tribal water code, and it gave the Seminole responsibility for water management on their reservations. The tribe’s legal representation claimed that the compact “recognize[d] the Tribe’s sovereign power in the administration of reservation water resources,” and that it allowed for “intergovernmental
cooperation between sovereign governments,” rather than “subordination of the Tribe’s interests to the [SFWMD’s].”10 Upon the completion of the compact and its approval by the SFWMD, the entire settlement was forwarded to Congress for its authorization, provided in December 1987 under the Seminole Indian Land Claims Settlement Act. This law stipulated that the compact would have “the force and effect of Federal law for the purposes of enforcement of the rights and obligations of the tribe.”11
Meanwhile, the Miccosukee made their own protests about the Modified Hendry County Plan. Fearing that the project would adversely impact water quality and vegetation in Conservation Area No. 3, the tribe filed an objection with the Corps, stating that the project had the potential of harming natural resources on tribal land. The SFWMD tried to assuage Miccosukee fears, stating that the project would have “no significant impact to the Indian land.” Besides, the SFWMD continued, the plan was just a part of an “environmental enhancement” program that it was conducting for Conservation Area No. 3. Other components, according to the SFWMD, included restoring 30 square miles of the Everglades under the Holey Land project, using the Rotenberger Tract to prevent agricultural runoff from entering Conservation Area No. 3, and conducting the Shark River Slough Restoration to provide “major improvement to the natural flow system of the Everglades.” Indeed, the SFWMD asserted that “the effects of the flood control portion of the Hendry County Project are inconsequential in comparison with the environmental benefits that will be associated with these three restoration projects.”12
The Miccosukee were not so sure, and they worked with the SFWMD on a memorandum of agreement assuring that Miccosukee interests would not be harmed. This memorandum was concluded in May 1987. According to its provisions, the tribe agreed to withdraw its objection to the Modified Hendry County Plan and to develop a water rights compact and a tribal water resources department in exchange for certain co ncessions from the SFWMD. These included the monitoring of discharges into Conservation Area No. 3A and on tribal land for pesticides, and the development of a monitoring program for water quality. As part of this plan, the SFWMD would make quarterly water quality reports to the tribe, and it would develop “nutrient standards” for 3A that would prevent “excessive nutrient enrichment.” Likewise, if a proposed SFWMD project had the potential to impact “water quantity or quality” on the Miccosukee Reservation, the district would consult with the tribe.13 The Miccosukee Business Council approved the memorandum of agreement on 11 May 1987, and began work on its compact soon after.14
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Seminole and Miccosukee became more concerned about water quality on their lands as the condition of Lake Okeechobee and the conservation areas worsened. In 1989, for example, the SFWMD issued an interim SWIM plan for Lake Okeechobee. This document noted that “in spite of intensified management efforts, . . . water quality conditions in Lake Okeechobee have not improved.” Instead, they hit “the highest [phosphorous] levels yet recorded” in 1988. According to the report, the Surface Water Improvement and Management Act had mandated that phosphorous levels be lowered by 1992, and the SFWMD had developed a management strategy that emphasized controlling phosphorous inflows and implementing practices within sub-basins to reduce how much of the nutrient reached the lake, but, so far, no significant downturn in phosphorous had resulted. The SFWMD therefore proposed that “a more aggressive management approach” be used, part of
The Modified Hendry County Plan. (Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District.)
which included continuing to divert nutrient-rich water from the EAA to the conservation areas –where it would affect Seminole and Miccosukee land.15
Because of these diversions, it was not surprising when the SWIM plan for the Everglades (defined as Conservation Area Nos. 1, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, and the Everglades National Park) noted in 1992 that the discharge of water with high phosphorous levels into the conservation areas had “caused changes in existing vegetative species composition” that had the potential to “threaten fish and wildlife populations.” Cattails and other non-native plants, such as melaleuca, had overrun sawgrass in several areas, the report declared. The diversion of water from the EAA to the conservation areas, it claimed, had brought an additional 45.4 metric tons of phosphorus per year. To combat these problems, the plan proposed, among other things, to create a Scientific Advisory Committee for the Everglades, with representation from various state, federal, and local agencies, including the Seminole and Miccosukee. The plan would develop strategies to protect and restore water quality in the Everglades. It also called for the implementation of STAs to cleanse the water, as well as monitoring programs and better regulation of landowner discharges.16
But the Miccosukee and Seminole believed more needed to be done to protect their interests. The Seminole were especially concerned about water quality on the Big Cypress and Brighton reservations. Under the authority of its water rights compact, the tribe had implemented a water quality monitoring program in 1989 that demonstrated that “the quality of water entering the [Big Cypress] reservation from upstream sources is severely degraded,” exceeding phosphorous levels of 300 parts per billion (ppb).17 The Seminole therefore received permission from the EPA to set its own water quality standards for its lands, and it began work on a water conservation plan for the Big Cypress Reservation, designed to “provide a comprehensive, fully integrated water management system” that could “support sustainable agriculture while contributing to the restoration of significant portions of the Everglades ecosystem.”18 As part of this plan, the tribe proposed to use surface water management structures to treat, control, and redirect water, and to implement BMPs in order to reduce nutrient levels, targeting 50 ppb as the accepted phosphorous level. In 1994, the Seminole completed the design phase of this plan, but more money was needed to implement it. In the meantime, the tribe discussed phosphorous levels in Lake Okeechobee with the SFWMD, including how they affected the Brighton Reservation (located to the northwest of the water body) since water from the lake was backpumped to the reservation.19
From 1993 to 1995, the SFWMD and the Seminol e negotiated an agreement detailing water quality efforts for Big Cypress and Brighton. This accord attempted to define the sources of water for these reservations, as well as outline efforts to preserve water quality. The agreement delineated that the main source of water for the Big Cypress Reservation would be the Rotenberger Tract, and Lake Okeechobee would serve as a secondary source. The SFWMD would ensure that the design of STA-5 and -6 would, in the words of SFWMD General Counsel Barbara Markham, “effectuate deliveries from both primary and secondary sources,” and it promised to conduct studies on water quality entering Big Cypress and Brighton reservations.20 For its part, the tribe agreed to monitor the quality of water leaving the reservation, and it would also implement its Big Cypress water conservation plan as long as it could get the necessary funding.21
There were several objections to the agr eement between the SFWMD and the Seminole. Both environmentalists and the Miccosukee were concerned that it required only that phosphorous concentrations not exceed 50 ppb in water both entering and leaving the reservation. Vida Verde, a non-profit organization dealing with social and environmental issues, stated that “water entering and leaving the Reservation should be below 50 ppb in phosphorous concentrations.”22 The association also objected to a provision in the agreement involving the Rotenberger Tract. The original design of STA-5, located in Hendry County and bordered by the L-3 canal on the west and the Rotenberger Tract on the east, contemplated taking water from C139 and routing it through STA-5 to the Rotenberger Tract to allow for a more natural hydroperiod on the land. Water from C-139 could then be filtered to 50 ppb before entering Rotenberger, which would cleanse it further to 10 ppb before discharging it to Conservation Area No. 3A. Under the Seminole/SFWMD agreement, however, the Seminole could take water from the Rotenberger Tract, use it on their citrus plantations and ranches, and th en discharge it with a phosphorous level of 50 ppb. In Vida Verde’s view, this constituted “receiving clean water, polluting it and releasing it downstream.”23
Likewise, the Miccosukee objected to the plan, insisting that their own interests would be harmed if the Seminole did not mandate that water have a lower phosphorous level than 50 ppb. “Both the Seminole’s [sic] and the District has [sic] been advised that it is the Tribe’s intention to set a numeric standard for [total phosphorous] of approximately 10 ppb,” Miccosukee Water Resources Director Truman E. “Gene” Duncan, Jr., explained. “If the District executes the Draft Agreement, this action will be interpreted as a willful anticipatory violation of the Tribe’s water quality standards.”24 SFWMD officials did not see the situation in the same light, especially since the Everglades Forever Act did not set an immediate limit on phosphorous, pending more
Aerial view of WCA 3. (Source: South Florida Water Management District.)
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scientific research. “It is possible that phosphorous concentrations exceeding ten parts per billion (ppb) cause imbalances in Everglades’ flora and fauna,” Executive Director Samuel Poole III told Miccosukee Chairman Billy Cypress, “but we have not seen the scientific basis for this.” He also reassured Cypress that the SFWMD had “no intention of violating any applicable water quality standards,” including that of the Miccosukee.25
The problems that environmentalists and the Miccosukee articulated about the SFWMD/Seminole agreement spoke to the issues that both groups had with the Everglades Forever Act and its lack of a stringent phosphorous requirement. Whereas the Settlement Agreement had delineated 10 ppb as the appropriate criterion, the Everglades Forever Act had backed away from that figure, presumably at the bequest of the sugar industry and other agriculturists. Environmentalists and the Miccosukee used the scientific research of Ron Jones from Florida International University to show that any standard above 10 ppb would not effectively protect the Everglades. The Miccosukee were also concerned about the effects of the Everglades Construction Project – which would implement the structural features of the Everglades Forever Act, such as the STAs – on their water supply. The SFWMD insisted that STA-5 had to cleanse water only to 50 ppb, but the Miccosukee disagreed, stating that original conceptual design of STA-5 planned for a 10 ppb discharge.26
These differences convinced the Miccosukee that the state of Florida, through the SFWMD, had become misguided in its efforts to cleanse Everglades water, and that Miccosukee interests were at risk. The Miccosukee claimed that their reservation was being used as a “toilet” to collect phosphorous-laden farm water runoff. “Do you expect your neighbor to drink your garbage?” Miccosukee tribal chairman Billy Cypress asked. “We would not do that to anyone. We don’t want it done to us.”27
To protect its interests, the tribe decided to develop stringent water quality standards for its land, especially after the state of Florida’s Environmental Regulation Commission refused to look at the 10 ppb standard despite a petition from the Miccosukee and several environmental groups such as Friends of the Everglades. The Miccosukee thus requested authority from the EPA to set its own water quality standards, and the EPA granted permission in December 1994, giving the tribe “treatment as state” recognition under the Clean Water Act. Certain conditions existed, however. The standards had to apply only to those water resources that the Miccosukee actually held or that were held in trust for them by the federal government, and the tribe had to follow the same public participation regulations mandated by the EPA that states did. These included the publication of the proposed standards, public hearings on the criteria, and the opportunity for other groups to comment.28
Following these guidelines, the Miccosukee formulated their water quality standards. The stated purpose of these standards was not only to protect Miccosukee land, but also to ensure that water flowing into the conservation areas and Everglades National Park did not harm threatened and endangered species. Moreover, the tribe wanted to promote the social and economic well being of its members. Therefore, the tribe “vowed” that it would not “compromise” the health of its tribal members or of the Everglades ecosystem in setting its standards; instead, it would require that all water entering and leaving the reservation contain “a nutrient standard consistent with natural oligotrophic levels (including a total phosphorous limitation of 10 parts per billion of water),” oligotrophic meaning a low nutrient system. In enforcing these standards, the tribe
insisted that it would not let “adjacent water users” utilize its water or its “vegetative communities . . . as a biological filter.”29
When the Miccosukee held public hearings on these criteria in 1997, however, many objected to the stringent requirements. Although the Miccosukee considered them necessary in order to preserve the Everglades ecosystem, others disagreed, especially since the standards conflicted with the Everglades Forever Act, which had stipulated that 50 ppb would be used until the state developed a firm, numerically based criterion (which did not have to happen until 2003 and which did not have to be implemented until 2006). The Florida Sugar Cane League, for example, stated that the Miccosukee should wait to implement the 10 ppb standard until after the state had completed its scientific research on phosphorous loads.30 Likewise, SFWMD official Frank Williamson, Jr., explained that the district’s “most significant concern” with the Miccosukee’s proposal was its “potential conflict” with both the Everglades Forever Act and the Settlement Agreement in United States of America, et al. v. South Florida Water Management District, et al. “If adopted,” Williamson noted, the Miccosukee standards “would arguably establish a 10 ppb total phosphorous standard immediately.” Williamson explained that this did not take into account “the needs and thresholds of the Everglades” and “the physical realities of water management within South Florida.” In addition, he continued, the tribe was proposing only phosphorous limits “without providing a blueprint for improving water quality,” and it had failed to produce any scientific analysis or data supporting its 10 ppb standard. The requirements in the Everglades Forever Act were in the general public’s best interest, Williamson concluded, while the tribe’s standards only benefited the Miccosukee.31 In response, the Miccosukee declared that the law did not govern the tribe’s federal reservation lands.32
Another problem that the SFWMD had with the Miccosukee’s standards was that they did not conform to those developed by the Seminole Tribe. The Seminole’s standards proposed phosphorous levels of only 50 ppb, keeping them in conformity with the Everglades Forever Act. The SFWMD foresaw difficulties if the Miccosukee adopted the 10 ppb rule, since this would mean that two different standards would exist for “the same water body,” causing “unreasonable consequences” and “social and economic disruption.”33 In response to this concern, the EPA reminded the SFWMD that it had a dispute resolution mechanism in place that could “mediate disputes where the difference in water quality standards results in unreasonable consequences.”34
Meanwhile, environmentalists applauded the Miccosukee’s efforts. Joette Lorion, president of Friends of the Everglades and a Miccosukee consultant, stated that the tribe’s action was necessary because “right now, state enforcement officers are like the Maytag repairman: They have nothing to do until Dec. 31, 2006.” Charles Lee, senior vice president of the Florida Audubon Society, agreed, claiming that the sugar industry’s “game plan” was to “prevent” the 10 ppb standard “from ever being set.” The Miccosukee’s water quality proposal, however, would make it more difficult for the industry to carry out its strategy. “We’re tired of waiting,” Miccosukee Water Resources Director Gene Duncan explained. “Broken promises – that’s the history of the Indians and the Everglades.”35
Accordingly, despite the concerns expressed by the SFWMD and others, the Miccosukee adopted its 10 ppb standard in December 1997 and submitted it to the EPA for approval.36 The tribe also explained that it would determine whether water met the 10 ppb standard by measuring phosphorous content at five different locations: in the L-28 Interceptor Canal on the tribe’s
western boundary, in the L-28 Interceptor Canal at its dogleg (where water was discharged into the Gap Area), at a site in the C-60 Canal east of the S-140 pump station (measuring water emptying into the North Grass and South Grass areas), at the northeastern corner of the Alligator Alley Reservation in the North Grass region, and in the western portion of the Gap Area.37
Although the EPA usually had to approve water quality standards within 60 days, it took the agency two years before it issued a decision on the tribe’s request. Some speculated that the reason for this was that the Miccosukee was the first entity – state or otherwise – to set a numeric criterion for phosphorous and it took considerable time for EPA personnel to wade through the stacks of scientific literature on the subject. Finally, in May 1999, the EPA approved the Miccosukee’s water quality standards, a significant victory for both the tribe and environmentalists. The EPA called the criteria “a significant step forward in protecting the health of the Everglades”; EPA Administrator Carol Browner, former secretary of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, lauded the “tough standards,” seeing them as a way to “protect and restore this national treasure [the Everglades] for future generations.”38 According to an article in Time magazine, the standards meant that “everyone” around the Miccosukee would have to meet the same criteria, even “sugar companies, which argue that they don’t have the technology to comply.”39 The EPA agreed. Regional Administrator John Hankinson explained that the EPA’s review provided “a strong foundation for developing future water quality standards and the technology necessary to meet those standards.”40 But the state continued its own scientific studies of phosphorous, unwilling to accept the 10 ppb without further review.
The Miccosukee also began pursuing means to end the Special Use Permit relationship with Everglades National Park for the 333 acres on the park’s northern border. The catalyst for this action was Everglades National Park Superi ntendent Richard Ring’s objections to the
construction of houses in the Special Use area. In order to resolve the matter, the Miccosukee worked with Florida’s congressional delegation – including Alcee Hastings and Carrie Meek – to pass legislation ending the Special Use relationship. In 1998, Congress enacted the Miccosukee Reserved Area (MRA) Act that terminated the Special Use Permit, expanded the area to approximately 660 acres, and granted the Miccosukee the right to govern the land “as though the MRA were a Federal Indian reservation.”41 After the passage of the act, the Miccosukee began developing water quality standards for that area as well, which, because of its location, affected Everglades National Park. The tribe essentially applied the same 10 ppb numeric criterion to the region as it did to its reserved lands, and the EPA approved this action in October 1999.42
Meanwhile, the Miccosukee employed another tactic in its fight to preserve the Everglades ecosystem: litigation. Throughout the 1990s, the tribe sued several federal and state agencies for many different reasons. In 1995, for example, the tribe filed a lawsuit, ultimately unsuccessful, against the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Corps of Engineers, and the SFWMD because of flooding on their land in 1994 and 1995 caused by Tropical Storm Gordon. The Miccosukee claimed that the Corps and the SFWMD did nothing to alleviate the flooding because of NPS opposition to receiving more water.43 Other Miccosukee lawsuits included one in 1999 alleging that deviations from Conservation Area No. 3A’s regulation schedule by the Corps and the SFWMD (done at the request of the National Park Service to preserve the endangered cape sable seaside sparrow) violated the Endangered Species Act by threatening the wood stork and the snail kite in 3A.44
Perhaps the most prominent Miccosukee litigation, however, dealt with water quality standards under the Everglades Forever Act. As explained above, in 1994, the tribe had joined other petitioners to request that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection establish a numeric water quality standard of 10 ppb. The department rejected the petition, but the state’s Fourth District Court of Appeals reversed that decision (Miccosukee Tribe v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection), ruling that only Florida’s Environmental Regulation Commission had the authority to either accept or reject the petition. The Environmental Regulation Commission decided that it would review the standards at some undesignated point, and the court subsequently found that this meant that the state was working as expeditiously as possible under provisions of the Everglades Forever Act. Only the Florida legislature, the court ruled, could hasten the timeline.45
At the same time, the Miccosukee sued the U.S. Department of the Interior, requesting that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida require the enforcement of the 1991 Settlement Agreement and 1992 Consent Decree. The genesis for this action was a 1994 settlement between the U.S. Department of the Interior and Flo-Sun Sugar Company, whereby the corporation agreed to pay $4 to $6 million a year in Everglades clean-up costs in exchange for the Interior Department not enforcing phosphorous standards until 2008. The Miccosukee objected to this arrangement, saying that it was opposed to “government attempts to substitute less stringent provisions of the Everglades Forever Act for those of the Settlement and Consent Decree.”46 The compromise between the Interior Department and Flo-Sun merely delayed the implementation of strict phosphorous standards to the detriment of the ecosystem. “Delay is the enemy of the Everglades,” Cypress related. “The Miccosukee Tribe will not accept delay.”47 Dexter Lehtinen was even more forceful, claiming that the federal government, through its
concurrence with the Everglades Forever Act, had authorized not only the continued pollution of the Everglades, but had also “polluted the democratic process.” Lehtinen vowed that “the Miccosukee Tribe will not allow their Everglades homeland to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.”48
The Miccosukee continued its assault by filing an action against the EPA as well, charging that the Everglades Forever Act had changed Florida’s water quality standard and that the EPA therefore had the responsibility to either approve or reject the changes, as stipulated by the Clean Water Act. According to one observer, the tribe claimed that, under the Everglades Forever Act, the state was allowing water with high levels of phosphorous to flow across South Florida, causing “an imbalance in the natural aquatic flora and fauna through 2006.”49 After representatives of the EPA testified that the presence of polluted waters did not necessarily mean that water quality standards had changed, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida rejected the tribe’s claim. The tribe appealed the ruling, leading the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to remand the case back to the district court, instructing it to decide independently whether water quality standards had been altered. After its review, the district court ruled that a change had been made, and it instructed the EPA to take action. The EPA again stated that the act did not alter the standards, claiming, according to one legal scholar, that “it did not change any designated uses of downstream waters” and that “it did not change antidegradation policy.”50
A Miccosukee Indian village. (Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District.)
In 1998, after conducting a judicial review of the EPA’s decision under the Administrative Procedure Act, Judge Edward B. Davis of the district court overturned the EPA’s decision as “arbitrary and capricious.”51 According to Davis, the Everglades Forever Act did not establish a legitimate compliance schedule as required by the Clean Water Act, and, because no numerical criterion had to be in place until 2006, the EPA was effectively allowing violations of state water quality standards by agricultural interests until that time. Therefore, Davis ordered the EPA to view the Everglades Forever Act as violating Florida’s water quality standards. This seemed to be a significant ruling in favor of the Miccosukee, but the EPA stated that it would have to carefully analyze the decision before taking any action.52 According to scholar William Rodgers, whatever the outcome, the case “had the collateral benefit of drawing EPA – the ‘expert’ water quality agency – into the South Florida water wars.”53
Throughout the 1990s, then, the Miccosukee and the Seminole worked to protect the interests of their reservations and their interest in the Everglades – an area where they had resided for many decades. This fight focused on water quality, especially in relation to phosphorous concentrations. Although the Seminole generally used conciliatory methods to achieve their objectives – formulating water quality standards in conformance with the Everglades Forever Act, establishing a water conservation plan for Big Cypress Reservation in collaboration with several state and federal agencies – the Miccosukee took the opposite approach. Believing that the desire to achieve consensus was sacrificing its interests, the Miccosukee implemented water quality standards significantly more stringent than those set up by the Everglades Forever Act and sued federal and state entities over both water quality and quantity. Although these suits deepened conflicts with the SFWMD, the Corps, the EPA, the NPS – in short, almost every entity with a stake in water resource management – the Miccosukee regarded them as necessary to preserve the Everglades ecosystem. “The Everglades are dying,” Buffalo Tiger declared. “The land cannot recover from this.”54 Besides, according to Gene Duncan, the “only time” the Miccosukee could “get anyone’s attention is when we’re in court.”55 If nothing else, the lawsuits focused attention in the late 1990s on the impor tance of lowering phosphorous concentrations to 10 ppb and made state and federal agencies take both tribes more seriously in water management decisions. As environmentalist Nathaniel Reed observed, the Seminole and the Miccosukee now had “a large say in how the Everglades is restored.”56
Chapter Fifteen Endnotes
1 Billy Cypress, Chairman, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, to Honorable Harry A. Johnston, Member of Congress, 9 July 1993, File Everglades Mediation Miccosukee, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
2 Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek, American Indians & National Parks (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1998), 230; Parker Thomson to The Honorable Reubin O’D. Askew, Governor, 14 April 1977, File Conservation Area 3, Miccosukee Tribe, 1966-78, Re: Declaration of Trust, Box 02194, SFWMDAR. This license was later amended to become a perpetual lease.
3 Harry A. Kersey, “Introduction,” in Buffalo Tiger and Harry A. Kersey, Jr., Buffalo Tiger: A Life in the Everglades (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 2.
4 Buffalo Tiger and Kersey, Buffalo Tiger, 126.
5 Joel Kuperberg to Hugh McMillan, 15 November 1973, File Re Seminole Tribe, Trustees Correspondence, State Lands Records Vault, Division of State Lands, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Marjory Stoneman Douglas Building, Tallahassee, Florida.
6 R. L. Clark, Jr., Chairman, to The Honorable Reubin O’D. Askew, 7 January 1974, File Re Seminole Tribe, Trustees Correspondence, State Lands Records Vault, Division of State Lands, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Marjory Stoneman Douglas Building, Tallahassee, Florida.
7 Kersey, “The East Big Cypress Case, 1948-1987,” 466-474.
8 Kersey, “The East Big Cypress Case,” 474.
9 Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Wilder to The Honorable Sidney R. Yates, Chairman, Subcommittee on Interior, House Committee on Appropriations, 9 March 1989, File Miccosukee Campground Project, Box 19707, SFWMDAR.
10 Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Wilder to Ralph W. Tarr, Esq., Office of the Solicitor, 15 February 1989, File Miccosukee Campground Project, Box 19707, SFWMDAR.
11 Quotation in Seminole Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1987 (101 Stat. 1556). For more information on the Seminole water rights compact, see Jim Shore and Jerry C. Straus, “The Seminole Water Rights Compact and the Seminole Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1987,” Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law 6 (Winter 1990): 1-24.
12 “Summary Information on the Modified Hendry County Plan,” File Memorandum of Agreement, Miccosukee Tribe, Box 19707, SFWMDAR.
13 “Memorandum of Agreement between the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and the South Florida Water Management District,” attachment to Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Business Council Resolution No. MBC-27-87, File Memorandum of Agreement, Miccosukee Tribe, Box 19707, SFWMDAR.
14 Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Business Council Resolution No. MBC-38-88, File Indian Affairs Miccosukee Research 94, Box 22792, SFWMDAR.
15 South Florida Water Management District, Interim Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) Plan for Lake Okeechobee, Pa rt 1: Water Quality & Part VII: Public Information (West Palm Beach, Fla.: South Florida Water Management District, 1989), Executive Summary – 1-2, 7-8.
16 South Florida Water Management District, Surface Water Improvement and Management Plan for the Everglades: Planning Document (West Palm Beach, Fla.: South Florida Water Management District, 1992), 5, 1014, 36, 40.
17 “Seminole Tribe Everglades Restoration Initiative: Water Conservation System Conceptual Plan, Briefing Paper for the U.S. Department of the Interior,” 17 February 1995, File GOV 02-16-03 Federal Government 95 Interior Department, Indian Affairs – Seminoles, Conceptual Water Conservation System Design DOC, Box 15771, SFWMDAR.
Chapter Fifteen Endnotes (continued)
18 Seminole Tribe of Florida to the Honorable Ralph Regula, Chairman, and the Honorably Sidney Yates, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on the Interior, House Committee on Appropriations, 1 June 1995, File Seminole SWIM Big Cypress Plan, Box 19707, SFWMDAR.
19 Woodie Van Voorhees, Government & Public Affairs, to Irene Quincey, et al., 2 March 1994, File Seminole SWIM Big Cypress Plan, Box 19707, SFWMDAR; Draft Agreement Between the South Florida Water Management District and the Seminole Tribe of Florida Providing for Water Quality, Water Supply and Flood Control Plans for the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation and the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation, Implementing Sections V.C. and VI.D of the Water Rights Compact, 15 November 1993, ibid.
20 Barbara A. Markham, General Counsel, to Governing Board Members, 30 June 1995, File Micco WQ Standards, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
21 Draft Agreement Between the South Florida Water Management District and the Seminole Tribe of Florida Providing for Water Quality, Water Supply and Flood Control Plans for the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation and the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation, Implementing Sections V.C. and VI.D of the Water Rights Compact, 26 June 1995, ibid.
22 Phillip C. Garcia, President, and Shannon Larsen, Acting Secretary-Treasurer, to Valerie Boyd, et al., 8 December 1995, unlabeled file, Box 22792, SFWMDAR (emphasis in the original).
23 Garcia and Larsen to Boyd, 8 December 1995.
24 Truman E. Duncan, Jr., Water Resources Director, to Mr. Sam Poole, III, Executive Director, South Florida Water Management District, 25 September 1995, unlabeled file, Box 22792, SFWMDAR.
25 Samuel E. Poole III, Executive Director, South Florida Water Management District, to Billy Cypress, Chairman, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, 11 August 1995, File Micco WQ Standards, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
26 Duncan to Poole, 25 September 1995; see also Joette Lorion interview by Matthew Godfrey, 18 January 2006, 5 [hereafter referred to as Lorion interview].
27 As quoted in “Indians Seek to Have Say in Everglades Suit,” The Miami Herald, 28 March 1993.
28 Elizabeth D. Ross to Distribution List, 4 September 1996, File Indian Affairs, Seminole Water Quality Standard Research 94-98, Box 22792, SFWMDAR; Lorion interview, 5; Rodgers, “The Miccosukee Indians and Environmental Law,” 10926.
29 “Miccosukee Environmental Protection Code Subtitle B: Water Quality Standards for Surface Waters of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida” [hereafter referred to as Miccosukee Water Quality Standards], File Micco WQ Standards, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
31 Frank Williamson, Jr., to Secretary Murley, Florida State Clearinghouse, Department of Community Affairs, 13 October 1997, File Micco WQ Standards, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
33 Quotation in Williamson to Murley, 13 October 1997; see also Seminole Water Commission, Seminole Tribe of Florida, “Proposed Rules: Water Quality Protection and Restoration: Rules to Carry Out the Federal Clean Water Act and the Tribal Water Code, Including Water Quality Standards for the Big Cypress Reservation,” File Indian Affairs, Seminole Water Quality Standard Research 94-98, Box 22792, SFWMDAR.
34 Robert F. McGhee, Director, Water Management Division, United States Environmental Protection Agency, to Mr. Frank Williamson, Jr., Chairman, Governing Board, South Florida Water Management District, 17 November 1997, File Miccosukee WQ Standards, 1997-98, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
Chapter Fifteen Endnotes (continued)
35 Lorion, Lee, and Duncan quotes all cited in Neil Santaniello, “Cleanup Pace Prompts Tribe to Take Hard Line,” Sun-Sentinel, 15 October 1997.
36 Miccosukee Water Quality Standards. The Miccosukee Reserved Area had previously been called the Permit Area, but under the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act of 1998, Congress recognized the 667 acres that the tribe had leased from the state as “Indian country.” Rodgers, “The Miccosukee Indians and Environmental Law,” 1092610927.
37 “Methodology for Determination of Compliance with the 10 Parts Per Billion Numeric Criterion for Total Phosphorous,” 6 December 1998, Miccosukee WQ Standards, 1997-98, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
38 Quotations in “EPA Approves Tough Phosphorous Limit for Tribal Waters in Everglades,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Press Release, 26 May 1999 <http://www.epa.gov/Region4/ oeapages/99press/052699.htm> (25 November 2003); see also Lorion interview, 5.
39 Tim Padgett, “Last Stand,” Time 154 (5 July 1999): 61.
40 As quoted in Light, “Miccosukee Wars in the Everglades,” 736.
41 Act of 30 October 1998 (112 Stat. 2964).
42 Lorion interview, 5-6.
43 See Omnibus Order, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida v. United States of America, et al., copy provided by James W. Vearil, Chief, Water Management Section, Met Section, Jacksonville District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Rodgers, “The Miccosukee Indians and Environmental Law,” 10920.
44 See Dexter W. Lehtinen, Esquire, for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, to Honorable Secretary Bruce Babbitt, U.S. Department of the Interior, 16 March 1998, File Miccosukee WQ Standards, 1997-98, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
45 Keith W. Rizzardi, “Alligators and Litigators: A Recent History of Everglades Regulation and Litigation,” The Florida Bar Journal 18 (March 2001): n.p. (copy provided by John D. Brady, principal assistant, Jacksonville District Office of Counsel, Jacksonville, Florida).
46 Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Press Release, 6 November 1995, File Everglades Mediation Miccosukee, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
47 As cited in Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Press Release, 6 November 1995.
48 As cited in Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Press Release, 6 November 1995; see also “Tribe Sues U.S. Agency Over Cleanup,” unidentified newspaper clipping in File Everglades Mediation Miccosukee, Box 19706, SFWMDAR.
49 Quotation in Rodgers, “The Miccosukee Indians and Environmental Law,” 10926; see also Light, “Miccosukee Wars in the Everglades,” 731.
50 Quotations in Rizzardi, “Alligators and Litigators”; see also Light, “Miccosukee Wars in the Everglades,” 731-732.
51 As cited in Rizzardi, “Alligators and Litigators.”
52 Rizzardi, “Alligators and Litigators”; Light, “Miccosukee Wars in the Everglades,” 731-732.
53 Rodgers, “The Miccosukee Indians and Environmental Law,” 10926
FLORIDA SURVEYORS AND DEVELOPERS IN THE 19TH CENTURY
by Dr. Joe Knetsch
CHAPTER 15
HAMILTON DISSTON AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FLORIDA
One of the most enduring mysteries in the history of Florida is the “man,” Hamilton Disston. Little has ever been published about this individual’s life or his many accomplishments. What is known is based upon few primary sources, and those have not been evaluated for accuracy. None of the few works that discuss the Gilded Age politics have ever delved into the life behind the man who bailed Florida out of its worst financial embarrassment. Even the story of his death is questionable, if, in fact, not totally erroneous. It is the goal of this paper to shed some light onto this unknown individual and maybe encourage greater pri mary research into the background of those who have helped to shape our destinies.
That Hamilton Disston was a congenial person has been testified to by many who knew the young man. Born on August 23, 1844, he was educated at home, like many children of his day, and at the age of fifteen, he became a full-time apprentice in his father’s factory on Laurel Street, in Philadelphia. His father was an inventive, strong willed and talented man, whose mechanical abilities came naturally through Hamilton’s grandfather, Thomas Disston, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England. The adaptable Henry Disston migrated to America with his family in 1833, only to lose his father three days after their arrival. Left to his devices, he apprenticed himself to a saw-maker and began a career that reads like a Horatio Alger tale. With a start of only $350, he began his own manufacturing firm in 1840, and after some early
struggles with land-lords and lenders, established himself at Front and Laurel Street, two years after Hamilton’s birth. The elder Disston’s skills could not be denied, and he looked to become independent of imported British steel. In 1855, he constructed his own steel mill, producing some of the highest grade crucible steel to be found anywhere. This gave him the edge over much of his competition, foreign or domestic. So successful was the Disston works, that they were not affected by the severe Panic of 1857. Young Hamilton, observing first-hand many of his father's administrative touches and inventive capacity, probably made mental notes of those that were most suc cessful.1
1See the following for accounts of Henry Disston: Herman L. Collins and Wilfred Jordan, Phila delphia: A Story of Progress (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co. 1941) 417-18; Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, Editors, Dictionary of American Biography , Volume III (Cushman-Fraser) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, n.d.), 318-19; Harry C. Silcox, A Place to Live and Work: The Henry Disston Saw Works and the Tacony Community of Philadelphia (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); and William D. Disston Henry Disston and William Smith, “The Disston History,” May 1920. Typescript in the Disston Papers of the Tacony Branch Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The author would like to express his sincere thanks for the assistance rendered by this library’s very capable and courteous staff.
The Civil War brought many changes to the Disston firm, primarily the need to produce war materials for the Union Army. For the purpose of making metal plates, whose importation was disrupted by Confederate raiders, Henry Disston constructed his own rolling mill. He also erected an experimental saw mill to test his saws on various types of wood for the purpose of more efficient cutting and precision. The father also experimented with new saw types, improved the quality of the steel and any number of improvements in various war materials. In the interest of the firm and national defense, he encouraged employees to spot defects and to suggest improvements. 2 The firm, aside from its primary business, also produced scabbards, swords, guns, knapsack mountings and army curbits for the military effort. In addition to his production, Henry Disston offered each of his employees who joined the colors half as much in addition to what the government would pay, and guaranteed them their jobs upon returning from the war. 3
2Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography . 318.
3“Disston History,” 17.
According to Harry C. Silcox, in his recent work on the Disston works, Hamilton wanted to enlist in the Army immediately upon President Lincoln’s call for volunteers. Twice, Hamilton attempted to enlist, only to find his place taken by someone who was paid an enlistment bonus by his father, who insisted he was needed in the business. To relieve this tension, Hamilton increased his interest in the Northern Liberties volunteer fire company. As the story goes, the fires became so frequent that Hamilton was often missing answering the fire bell. Hamilton’s popularity among this group of young men was great enough that, in the end, his father relented and allowed him and 100 “Disston Volunteers” to serve their time. The father went so far as to equip the entire unit. When the war ended in 1865, Hamilton returned to the firm and was created a partner in the new business of Henry Disston & Son. 4
4Silcox, A Place to Live and Work , 54-55.
Assisted by a protective tariff policy and a growing demand for saws of all kinds, the years immediately following the war were very prosperous for the firm. New lines of products were introduced, including a new line of files developed during the war. According to a handbook from the company, “During the War we were unable to obtain files which would give us satisfaction and were compelled to manufacture our own. We spent thousands of dollars in perfecting our arrange ments for manufacturing files.” 5 Hamilton lost his social outlet when the volun teer fire department was discontinued in 1870 and this led him into his first ventures into politics. The prosperity of the firm and the free time that this allowed the “partner” meant a change of roles, one congenial with the growing need to market the company’s new products and the move of the Disston works to the new area ofTacony.
5“Disston History,” 18.
Hamilton, like his father, was a strong Republican and favored the protective tariff. His growing interest in politics led him into the embroglio of the Philadel phia wards. In the beginning, he was allied with many of the so-called “bosses” of the wards, including James McManes (the city gas works “czar”), William Leeds and David H. Lane. He helped one of his old
Northern Liberties Hose Company colleagues, John A. Loughridge, into the post of prothonotary to the Court of Common Pleas. 6 One-time governor of Pennsylvania, Samuel W. Pennypacker, noted in his autobiography, that, in 1875, Hamilton Disston was the ward leader in the Twenty-ninth ward, and was assisted by William U. Moyer. He also makes it clear that anything that went on in the ward, had to have Disston’s approval, which he claims he disliked. 7 Pennypacker discribes his groups’ defeat at the hands of Disston and his allies when he attempted to reform the precinct:
“We hired a hall, notified every Republican, held a meeting which was largely attended and selected a ticket. For a time it looked ask though we would succeed, but we failed at the last moment through the better discipline of our opponents and the superior practical knowledge which comes with it. The evening of the primary turned out to be cold, and blasts of snow filled the air. The well-to-do citizens upon whom we relied sat at home by their fires in comfort. Their servants rode in carriages, hired by the more shrewd regulars, to the polls and voted against us.” 8
6Silcox, 55. Samuel W. Pennypacker, in his The Autobiography of a Pennsylvanian (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1918), 176, noted that McManes had made his fortune in street railways. Pennypacker depicts this “thrifty, capable and vigorous Irishman” as an absolute autocrat who “tolerated no difference in opinion in the ranks.” He states that McManes was the head of the Republican organization in Philadelphia during the 1870s.
7Pennypacker, Autobiography , 174.
8Pennypacker, Autobiography , 174.
The future governor learned from his tactical error and soon was on the way to more personal successes. Meanwhile, having learned how to control the ward, Hamilton shifted his efforts, somewhat, to the family-created settlement of Tacony, where he served innocuously as a Fairmount Park Commissioner, while controlling the town through his Magistrate (and real estate agent) Tom South.9
9Silcox, A Place to Live and Work , 55.
Disston’s interest in politics also made him friends on the national scale. With an ability to help finance investment schemes as well as political
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campaigns, Dis ston had the ears of some of Pennyslvania’s most powerful and influential. Among those who readily listened to and cooperated with Disston were Wharton Barker (once head of the Finance Company of Pennsylvania), Thomas Scott, Jr., the heir to the Pennsylvania Railroad former president’s fortune and later, a part ner in some of Disston’s Florida ventures, and, most importantly, Matt Quay, U.S. Senator and “Boss” of that body. Through Quay, a high tariff man in his own right, Disston sought to keep the price of imported steel and, later, sugar, high. 10 He shared with his father, a strong feeling of getting things done, in politics as well as business. And, again, like his father, who, in 1876, served as a Hayes elec tor from Philadelphia, Hamilton attended to the political interests by attending the 1888 Republican National Convention as an at-large delegate. 11
10For Disston’s relationship to Wharton Barker, see Pennypacker’s Autobiography , 124; For Scott’s relationship, see Florida Dispatch , March 13, 1888. 218; For Quay, see, Stanley P. Hirshson, Farewell to the Bloody Shirt (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 227-28. Hirshson also notes Diss ton’s ambition to run for the Senate in 1891.
11For his father’s appearance as an elector, see, Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography , 319; For Hamilton’s letter of June 18, 1888. J. J. Dunne to W. D. Barnes. “Old Railroad Bonds” (Drawer), no file (old box destroyed). Land Records and Title Section, Division of State Lands, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee, Florida. Letter is loose in the drawer at this time. It is on the letter-head of the “Keystone Chemical Company.”
The Disston family also had investments other than their own sawworks. Hamilton’s father, Henry, saw a need to keep ahead of the rest of the industry, and, as noted before, constructed his own rolling mill, an experimental saw-mill and other smaller ventures near the family works. However, he also invested in a saw mill operation in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which helped to supply the saw works with handles for many of their tools. 12 Hamilton was more adventurous with his money and was an officer in the Keystone Chemical Company, the Florida land ventures and a railroad trust/syndicate, capitalized at $20,000,000, in China. This last venture was in association with Wharton Barker, Samuel R. Shipley (Presi dent of the Provident Life and Trust Company), and others. 13 It should also be pointed out that the Disston family owned much of the land in and around Tacony and a substantial sum was earned over the years from this investment.
12
Silcox, A Place to Live and Work , 54-55.
13Silcox, A Place to Live and Work, 55; Letter-head on letter of June 18, 1888, cited above. [Disston is listed as “Vice-President” on this letter-head.]; and Pennypacker, Autobiography, 125.
As a manager of the Disston works upon Henry Disston’s death in 1878, in his fifty-ninth year, Hamilton has received mixed approval and doubt. The firm’s his tory, done by two members of the family and one other, states, “The general supervision of the establishment now devolved on Hamilton Disston, who pos sessed the quick eye and sound judgment of his father. He, together with his brothers … having served full apprenticeships in the shops, and with Albert H. devoting himself to the general financial and office management, was competent from a mechanical as well as a business point of view to carry along the intentions of the founder, and the steadily increasing business was pushed to proportions per haps unexpected by him.” The story is told, in this loosely official history, that when the plant was visited by President Rutherford B. Hayes, Hamilton showed the president a rough piece of steel, which, he stated, he would convert into a thoroughly finished saw before the entourage left the building. Exactly forty-two minutes later, he presented the president with a new 26-inch handsaw, engraved with Hayes full name upon it. It had passed through twenty-four different pro cesses in that short period of time. 14 Another source noted that Hamilton was, “a keen, progressive executive. Under his management the business expanded mate rially.” 15 Harry Silcox, in his study of the Disston Saw Works, states that Hamil ton spent too much time away from Tacony to be any major factor in the firm’s success, and that his brothers and uncle, Samuel, were more responsible for the growth. 16 Edward C. Williamson, in his tract on Florida Politics in the Gilded Age, paints Hamilton Disston as a Nouveau riche Philadelphia society clubman who defied his father's wish to keep his eye on the family business and went his own way, something like the prodigal son. 17 Which ever the judgment, it cannot be denied that Hamilton Disston was a figure of importance and controversy.
14“Disston History,” 63, 72-73.
15Collins and Jordan, Philadelphia , 418.
16Silcox, A Place to Live and Work , 56.
17
Edward C. Williamson, Florida Politics in the Gilded Age: 1877-1893 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1976), 73.
It is generally agreed that Disston’s first trip to Florida came in 1877, at the behest of Henry Sanford, who had served in various capacities in Republican circles, including a stint as Ambassador to Belgium. According to one writer, the first attraction was the “lunker black bass” found in Florida waters. However, given the lack of subsequent reporting of Mr. Disston’s fondness for fishing, even while a resident of Florida, this speculation may be questioned. What is clear is that Mr. Disston became very interested in the agricultural possibilities of the State, assuming it could find a way to remove the water that often covered the entire State south of Orange County. By 1879, he came to the firm conviction that the drainage of the upper portions of the Everglades, as he saw them, could be reclaimed from the morass of South Florida.
What was needed was a means to acquire title to the swamp and overflowed lands of the area and then bring in the equipment to do the job. Disston soon convinced fellow Philadelphians, Albert B. Linderman, Whitfield Drake and William H. Wright, along with William C. Parsons, of Arizona, and Ingham Coryell of Florida to invest in a corporation for the drainage of the swamp lands of southern Florida. By the shrewd device of not paying any cash, but assuming the expenses of the actual drainage, the new corporation, known as the Atlantic and Gulf Coast Canal and Okeechobee Land Company, was able to work an arrangement with the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, the State’s agency charged with the responsibility to encourage a “liberal system of internal improve ments.” The avoidance of payment was used to circumvent the obligations of the Trustees under the injunction placed upon them by Francis Vose and others. 18 Vose, and his colleagues, had invested in Florida railroad bonds toward the end of the Civil War and expected to be paid at par, plus interest, for their redemption. After numerous legal wrangles, a New York court placed the injunction on the Trustees which forbid them to sell or bargain away any State lands until Vose and friends had been paid in full. This forced the Trustees to seek large, corporate buyers for its land and effectually stopped using land as an enticement for railroad investment. By late 1880, the sum owed to Vose had risen to just over $1,000,000. Because the Internal Improvement Trust Fund was (and is) separate from general
revenues and restricted in its mission to funding internal improve ments, this injunction placed the State in a bind and virtually ended any major rail road construction for nearly a decade.
18T. Frederick Davis, “The Disston Land Purchase,” Florida Historical Quarterly , 17 (January 1939), 203-6. This short piece is still the best and simplest way to understand the Disston Drainage Contract and the Disston Purchase. Davis is emphatic about the two separate arrangements.
The drainage contract, which was signed by all parties on March 10, 1881, called for the company to drain and reclaim all of the swamp and overflowed lands in the area south of Township 24 and east of Peace River. 19 When 200,000 acres of land had been reclaimed by the company, the State would begin deeding alternate sections of the reclaimed swamp and overflowed lands to it. Thereafter, the State would issue deeds as the work progressed. The State would benefit by getting half of the reclaimed land, which would now be worth a great deal more, and the company would benefit by gaining title to the other half of the land. Hopefully, the land would sell, and at a price that would allow the company to recover all costs, with some profit left over for the investors. The corporation soon issued 600,000 shares of stock at $10 per share, and began to assemble the dredges that were to accomplish the task. 20
19The original language of the contract stated Township 23, but this was amended later. The Peace River is what was meant, but looking at today’s map, one finds Peace Creek (the original lan guage) is a small stream, running east to west near Bartow, and flowing into Peace River, which is the current name of the water body meant by the contract.
20Davis, “Disston Land Purchase,” 205-06.
The drainage contract received some national attention that was the beginning of a new era in the awareness of Florida by the print media of the day. On Febru ary 18, 1881, the New York Times reported:
An immense transaction, involving the reclamation of 12,000,000 acres of land, or one-third of one of the States of the Union, has been undertaken by a company of Philadelphia gentlemen with every
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prospect of success ... The project of reclaiming this wonderfully rich country has been talked of for years, and it has long been considered feasible by many noted engineers… The leading man in the enterprise is Hamilton Disston, a young gentleman of great business energy and ample fortune, and present head of the great saw-manufacturing firm of Henry Disston & Sons… Under the agreement already made with the State, the com pany is required to begin surveys within 60 days, and within six months to put a force equal to 100 men on the work, and continue as expedi tiously as possible until it is completed. It is proposed to drain the land by a canal from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee River, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Another canal may also be con structed to the east, tapping the St. Lucie River, which flows into the Atlantic. These canals will entirely drain the swamp, and from ten to twelve million acres of the richest land in the world will be reclaimed. The company will receive for the work one half of the land recovered, and it is expected that this will largely repay all expenditure of money that may be made in the work… The entire property of the company is below the frost line, and there would be no such damage done to orange plantations as those in Northern Florida have suffered this Winter… Each share will carry with it the right to an acre of land. The stock will be put on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and is expected will be sold readily. Several applications for stock have already been made by prominent gentlemen in this city. 21
21New York Times, February 18, 1881.
Within a short time, after the negotiation of the purchase of these types of lands by Disston, international attention was to be drawn to Florida and the land boom of the 1880s was to begin.
On May 30, 1881, Governor William D. Bloxham announced to his colleagues on the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, that he had, “gone to Philadelphia and had there entered into articles of agreement with Hamil ton Disston for the sale to said Disston of four million acres of land at twenty-five cents per acre, and placed said articles before the Board for the action of the Trust ees.” On the following day, the Trustees accepted the deal and approved the arti cles of agreement. 22 The New
York Times reported the sale on June 17, 1881:
Philadelphia, June 16—What is claimed to be the largest purchase of land ever made by a single person in the world occurred today, when Hamilton Disston, a prominent manufacturer of this city, closed a con tract by which he secured 4,000,000 acres of land from the State of Florida. This huge transaction has been in negotiation for several months, and its success was owing to the shrewd tactics on the part of the agents of Mr. Disston. The land acquired, a tract nearly as large as the State of New Jersey, was a part of the public domain of the State of Florida under control of the Board of Internal Improvement of the State. Owing to the recent improved value of the land of Florida, this property has been anxiously looked after by capitalists of New York and Bos ton… there were renewed efforts on the part of the New York people, who were backed by a well-known German banking house of that city, and the syndicate from London, headed by ex-United States Minister to Belgium Sanford and the Boston capitalists to buy the land… The tract is situated north of Lake Okeechobee, and is nearly all below the frost line… It is Mr. Disston’s intention to at once begin an emigration scheme which will result in a very large addition to the population of Florida. To this end, he has already established agencies in several places in this country, and will at once organize bureaus in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Holland and Italy. 23
22Minutes of the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund of the State of Florida, Volume 2 (Tallahassee: I. B. Hilson, 1904), 500-01. [Hereafter, Trustees Minutes, Volume#, Page #]
23New York Times, June 17, 1881.
In fact, the emigration centers had already been ordered and people of influ ence contacted. One of the principle negotiators for Disston with the Trustees was the venerable John A. Henderson, one of the most influential men in the State at the time. Ingham Coryell, whose contacts include General Sanford and James Ingraham, was also, no doubt involved in the laying of the base for this transac tion, although this does need further investigation.
In the words of Bloxham’s biographer, “No single event in Florida’s
history has equalled this one in economic significance.” 24 The simple terms of the agree ment required a first payment of $200,000 and the balance at agreed upon inter vals. The entire amount was due on January 1, 1882. At the receipt of the first payment, Disston received a deed for 250,000 acres of land. Upon receipt of the first payment, which was immediately applied to paying off the Vose debt, rail road companies began lining up to get Trustees approval for their schemes. No fewer than ten such firms, who had all anticipated this sale, were waiting for the release of the lands destined to develop the lands of Florida. Among the most anxious was an Englishman, a member of Parliament, Sir Edward James Reed, whose interest in Florida was already well established and who was prepared, even at that moment, to purchase the ailing Florida Central Railroad. Disston made his first payment even before the due date and, by September 1, 1881, had made payments of $500,000, in cash, with the exception of $15,000 in coupons. About this time, Disston was negotiating with Sir Edward J. Reed for the eventual purchase of half of the 4,000,000 acres. These negotiations were very discreet and little record of their occurrence has been left to posterity. 25 By December 17, 1881, Sir Edward, as he was known in England, had entered into an agreement with Disston to handle his half of the purchase and all that was left was to get the Trustees to agree to their arrangement. On the following day, Disston addressed a letter to the Trustees explaining the deal:
Sir Edward Reed, of England, as you know represents large Rail Road interests in your State. I have succeeded in interesting him more directly in South Florida. He will take Two Million acres of my purchase and as I understand him, at once arrange a Land Company in England which will rapidly send many purchasers of land to Florida. He will proceed to Tallahassee without delay in order to complete the transfer to him of his part of my purchase, and will bring with him full details of the arrangement between him and myself. He will make the remaining payments due on my purchase. 26
24Kenneth R. Johnson, “The Administration of Governor William Dunnington Bloxham, 1881-1885,” (Unpublished Masters Thesis, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 1959), 58.
25Davis, “The Disston Land Purchase,” 207-08.
26
Letter of December 18, 1881. Disston to Trustees. Brown Rectangular Filing Box, “Disston”, Land Records and Title Section, Division of State Lands, Florida Department of Environmental Pro tection, Tallahassee, Florida. [Hereafter, “Brown Box, Disston”] According to the Florida Daily Times , of December 23, 1881, the negotiations took place in New York during a series of “frequent interviews.” Reed, for purposes of biographical background, was a member of Parliament, a noted civil engineer, a naval architect and consulting engineer for both the Russian and Japanese navies (ironically) and the chairman of the Milford Dry Docks.
Reed, of course, was not alone in the deal, and had already informed Disston of his contact with Dr. Jacobus Wirtheimer and other Dutch investors. Both Reed and Wirtheimer were involved in various railroads in Florida, including the Flor ida Southern Railroad and the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad. 27 On January 17, 1882, Reed sent the Trustees a copy of the arrangement between himself, Wirthe imer and Disston. 28 Reed was later to ask for extensions of time to make the pay ments, but did complete same by December 26, 1882. 29
27 Trustees Minutes , Volume 3, 199-200.
28Brown Box, “Disston.” Letter of January 17, 1882. Reed to Bloxham.
29Davis, “The Disston Land Purchase,” 208.
The sale of so much land could not but arouse the ire of many of Bloxham’s political enemies and some of the other interests who had lost out in the bidding. Politicians, pandering to the big vote, small money, medium to small farmer, screamed at the give-away to large corporations. Some noted the fact that foreigners were getting all of the choice land and leaving honest homesteaders the scrap land. One of the most visible critics of the sale was the editor of the Fernandina Mirror, the scholarly George R. Fairbanks. He noted that northern states sup ported education, improvements and other functions through the sale of their public lands and they did not let them go for 25 cents per acre. The negotiations for the sale, he maintained, were held in secret with no public input whatsoever. Only the extreme poverty of a misrun government could cause such a calamity as this sale. 30 The Tampa Sunland Tribune, also spoke out against the “give-away” because its editor, J.B. Wall, feared that Disston would select all of the good land in Hillsborough County and ruin any
chance of attracting a railroad to the port city.31 Another group who protested the sale was made up of squatters and new homesteaders. The former because their practiced way of life would now be seriously curtailed, the latter because the land company may claim the land before the required five years for a valid claim could pass, thereby depriving them a chance a good land. 32 Many of these complaints were very legitimate and real. The threat posed by the sale, did make life for some of these groups very uneasy.
30Williamson, Florida Politics in the Gilded Age , 75.
31 Ibid , 76.
32Johnson, “The Administration of William Dunnington Bloxham,” 60.
Disston was well aware of the problems the sale would have regarding settlers and squatters. He understood going into the deal that legitimate settlers on the land should be allowed to purchase their land at the State price, $1.25 per acre, and agreed to the stipulation that these settlers had up to one and a half years to lay their claims before the land office to get this price. However, what displeased him most was the fact that the language used by the Trustees was that all settlers now upon the land could get this price.
All settlers, Florida Land and Improvement Company Secretary Richard Salinger noted, “include[d] Squatters pure and sim ple.” However, Disston agreed to this language because, “it would be better to include this class as it might lead to complications which it were better to avoid.” 33
33Brown Box, “Disston.” Letter of October 3, 1881. Salinger to Judge E. F. Dunne.
As to the cooperation of Disston with railroad interests, who may or would have claims within the lands his agents selected, Disston, himself, pointed out his total cooperation with the South Florida Railroad Company and the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railroad. 34 Disston seldom had any major disagreement with the railroad interests of the State, except W. D. Chipley, the aggressive vice-president and general superintendent of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad, who claimed some of the swamp and overflowed land in southern Florida should be reserved for his, and other, railroads. 35 Disston’s aid was vital, in the end, to the completion of
the railroad to St. Petersburg constructed by Peter Demens. It was Disston, who could not reach a final agreement with Demens, who introduced the sometimes cantankerous Russian to Phillip Annour, the Drexels of Philadelphia and financier Ed Stokesbury, and thus provided the means to the salvation of the Orange Belt Railway. 36 Disston, himself, later became the builder and part-owner of the St. Cloud and Sugar Belt Railroad, and always had an appreciation for the power of the rail. It should be remembered that Disston had, at first, contemplated a railroad to cover the entire area of the Kissimmee and Caloosahatchee valleys, which was to be built under the name of “The Kissimmee Valley and Gulf Rail way.” 37
34Brown Box. “Disston.” Letter of December 18, 1881. Disston to Trustees, previously cited. This file also contains hand-written copies of the agreements with the two railroads.
35Florida Department of State, Division of Library and information Services, Bureau of Archives and Records Management. Record Group 593, Series 665, Carton 1. Letter of April 14, 1884, Chip ley to Bloxham.
36Albert Parry, Full Steam Ahead: The Story of Peter Dem ens, Founder of St. Petersburg, Florida (St. Petersburg: Great Outdoors Publishing Co., 1987), 13-16. See also letter of support, dated December 29, 1886. Disston to Governor E. A. Peny. “Old Railroad Bonds,” [Drawer] Loose, file box destroyed. Land Records and Title Section.
37Old Railroad Bonds, [Drawer], “Atlantic and Gulf Coast and Okeechobee Land Comapany” [File] Letter of June 8, 1888. Disston to Governor E. A. Perry. Land Records and Title Section.
One of the most severe criticisms of the sale was the problem created by the designation of swamp and overflowed lands as those to be sold. Much of the con fusion, then and now, comes from the definition of swamp and overflowed given in the Swamp and Overflowed Lands Act of 1850. The crux of the question revolves around the language which designated lands as swamp and overflowed if they were covered with water, all or part of the time, and thus made unfit for culti vation. If the land could be diked or leveed off and drained so as to make them useful for agriculture, then they could be granted to the states as swamp and over flowed. This definition also applied to a surveyable section of land, in which fifty percent or more of such a section were of this description. In fact and practice, this meant that many of the swamp land deeds would, of necessity, contain large portions of dry uplands.
Faces on the Frontier
This fact was not lost on the Disston interests. On Octo ber 18, 1881, shortly after the purchase was made, Ingham Coryell wrote to Governor Bloxham suggesting that the State and the land company resolve the problem of high and dry land, before any public out-cry could take place.
I now propose on the part of the Land Company, “That we select by personal inspection all the high & dry lands within the limits of the reclamation district so soon as the condition of the waters will allow it, and that the State join us in the inspection by the appointment of an inspector to represent the State, and all lands returned as not subject to overflows be taken by the Land Company… to accomplish the object of setting at rest finally & forever any contention as between the State & our reclamation company as to what are & what are not reclaimed lands, would be pleased to have them do so. Some mode of settlement at this stage would perhaps avoid a vexed questioning in the future. We now have all the evidences of what are or are not, overflowed Lands & plenty of reliable Witnesses to prove the fact. If affected by drainage, the proof would not be so satisfactory. 38
38Brown Box. “Disston,” Letter of October 18, 1881. I. Coryell to Governor W. D. Bloxham.
However, the Trustees did not respond to this suggestion. Problems, as predicted by Coryell, did, indeed, plague the project from this very lack of definition. It is no surprise that most land historians consider this act one of the most ill-designed land acts ever passed by Congress or administered by the General Land Office.
But, regardless of the criticisms, some did appreciate and defend the Disston Purchase. One of the most ardent of these defenders was Charles E. Dyke, editor of the Tallahassee Floridian . This newspaper, as it was known at the time, was the organ of the State’s Democratic Party. Yet, it does not diminish the importance of his views, when it is known that most of the registered white voters were Democrats. After laying out the main features of the purchase contract, Dyke wrote:
As we have heretofore stated, the sale has our heartiest endorsement as a financial transaction in every way meeting the peculiar exigencies of
the case. Indeed, under all the circumstances, it is difficult to see how the Board could have done otherwise to accomplish the purpose in view. The debt against the Fund already amounted to some $900,000, and was constantly increasing, in effect bearing compound interest. The expenses of litigation, added to the interest, annually increased the debt, notwithstanding the large sales of land and the application of the proceeds to its payment. The natural and inevitable result would have been the entire absorption of the lands belonging to the Fund in a few years, leaving nothing for internal improvements. Besides, all this, the creditors, cognizant of these facts, were preparing to apply to the courts to have the entire Fund and all its interests turned over to them, or to have some five or six millions of acres set apart and deeded to them in satisfaction of their claims. Had the Trustees remained quiet and allowed this to be done they would have been justly subject to cen sure. 39
39Tallahassee Floridian , June 28, 1881, 2.
This defense of the Trustees’ action was taken up by many of the other news papers throughout the State and helped, in some measure, relieve some of the pressure on the Governor and the company.
As to the actual work of the drainage company, it began with two dredges, one beginning the work of connecting East Lake Tohopekaliga with Lake Tohope kaliga, and the other began work on the canal which would open Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee River in South Florida. The Trustees were notified of the commencement of work on November 7, 1881, by the president of the Atlantic Gulf Coast and Okeechobee Land Company, Samuel H. Grey, who had replaced William H. Stokely. Hamilton Disston, was the treasurer of that company, but president of the Florida Land and Improvement Company, which handled the land sales transactions for much of the Purchase lands. The success of the reclamation project was noticeable in a very short time. Francis A. Hendry, one of the early promoters of the drainage project, told the Florida Daily Times , in early 1882, that the work on the southern end of the project was begun in earnest on January 20, 1882, and had resulted in a canal 28 feet wide and 5 feet deep and one mile in length. This short canal had already shown evidence, according to the Captain, of an increased velocity of the water headed toward the Gulf and
had begun to scour out a deeper and wider channel on its own. This, he believed, would eventually result in a large canal that would help to lower Lake Okeechobee some six feet and expose some one million fertile acres to agricul tural use. 40 The northern work experienced one of the most famous incidents in the history of the drainage project.
40 Florida Daily Times , February 23, 1882, 3.
On November 22nd, [1883] the last dams on the line of canal were cut, and vent given to the waters of the lake. A number of visitors assembled to witness the interesting event. The first rush of the waters carried away the last vestige of the dams, and accumulations in the canal, and the velocity of the current established was sufficient to scour out the softer strata composing the bed of the canal, to a depth several feet below the line of excavation… During the first thirty days, the lake surface fell thirty-six inches… East Lake Tohopekaliga, formerly surrounded by cypress and marsh margins, has developed a beautiful wide sand beach, the bordering lands are elevated and marshes changed to rich meadow lands. 41
41Elizabeth Cantrell, When Kissimmee Was Young (Kissimmee: Self Published, 1948), 25
The Southport canal was the next to be completed in the northern area, con necting Lake Tohopekaliga to Lake Cypress. This canal cut off the tortuous chan nel, now called Dead River, and greatly shortened the length of time to ship goods southward from Kissimmee City, which was founded as a result of the company’s efforts. The city of Southport, where the canal leaves Lake Tohopekaliga, was founded within a year of the canal being opened, so much had the level of the big lake fallen. Narcoosee and Runnymede were also founded on reclaimed land in the area and settled by English colonists.
Most importantly for the direct future of Florida was the establishment of the St. Cloud Sugar Plantation. Because Pat Dodson has written so well on this topic, I will only summarize its accomplishments here. After the reclamation of some of the land near Southport, an experimental patch of 20 acres of sugar cane were planted there in land that was covered with muck and two to three feet of water the year before. The results, monitored by Captain Clay
Johnson and John W. Bryan for Mr. Disston, were astonishing. Rufus E. Rose, Clay Johnson’s brother-in-law, and later State Chemist, began planting on a larger scale. Disston, in 1887, per sonally bought half interest in the St. Cloud Sugar Plantation and increased its capital so as to allow the planting of 1,800 acres. The result was a record harvest and yield, higher than any recorded in the United States to that time. Disston soon brought down contractors to erect a sugar-mill, costing nearly $350,000. The mill had a capacity of producing 372 tons per day, much above the average of 200 tons elsewhere. The sugar produced by the plant, in spite of the lack of sophisticated machinery, was excellent and profitable. Congress, in 1890, to aid in the domestic production of sugar, helped the enterprise along by paying a bounty of 2 cents per pound. As Dodson noted: “Influenced by the bounty, advice from sugar experts, and by increasing consumer demand for sugar, Disston took in more associates, and reorganized the plantation under the name of the Florida Sugar Manufacturing Company. It was capitalized at a $1,000,000, and an additional 36,000 acres were added to the holdings.” Financially, this investment did not pan out well, even though the production was high. The panic of 1893 played a role in the loss in this investment, but, more importantly, the bounty so gratuitously given by Congress in 1890, was removed in 1894 by the Cleveland administration. With late 1894 and early 1895 came the freezes that so destroyed the citrus industry, and with it, land prices, upon which the whole operation depended, became ridiculously low. Although things picked up in 1895, it was not sustained long enough for Hamilton Disston to realize any major profit before his death in April of the following year.42
42This is a quick summarization of Pat Dodson’s article, “Hamilton Disston’s St. Cloud Sugar Plantation, 1887-1901,” Florida Historical Quarterly 49 (April 1971), 357-369.
Other problems had an impact on the whole scheme of the drainage and land sales. For the drainage project, the problem existed of the amount of land actually reclaimed and deeded to the company. In spite of two very favorable inspections by state appointed engineers, the legislature, in 1885-86 ordered an investigation into the claims of the company and the commission appointed by the Governor found the company had exaggerated its reclamation efforts and that it was not entitled to all of the lands it claimed as a result of its efforts. The political nature of this commission can be seen in the appointment of J. J. Daniel, of Jacksonville, a highly skilled surveyor and attorney, who forthrightly
Faces on the Frontier
wrote to Governor Perry, informing him that as a president of a railroad company, with interests, as an attor ney, in other such firms, he was technically not qualified to be on the commission according to law. The Governor overlooked these problems and appointed him, along with J. Davidson of Escambia County and Col. John Bradford of Leon County, as commissioner. 43 Indicative of the tenor of the investigation, Daniel wrote to Perry:
Dear Gov. After consultation with my associates, I write to say that we do not consider any of the lands lying South of the section line which runs two miles North of and parallel to the township line between townships 27 and 28 South, as reclaimed by the work of the drainage company. There are lands within the drainage district North of this line around Lake Gentry and Alligator Lake and in the water-shed of Reedy Creek which have not been effected by the lowering of the waters of Tohopekaliga La… we have not carefully examined the lands around Lake Rosalie and Walk-in-theWater and it may be that there has been a partial reclamation effected here, though from the examination we made below, that is around Tiger Lake, we are not disposed to thing that the waters of Rosalie and Walk-in-theWater can have been very materially reduced.44
43Florida State Archives. Record Group 593, Series 665, Carton, Letter of December 4, 1885. Daniel to Perry.
44 Ibid , Letter of March 23, 1886. Daniel to Perry.
Although later reports from Daniel indicated that the drainage had some impact on the removal of water from the land in the northern area, the company was forced to reconvey some lands already deeded to it and modify some of its operations in order to reach the magic 200,000 acres required by the drainage contract. Throughout the ordeal, Disston and his engineer, James Kreamer, maintained that the company had done exactly as it claimed. 45
45 Ibid , Folder 2. Letter of June 19, 1886. Disston to John A. Henderson.
By March of 1889, Kreamer was reporting to Governor Fleming that the progress was becoming more rapid and that many of the promised canals had been dredged. His report of progress listed the following canals
as being totally or par tially complete by December of 1888: The Cross Prairie Canal, the Southport Canal, the canal connecting Lake Cypress to Lake Hatchineha, the connector between Hatchineha and Lake Kissimmee, the improvement of Tiger Creek and Rosalie Creek (called “Cow Path” in the report), improvements in the Kissimmee River itself, the canal between Lake Okeechobee and Hicpochee, the Hicpochee to Lake Flirt canal, and the canal from Lake Hicpochee southward into the Ever glades. Also included in this report is the additional canal into the upper Caloosa hatchee River and some improvements in this river’s channel. Finally, there is the widening of the Southport canal to a width of 106 feet. 46 There is ample evidence that, in addition to lowering the levels of Lakes Tohopekaliga, East Lake Tohopekaliga, Lake Cypress and some of the smaller lakes to the east of this group, that the level of Lake Hatchineha was reduced. Enough of this lake was lowered to expose an area known as Live Oak Island, on the northeastern shore of the lake, approximately 182 acres in area, not counting the marsh. 47
46 Ibid , Letter of March 5, 1889. Kreamer to Fleming.
47See a series of letters in Volumes 20-22 in the Miscellaneous Letters to Surveyor General. Land Records and Title Section. For the acreages involved here, see the Official Plat of Township 28 South, Range 29 East, surveyed by William H. Macy, January 16, 1897.
In 1893, as required by law, the Trustees issued another “Official Report… To the Legislature of Florida Relative to the Drainage Operations of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast and Okeechobee Land Company.” This report noted that, up to 1893, the company had been conveyed 1,174,943.06 acres of land. It stated that the canals mentioned in Kreamer’s 1889 report had been deepened and snagged, thus facilitating more outflow of water from the land. This report also recognized the newer canals in the northern area to Lake Hart and from that waterbody to the Econlochatchee River. Finally, it claimed that the level of the great Lake Okeechobee had been lowered four and one half feet below its normal level at the time the contract was entered into. All in all, the report was very favorable to the company’s interest and promised little trouble in the future deeding of lands under the old drainage contract.48
48“Official Report of the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund to the Legis lature of Florida Relative to the Drainage Operations of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast Canal and Okeechobee Land Company, 1893” (Tallahassee: Tallahassean Book
Faces on the Frontier
and Job Office, 1893). It is worth noting that the lowering of the Lake Okeechobee by four and one half feet, via this operation, would be greatly disputed today, as it was in the years immediately preceding Governor Broward’s great effort.
As for the settlement portion of Disston’s work in Florida, one has only to look at the map around the drainage contract to see the towns of Narcoosee, Run nymede, St. Cloud, Southport and the city of Kissimmee to note the growth of this area. However, less publicized, though just as important, was the development of Tarpon Springs, Gulfport, Anclote, and other cities in modern Pinellas County to see an even greater effect on the growth of Florida. The main impetus to the growth of this vital area was through the Lake Butler Villa Company, another of the many Disston land companies. According to Gertrude K. Stoughton’s Tarpon Springs, Florida: The Early Years , Disston and former Arizona governor, Anson P. K. Safford, were looking for a place from which to make a resort. James Hope, son of Anclote pioneer and U. S. Deputy Surveyor, Sam Hope, acted as their guide. Upon reaching Spring Bayou, the two immediately agreed that they had found their spot. So thinking, the Florida Land and Improvement Company was assigned title to about 70,000 acres of land in the vicinity, of which is soon transferred most of it to the Lake Butler Villa Company, of which Safford was the president. Disston also had agents looking further down the Pinellas Peninsula for additional opportunities. They settled upon the land that soon would be called “Disston City,” today’s Gulfport. Tarpon Springs flourished under the guidance of Safford and Mathew R. Marks, another experienced real estate man, who made a name for himself in Orange County before migrating west. Disston City, on the other hand, suffered greatly when Demens ended the Orange Belt Railway in St. Petersburg, named for the Russian’s home town. 49 Thus, two very important areas in the State of Florida owe their very existence to the efforts of Hamilton Disston.
49See Gertrude K. Stoughton, Tarpon Springs, Florida: The Early Years (Tarpon Springs: Tarpon Springs Area Historical Society, 1975, Second Edition) and Parry, Full Steam Ahead , 23-24.
Also owing much to the Disston heritage is the Florida sugar industry. Although some sugar has almost always been grown in Florida since Spanish times, Disston’s experiments in St. Cloud and the surrounding area proved the potential for the exploitation of the land for the growth of sugar. Also
experi mented with in this vicinity was rice. A separate company was founded to exploit this crop’s potential also, but it was fairly short-lived compared to sugar. 50 Like other Floridians, he experimented in a variety of crops, including oranges and tobacco. 51 This latter would seem to be a natural product for the heavy cigar smoking Disston. His drainage idea inspired many to do the same with their lands and helped to bring about a whole new way of looking at swamp lands.
50 The Tropical Sun , (West Palm Beach/Juno) April 1, 1891 and June 10, 1891. It was reported in this latter article that 15,000 acres was rented for four years at a rent of $600,000. The firm was known as the Kissimmee Rice Manufacturing Company.
51 Florida Times-Union , January 21, 1886. It was reported that Disston had 56,000 young orange trees planted in a grove on East Lake Tohopekaliga. For the tobacco story, see Florida Times-Union , December 4, 1895.
Little more needs to be said about his immigration schemes. He was success ful in helping to bring a number of English settlers to Central Florida, where their heritage lives on today. He also brought in Italian laborers to work on the dredges in the early years of the drainage project. At one point, as a humanitarian gesture, he offered forty acres of land to each of fifty Jewish families displaced by the recent Russian pogroms who were stranded in Philadelphia. 52 The exact number of immigrants he brought to Florida is impossible to guess, but it was substantial.
52South Florida Journal, March 9, 1882. He wrote the offer in an open letter to Mayor King.
Hamilton Disston was a complex man, like any of us. However, there has been a persistent story that needs further examination, and that is the alleged suicide of this active and vital man. The main sources of the story, and there are only two cited, are; one, the Democratic newspaper of Philadelphia, and; two, the oral testi mony of a nephew who barely knew “uncle Ham,” but stated that it was the family secret. Upon examination, one should remember the times in which this newspa per story was written; the age of “yellow journalism,” William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Remember, also, that Hamilton Disston was a large and regular contributor to the Republican Party, who also had, at times, some political ambitions of his own. Additionally, we should not forget that he was close to Matt Quay,
the hated Republican “Boss” of the United States Senate, from Pennsylva nia. The nephew’s statement can be seen, in some circles, as hearsay. The alleged cause of the suicide was the supposed losses by the Disston firm during the Panic of 1893-94 and the coming due of a $1,000,000 note drawn on the family busi ness.
The facts of the case do not lead to a conclusion of suicide, especially since there were no eye-witnesses and the coroner’s official report, recognized by all, reads that he died by natural causes, probably a weakened heart, i.e. a heart-attack. The “Father of Business History,” Alfred Chandler, in his book on Land Titles and Fraud, noted, on page 493, that he was acquainted with Hamilton Disston and that he died of a heart-attack, while at home. If the obituary in the May 1, 1896, edi tion of the Florida Times-Union is typical, the newspapers reported that, “Heart disease was the supposed cause of his death.” How could only one newspaper get the story right, when a coroner, a friend and all of the other newspaper organizations in the country reported his death incorrectly?
Given the Victorian era’s fondness for protocol, the funeral of Hamilton Diss ton has a place in this story. If someone of the stature of Mr. Disston had commit ted suicide, it is doubtful that any truly notable individuals would have attended the funeral. Employees of the deceased would hardly have been permitted by the company to attend such an affair either. In the case of Hamilton Disston’s funeral the attendee list reads like the Philadelphia social directory and included Mayor Warwick, P. A. Widener, William Elkins, Thomas Dolan, State Senator Charles Porter, Governor Hastings of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Mathew Quay, District Attorney George Graham, etc. The Atlanta Constitutions listing, from which this is taken, noted that some were honorary pallbearers and those that were actual pallbearers. This newspaper’s May 5, 1896 account also restates the cause of the death as heart disease. During this era one does not attract attention to the death-by-suicide by having such notables attend the services along with over one thousand of the workers from the family-owned factory.
What of the charge of near bankruptcy caused by the Panic of 189394? Yes, the Disston works did reduce wages by 10 per cent during the middle of the panic, however, the company was on sound enough ground that by
May 23, 1895, they had restored the lost percentage and the firms business had increased 12 percent from April of 1894 to April of 1895. 53 On April 4, 1896, the Disston firm announced in the New York Times, “Value of annual product, $2,500,000. Our foreign trade is 20 per cent of our total business. Our output is 20 per cent greater that six years ago.” This would hardly put a business out of commission. Finally, there is the will of Hamilton Disston. This document, as recorded in the New York Times of May 9, 1896, stated that: “In the petition filed by the executors the value of the estate is given as 'over $100,000,' but it is thought that it will amount to several million dollars when the heavy insurance Mr. Disston carried is included.” The “income” from the will and its enjoyment was to go to all the chil dren, until his son reached his thirtieth year, when he could then take his full one -third share. His wife was to get most of the material goods (house, horses, car riages, etc.) and enjoy all of the other income until her demise, when it would residuary estate. Fully one-third of the real estate, except that in Florida, was to go to the wife during her natural life time. This is not a document of a poor, destitute man, driven to the brink and beyond by a $1,000,000 note due on his invest ments. It is interesting to observe that his Florida holdings are excluded from his personal will. The answer why this is so can be no simpler than the fact that cor porations, under law, are treated as separate, corporal bodies, with lives of their own. With Disston’s friends in the financial and political worlds, there are few questions to be raised as to whether or not he could have won an extension, refi nancing, etc. of this note. The entire scenario of a financially distraught, no place to turn man, bent on suicide, simply does not fit the available evidence at this time. The newspaper account of the suicide in a bath tub is much too melodra matic. The whole repetition of the story smacks of another “Seward’s Folly” myth of American history.
53 New York Times , May 23, 1895, 1.
In summation, Florida lost a good friend when Hamilton Disston passed from this world. This was recognized by his contemporaries. In its editorial for May 1, 1896, the day after Disston died, the Florida Times-Union , stated: Floridians will read the news of the sudden death of Hamilton Disston with a feeling of genuine regret. He did wonders for the advancement of Florida’s interests and the devel opment of her products. He can be classed as one of Florida’s best friends.” Kiss immee, St. Cloud, Narcoosee, Tarpon Springs,
Gulfport, Runnymede, Fort Myers, LaBelle, Moore Haven, etc. all owe a debt of gratitude to Hamilton Disston. The great attempt to rescue Florida from the swamps, mosquitoes and alligators, and make it a showcase of civilization is the legacy of Disston’s Florida efforts. With out his leading the way, how long would the State have to await one like him: a Flagler, Chipley, Plant, all followed his lead and made their own marks upon the landscape. There may be those who chide these remarks and look at the environ mental damage done by his and succeeding generations, however, they take the man out of his time, and thrust upon him a knowledge he did not have or have a chance to acquire. Without him, many who now criticize, would never have migrated to the Sunshine State and stayed away, wondering how anyone but the brave Seminoles could live in the land of swamps and alligators.
Next Month …
CONCLUSION
Joe Knetsch has published over 170 articles and given over 130 papers on the history of Florida. He is the author of Florida's Seminole Wars: 1817-1858 and he has edited two additional books. Faces on the Frontier: Florida Surveyors and Developers in 19th Century Florida is a history of the evolution of surveying public lands in Florida and traces the problems associated with any new frontier through the personalities of the majort historical figures of the period. As the historian for the Division of State Lands, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, he is often called to give expert witness testimony involving land titles and navigable waterways issues.
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ARCHIVES FROM THE
SCENES IN A SURVEYOR’S LIFE ; OR
A
RECORD OF HARDSHIPS AND DANGERS ENCOUNTERED. AND AMUSING SCENES WHICH OCCURRED, IN
THE
Operations of a Party of Surveyors IN SOUTH FLORIDA .
By W. L. PERRY.
JACKSONVILLE:
C. DREW'S BOOK AND JOB PRINTING OFFICE 1859.
CHAPTER XVI
ON arriving at camp Saturday noon, as stated in the preceding chapter, the Captain was very much surprised to find, by a report from Smith, that there remained but five days ’ rations. As we had to move our encampment into another township to the westward, the Captain concluded to do so that afternoon, which he had intended to devote to writing up his papers, so as to start the team early Monday morning to Fort Capron for supplies.
The move was effected, and we spent the Sabbath very quietly by a large lake, where a deep creek emptied into it.
Early Monday morning Smith was started with the team to Fort Capron, with orders to make all possible haste, as we should be entirely without provisions in four days ’ time. Soon after the wagon started in one direction, the Captain and men shouldered what provisions were left, for a few days tramp on the work in another, leaving me alone at the camp to work at the tailoring business, I being the only man in camp gifted with any talent in that line.
The best and only pair of pants I possessed were entirely worn off at the kness, presenting, at those two extremities, an exceedingly tasseled and frilled appearance, and leaving exposed, from there down, a pair of legs no little streaked and torn by briars and saw-palmetto. Tap ’ s was nearly in the same condition, and I was left, as above stated, to manufacture for him and myself, each, a pair of pants from six yards of tow cloth we had on hand.
Accordingly, soon after the boys had all gone, I set about the work,—first on the pair designed for myself. Spreading a blanket on
the ground under the pleasant shade of a live-oak tree, to be used as a table, I pulled off the old and ragged pair to use as a pattern, and soon had the new ones cut out and all ready for the needle. When this was done, instead of putting on the old ones again, as I should have done, I sat down in the cool shade, went to sewing, and was soon lost in intensity of application to the work to all objects apart from it. How long I had remained so I cannot tell, but was awakened from my dreamy state at last by a strong odor of burning cotton.
On turning towards the tent, imagine my feelings on beholding all one side of it enveloped in flames. I immediately threw down my work, without a thought for its safety, seized the tent cloth, and at one surge tore it from all its fastenings, and ran with it to the lake, where I soon had it sunk under the water, and the fire, of course, effectually “ outed. ” I then returned to see to the safety of the various articles which had been covered by the tent, among which, and uppermost in mind, were all the papers connected with the survey, knowing their loss would be ruinous.
With some difficulty, I saved them, with nearly everything in the tent, but when I returned to my work it was not there. My old pants, which I had taken off to cut by, my new ones, together with the cloth to make Tap ’ s new ones out of, were all burned up. I could have wept as I sat on the end of a log pensively gazing on the little heap of ashes, now all that remained of my last pair of breeches; but, being always a philosopher in time of trouble, I bethought me of the old proverb which says: “ It ’ s useless to cry over spilt milk, ” (burnt breeches,) and I became resigned to the loss.
The only garment I now possessed on the face of the earth was a hickory shirt, and as I was then in a neighborhood where clothes couldn ’ t be borrowed, the reader may easily imagine the figure I cut for some time after this sore loss.
Late in the evening of the fourth day, the Captain and company returned to the camp, having eaten up all their provisions, expecting to find Smith there with a fresh supply, but in this they were mistaken. Smith had not come.
There still remained a small quantity of flour and a few beans, the latter of which, with a portion of the former, we cooked and ate for supper, and went to sleep with the confident belief that Smith would
arrive, at farthest, against noon the next day. Next morning, rather than breakfast on bread alone, made without salt or grease, we concluded to await the arrival of Smith before eating any more. Dinner and supper time came and went, and still no Smith. Hunger now forced us to cook the little remaining flour, which was made into a small cake, and cut into as many pieces as there were persons to divide it among. This done, that there might be justice all around, and no room for complaint or grumbling, (for among a parcel of hungry men, in an emergency like this, a square inch of bread is of immense importance,) the Captain took the tin plate on which it was placed, and telling me to turn my back toward him, took one of the pieces in his hand and, asked:
“ Who shall have this piece? ”
“ Sile, ” I answered, and he came up and received it.
“ And who shall have this? ” continued the Captain.
“ Tap, ” I replied, and Tap got it.
And so we went on until each was supplied with a portion of the unsalted, unshortened and unleavened bread, as equally divided as could be made by the eye alone.
The following morning the Captain took the boys and went out to run a line or two not far from the camp, telling me that they would be back against twelve o ’ clock, and if Smith came I must have a big dinner cooked, and that if he didn ’ t come, I must make some shift for something to eat, or we would starve if anything had happened to the team. What that “ shift ” was going to be, I could not tell. Smith had the gun, and we couldn ’ t kill the game; the hooks were all lost or broken, and we couldn ’ t catch fish,—what could be done?
After turning the matter over for some time, I made up my mind that our dependence was upon the invention of some plan to catch fish from the neighboring creek, and fortunately having a line, I set about it as follows: procuring a piece of hickory stick about one and a half inches in length, I cut a small niche all around in the centre, in which I tied the line, and then whittled off each end, or nearly so, and with this sort of tackle proceeded to the creek. After a long search I caught a frog with which I baited the stick-hook, and throwing it into the water quietly awaited the result. I had not to wait long before I felt a heavy
nibble, and on drawing the line found I had a very large catfish, which I succeeded in bringing to shore. He had swallowed the frog and with it the stick, and when I pulled on the line, the later being tied in the middle, turned crosswire in his stomach and held him securely.
Having in this way caught as many as desired, I returned to the camp, and removing the entrails, covered them up in the ashes to roast. When the men returned at noon, such a bait of catfish roasted without salt, as was eaten, is seldom witnessed.
The Captain now becoming alarmed at the protracted absence of Smith, took Sile with him and set out to see if he could get any tidings of him. He may have been attacked by the half hostile Indians, then roaming over the country.
After two and a half days travel, with nothing to eat save a few palmetto buds and whortleberries, as they could spare the time to gather them, the Captain and Sile arrived safely at Fort Capron, though hungry and weak, finding the wagon there, but Smith gone. The latter had left four days before in search of the ponies and mules, which had strayed off, and nothing had been heard of him since. Taking first a good supper and a good night ’ s sleep, they then took Smith ’ s trail to follow him up. Fortunately, and to the great relief of the Captain, they had only proceeded a few hour ’ s walk, when they met the object of their search returning with the horses. Knowing our condition, the Captain lost no time in coming with the load of provisions to our relief. When they arrived they found those of us who had remained at the camp faring sumptuously on roasted cat and mudfish, (this being the only kind we could catch with the new fashioned hook,) without a particle of salt, and in health and strength, feeling none the worse for it.
The first few days this kind of fare was a bitter pill, but the more we partook of it the better we liked it, and at the end of the eight days we had all become fond of it, and felt that we could have lived months on the same, with no particular desire for better. •
Past Presidents
1956 - 1957
H.O. Peters
1960 - 1961
Hugh A. Binyon
1964 - 1965
James A. Thigpenn, III
1957 - 1958
C.
1961 - 1962
Russell H. DeGrove
1965 - 1966
Harold A. Schuler, Jr.
1958 - 1959
P. Goggin
1962 - 1963
Perry C. McGriff
1966 - 1967
Shields E. Clark
1959 - 1960
1963 - 1964
Carl E. Johnson
1967 - 1968
Maurice E. Berry
Harry
Schwebke
John
R.H. Jones
Past Presidents
1968 - 1969
C. Hart
1972 - 1973
Broward P. Davis
1976 - 1977
Robert S. Harris
1969 - 1970
1973 - 1974
E.R. (Ed) Brownell
1970 - 1971
1974 - 1975
E.W. (Gene) Stoner
1971 - 1972
1975 -1976
Lewis H. Kent
William G. Wallace, Jr. 1979 -1980
Robert W. Wigglesworth
William
Frank R. Shilling, Jr.
William V. Keith
James M. King
Past Presidents
1980 - 1981
Ben P. Blackburn
1984 - 1985
Buell H. Harper
1988 - 1989
Stephen G. Vrabel
1981 - 1982
William B. Thompson, III
1985 - 1986
H. Bruce Durden
1989 - 1990
W. Lamar Evers
1982 - 1983
John R. Gargis
1986 - 1987
Jan L. Skipper
1990 - 1991
Joseph S. Boggs
1983 - 1984
Robert A. Bannerman
1987 - 1988
Stephen M. Woods
1991 - 1992
Robert L. Graham
Past Presidents
1992 - 1993
D.
1995 - 1996
Thomas L.
1999 - 2000 Jack Breed
1993 - 1994
1996 - 1997
R.
- 1995
1997 - 1998
E.
1998 - 1999
Nicholas
Miller
Loren E. Mercer 1994 -
Robert D. Cross
Kent Green
Gordon
Niles, Jr.
Dennis
Blankenship
W. Lanier Mathews, II
Connor
Past Presidents
Stephen M. Gordon
Richard G. Powell
Michael J. Whitling 2007
Robert W. Jackson, Jr. 2008 -
Pablo Ferrari
Steve Stinson
Dan Ferrans 2011
Jeremiah Slaymaker
Ken Glass
Russell Hyatt
William Rowe 2003 -
David W. Schryver
Past Presidents
2015 - 2016
2019 - 2020
2016 - 2017
2020 - 2021
2017 - 2018
2021 - 2022
2018 - 2019
2022 - 2024
Lou Campanile, Jr.
Robert Strayer, Jr.
Dianne Collins
Don Elder
Hal Peters
Lou Campanile, Jr.
Howard Ehkme
Dale Bradshaw
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