The Lakeland Evening Telegram

RECLAIMING THE EVERGLADES.

The following very sensible article in the Saturday Evening Post sums up the situation with great accuracy:

"The Everglades of Florida are going the way of that Great American desert whose waste aridity was described in the school geographies of our fathers: but the transformation is much more rapid. Lake Okechobee—the largest body of fresh water, except Lake Michigan, within the boundaries of the United States—is twenty-one feet above sea level. It has low, marshy banks on the south, and during the rainy season it overflows, flooding the 'glades. Florida is digging five main canals, each fifty feet wide, from the lake to tidewater. When completed—a year from next summer—these canals will lower the level of the lake four feet, preventing its overflow, and thus reclaim a large part of the Everglades. When lowered, the lake will still cover half a million acres to a depth of three feet—a great reservoir from which water will be let into the canals and impounded by gates and locks for irrigation purposes as needed during the dry season. The soil of the Everglades is muck, two to fourteen feet in depth. The climate, of course, is subtropical, with frost almost unknown. It is an admirable scheme, the practical value of which, we believe, is not questioned by any one competent to speak. It should be understood, however, that the Everglades will not be ready for cultivation when the State's job is done. Lateral canals and farm ditches must still be constructed by the land owners. This work is not very expensive, but takes some time. It should also be understood that anybody who buys land in the Everglades with his eyes shut is liable to the same disappointment which awaits a blind investor in the frosty north."