Marjorie Harris Carr

The plan was for the Cross Florida Barge Canal to cut a canal across the state from Jacksonville to the Gulf of Mexico, essential making it another Panama Canal. Construction began in 1964. Only two sections were built before work was halted due to environmentalists, the foremost being Marjorie Harris Carr (1915-1998). The two sections completed traverse this byway on SR 19 near Palatka. It was not until 1990 that a presidential bill was signed deauthorizing the building of the canal.

In 1991 the purpose of the canal was changed and it was named the Cross Florida State Recreation and Conservation Area. In 1998 it was renamed the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway in honor of the woman who led the fight to stop the canal.

Archie Carr (1909-1987), Marjorie’s husband, was also a connservationist. Archie was a professor at the University of Florida and often led his students on trips through the Ocala. Efforts are underway to restore the Archie Carr Cabin outside of Umatilla. This was the remote “Walden Pond” like location where Carr used to retreat to nature and the wilderness.

William Bartram

New England’s Henry David Thoreau and Walden Pond may be more famous, but Florida’s William Bartram and his Travels is every bit the equal. Whereas Thoreau’s observations were centeredon a cabin at a pond, Bartram’s observations were athered on an extensive trek through the southeast that included passage through remote parts of Florida’s rivers and forests.

William Bartram’s Travels was penned in the late 1700’s. When he met Ahaya the Cowkeeper, chief of the Alachua band of the Seminole tribe just north of the Ocala National Forest, the amused chief named Bartram Puc-puggee, the Flower Hunter. Bartram’s book was published in 1779 and was translated into almost every major European language. The Bartram Trail winds through FBBSB.

He was a remarkable adventurer who cataloged flowers in Florida and seven other states: North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. Today there are William Bartram websites and conferences; and the Bartram Trail has many local chapters in the Southeast and a series of historic markers mark his route.

There are four William Bartram Trail historic markers within the sites of the FBBSB (Volusia, Salt Springs, Palatka and one in Welaka near the Fort Gates Ferry).

William Bartram Video