Kennedy gave the go-ahead in 1963 the next year, President Lyndon Johnson ceremoniously set off the explosives that once again launched the sputtering project. Amid national security fears and pressure for job creation, President John F. Support was sporadic, and the plans went nowhere for some time. The beginnings of construction were underway by 1935, but rising environmental concerns and lack of funding stalled completion.Ĭongress again authorized the construction of the canal in July 1942. Roosevelt approved a $5 million allocation of federal funds for the project,” wrote Florida Historical Society executive director Ben Brotemarkle in a 2015 Florida Today article.
As part of his New Deal program, President Franklin D. “With the Great Depression of the 1930s, construction began on the Cross Florida Barge Canal as a way to stimulate the economy and provide jobs. But the strategic and economic advantages that would be offered by such a path were never forgotten. Johns to a point just about Tampa Bay a map made by Juan de la Puente in 1768 plainly shows a channel across the peninsula.” Of course, such maps were wrong.ĭream as they might, eventually all these explorers discovered that there is no easy, natural route across the state. One map dated around 1594 shows rather imperfectly the water course across northern Florida… ‘A New and Accurate Map of East and West Florida Drawn from the Best Authorities,’ published in the London Magazine, March 1765, outlines a waterway from the St. Bennett’s October 1966 Florida Historical Quarterly article “Early History of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal.” “Several mapmakers supported this theory of a Florida waterway. Johns on the Gulf, according to Charles E. Johns and the west coast of Florida looking for a rumored second mouth of the St. Because the more than 1,300 miles of coastline add considerable time to the journey-not to mention the threat of pirates, coral reefs and bad weather with which to contend along the way-a shorter trip could forever change shipping across the Southeast.Īfter capturing Fort Caroline, commander Pedro Menéndez de Avilés explored the St. A more efficient route to move goods to and from the Atlantic was a dream of many a would-be tycoon. Since Europeans first discovered and inhabited La Florida, men have searched for a way to avoid sailing around the peninsula to reach the Gulf of Mexico.
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