UF00083645_00008.pdf

UF00083645_00008.txt

UF00083645_00008_pdf.txt

"YOUR GOVERNMENT" v- #16 FROM: Governor's Office
by Farris Bryant Tallahassee, Florida
Governor of Florida

THE CROSS FLORIDA BARGE CANAL

Almost a century and a half ago, in 1820, the Army Corps of
Engineers made a formal study of an idea to out a man-made canal
through the Florids.Peninsula linking the Gulf to the Atlantic.
Such a canal was envisioned as a boon to waterway commerce.

Only this year, no less than 28 proposed routes later, was
there a firm decision made to complete a Cross Florida Barge Canal,
and construction actually begun.

President Johnson broke ground on February 27, and dredging
began at each end of the 100 mile canal.

Work was started on the Gulf Coast near Yankeetown at the mouth
of the Hithlacoochee River. At the other end -- dredging began at
the St. Johns Locks site near Palatks.

Uhen the canal is completed, waterborne traffic will travel
from Jacksonville on the Atlantic, down the St. Johns River to
Palatka - than southwest in the dredged canal to the Gulf of
Mexico at Yankeetown.

This concept was approved by Congress in 1942, but before
construction could begin a reostudy had to be conducted. In 1961
this administration and Florida's Congressional Delegation
persuaded Congress to allocate $195,000 for that study.

He received another $205,000 in 1962 for pro-construction
planning.

Then, I went to Washington to confer with President Kennedy
in an effort to obtain the first actual construction funds for the
Cross Florida Barge Canal. I acted as Chairman of the Florida state
Board of Conservation in asking for $1 million.

In January, 1963, President Kennedy, in his budgetary request,
asked for and secured this money that led to our groundbreaking
this year.

We are now dredging with an additional $4 million from the
196h-65 fiscal federal budget, and Just recently, in September, I
made the presentation before the Bureau of the Budget for funds
covering fiscal year 196566.

The Barge Canal will provide a shipping shortcut that will
affect the economy nationally. It will interconnect the industrial
complexes of the eastern seaboard and those along the Gulf Coast --
Texas, Louisianna, and Alabama ~- and those of the mid-continental
v.5. along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

There are more than twenty-eight thousand miles of intra-
connected inland waterways east of the Rockey Mountains, and the Barge
Canal will enable Florida to transport her goods at rates that will
put her into competition with many northern producers heretofore not
considered to be competition.

The canal will bring to Florida: Oil, coal, minerals, chemicals,
grains. building materials, and other bulk materials. These are
commodities particularly suited for transportation on waterways. These
are commodities needed for the industrial development of Florida.

Dredging the Cross Florida Barge Canal will make some of the
finest hunting lands in the state easily accessible to the outdoorsman,
and provide miles of new water for pleasure boating and fishing.

A key to Florida's industrial future is economical transportation.
Barge transportation is a part of the answer to this requirement.
Industry goes where there is a balanced network of transportation --
including rail, highway freight, air, and water. All these
transportation mediums are essential to an industrial complex, and
mutually supporting.

If everything remains on schedule the Cross Florida Barge

Canal, for which so many have worked so hard, will be completed
in about seven years.

All but $13-1/2 million of the $158 million the Canal is
expected to cost will be supplied by the Federal Government. From

every viewpoint, this is a small price to pay for a "wonderway"
or this magnitude.




PAGE 1

---.-: e -:.. -. ..1 ---.-: -.1 ..