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| day 14 Thursday, January 27, 2000 Tamiami Trail, Collier-Seminole State Park Leaving the camp, I spent a long time looking at the Walking Dredge. Monument-ized, last of its kind, built in 1926 for the construction of the Tamiami Trail. A masterpiece in its way of mechanical engineering. Two diesel-driven cylinders, pistons driving two great iron flywheels. A bewilderment of cable drums and pulleys, levers and articulated arms. Toothed maw of the bucket in front. The feet were made of rafts of railroad ties: four at the corners and two at the center. It stalked the marshy ground, 80 feet of progress in a 10 hour shift. Standing on the center feet to lift the corners, then standing on the corners, moving the center 10 feet at a step. They blasted the limestone using 2.5 million sticks of dynamite. The dredge moved material from the canal it created to the roadway they built. In one of those curious statistics, they calculated that the dynamite, laid end to end, would reach from Miami to San Francisco. The bunkhouses and supplies for the workers rolled behind on the road they were building. It was a great bite across the body of the ‘glades. It was like the ritual scarification practiced by the native people. Coming of Age rites...for young women as well as men in some tribes (according to Douglas)...included splinters inserted under the skin and lit afire, to prove endurance. The Trail opened those secret huge vistas to the eyes
of the world. |
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Everglades Poems
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