While we have spent plenty of time discussing the high-tech failures of the Cold War and the “toddler” logic of modern AI, politicians tried to “drain the swamp” and literally “pave the Everglades” of Florida in the 19th century.
#TalesFromTheGrid is about not just one thing at this point. It started as a surreal thought experiment regarding absurdity (AI, algorithms, technology, or rodents who accidentally went to medical school.
Born in that weird, vulnerable moment between being awake and asleep, this set of texts explores dream logic, surrealism, and the absurd. But sometimes, this series features #MoreTrueFacts, which are very real stories about actual recorded human history—like the time we parachuted beavers into Idaho. Welcome to the facts, folks!
#MoreTrueFacts: Paving the Everglades
“Paving the Everglades,” perfectly captures the ultimate symbol of Florida’s long, and often disastrous, history of fighting against its own geography.
The belief was always that the Everglades was a useless, dangerous wasteland that simply needed to be “drained and claimed” by superior human engineering.
The Grand, Impossible Vision
The desire to tame the Glades started in the late 1800s. The idea was simple: water was the enemy. If you removed the water, you were left with thousands of acres of incredibly fertile muck—the perfect foundation for a massive, state-spanning agricultural empire.
In 1904, Florida’s Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward (yes, the one the county is named after) made “Draining the Everglades” the central plank of his platform. His plan was straightforward:
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Cut massive canals from Lake Okeechobee straight to the Atlantic Ocean.
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The water would drain out.
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Investors would arrive with checkbooks.
He was so confident that his campaign slogan was, “We will pave a path for progress!” which, given what we know now, is chillingly accurate.
Where it All Went Wrong
Broward’s plan was built on fundamental scientific ignorance. He was trying to drain an entire river of grass without understanding that the river was the engine.
The initial project failed spectacularly for three main reasons:
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The Peat Problem: When the Everglades water was removed, the ancient peat and muck soils—which had taken thousands of years to build up—suddenly hit the air. They started to oxidize and vanish. The ground itself was quite literally evaporating.
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The Water Works: They successfully built the canals, but the Florida water table is a dynamic system. They didn’t just drain the swamp; they lower the freshwater table, allowing saltwater from the ocean to start seeping in. They were poised to ruin their own water supply.
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The Monster it Created: But the real problem, the one that truly defined “paving the Everglades,” was Lake Okeechobee. They thought of it as a tank they could empty. But a tank this size doesn’t empty; it overflows.
The engineers didn’t account for the power of a major tropical storm on that much water. In 1926 and 1928, massive hurricanes hit, pushing Lake Okeechobee over its banks. The floodwaters were devastating, killing thousands of people in communities that were only there because of the draining promise.
The Final Step to “Progress”
The tragedy of the 1920s led to the definitive “paved” moment: the creation of the Herbert Hoover Dike, a monolithic, 143-mile-long earthen wall that completely cut off Lake Okeechobee from its natural flow into the Everglades.
This dike was the engineering equivalent of sticking a plug in the state’s main freshwater drain. It “saved” the new farms south of the lake from flooding, but it began the slow, painful death of the Everglades to the south.
Which brings us back to the core #moretruefacts concept: Human hubris and technology can never, ever win against nature. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we stop breeding smarter raccoons by a millions of dollars accident.
