Long before the construction of the Tamiami Trail, avaricious developers and aspiring homesteaders were exploring and encouraging the possibility of draining the vast wetlands that comprised the center of our state from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.
These schemes and the men who set them in motion—from tycoon Henry Flagler to Governor Napoleon Broward—ultimately shaped the ecology and economy of Florida as a whole and set the stage for many of the challenges we currently face in both arenas.
Join Museum Manager Thomas Lockyear as he explores the impetus for some of these wrong-headed initiatives to transform “worthless swampland” into fertile soil and their parallels to present-day development.
