THE TAMIAMI TRAILBLAZERS Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields In sixty-nine I was fifteen and running down forty-one I dont know where Im running now, Im just running on My grandfather, W Stanley Hanson, was a Trailblazer. In April 1923, he and twenty-two other men, including two Indian guides (Assumahatchee and Cornapatchee), a commissary truck, ten Model T Fords, an Elcar, and a bottle of grape juice made a perilous three-week trip across the Everglades swampland. My dad, Stanley Jr., was only nine-years old but his father had taken him to the woods ever since he was a little boy, so he thought he was old enough for the trek. However, moments before the cavalcade left FM, my grandfather decided there were too many things that could go wrong so he sent his boy, my dad home to Monroe St. Seventy-five years after the Trailblazers crossed the Big Cypress Swamp and the Everglades, Amy Williams sat on my mom and dads porch and interviewed my father, asking him about his father and his role as a Trailblazer. After the first question, my father looked over at Amy and tearfully said, I wish theyd have never built that damn road. My grandfather, a trusted ally of the Seminole and Miccosukee Indians and an advocate for good roads recruited two Indian guides and joined the caravan. Hood-winked and played by Baron Collier, my grandfather shared his in-depth knowledge of the Big Cypress Swamp and the Glades with the others so they could find their way through the saw grass and across the swamp until they hit the west end of the grade that ran to Miami. It took em a lot longer than they thought it would, planes were sent out to find them and then drop them provisions, and northern news papers reported they had been eaten by a lost tribe. Little did they know that they had just opened Pandoras box and the consequences would be felt for the next hundred years. Believing the Trail would bring the traveling public to the Indians and they could sell their cultural arts, everything seemed fine. But he didnt realize that Colliers boys would build the road in such a way as to cut off the sheet flow of the surface water that drained south into Shark River and the Ten Thousand Islands. Cut off the surface water it did. And in the years before the damage was known, his friends among the Miccosukee Indians, Josie Billie, Ingram Billie, Cory Osceola and Wm McKinley Osceola built camps along the Trail at places with names like Royal Palm Hammock, established successful commercial camps. And now, today, the Florida Dept of Transportation has elevated portions of the Trail, explaining to an unknowing public that their effort would allow the surface water to flow to Shark River without any obstruction and begin a process of rehabilitating a biological system that had been invaded many years ago. Only problem is, as Collie Billie says, there is a canal along the north side of the elevated section of the Trail and the sheet flow aint gonna flow anywhere. No different than the surface water on the north side of Alligator Alley. Oh yea, the bottle of grape juice. Henry Ford had given it to Russel Kaye and instructed him to give it to Williams Jennings Bryan once they reached the grade west of Miami. After they ran out of food and water, the group decided to share the grape juice. Might have used it in their radiators but thats doubtful, the Indian guides knew that the air plants that attached themselves to the cypress trees had trumpets that were full of water. Natures way of keeping this vital resource available throughout the dry season. Thanks to the Indian guides, they used the water from the air plants to fill their radiators and quench their thirst. Otherwise, the three week trek might have lasted a lot longer, if they survived at all, and Fords bottle of grape juice would have made it to the other side, like the sheet flow should do.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 02:17:13 +0000
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