Old Everglades Pump Station

Florida was one of our nation's last frontiers. As recently as the early 1900s, the southern interior was a vast and foreboding swampland, largely inaccessible. Efforts to tame the watery landscape took many twists and turns, guided by the needs and capabilities of the day.

The first drainage and navigation improvements began in the early 1930s, but efforts were slowed significantly by the Depression and by long cycles of drought broken by hurricanes.

In 1947, after years of drought, the state was deluged by rainfall averaging 100 inches along the lower east coast, almost twice the norm. Much of the ground was saturated when two hurricanes hit the state late in the year, and flooding throughout the region was devastating. Florida asked the federal government for a master plan to tame nature’s excesses. In 1948, the U.S. Congress adopted legislation creating the Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Project, the largest civil works project in the country. Construction began the next year and continued over 20 years as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the massive flood control plumbing system stretching from just south of Orlando to Florida Bay.

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