THE ADDISON/ ELLIS CANAL In 1911, Edgar W. Ellis and J.H. Beckwith put together a consortium of developers known as the Titusville Fruit and Farm Lands Company. They acquired 22,500 acres in the western portion of the old Delespine Grant with plans to drain marshland in the St. Johns River Valley, to make the land usable for agricultural purposes. By 1913, 43 miles of lateral canals had been dug and work began on the Addison/Ellis Canal, which led from Addison Creek to the outlying vegetable fields. The canal was intended to relieve flooding in the St. Johns River by diverting floodwaters to the lagoon and to transport supplies and crops from the St. Johns River to the Indian River Lagoon, ending at Addison Point. The company used the coquina rock extracted from the canal to pave roads to their fields. The marshland and sand ridges proved no problem for the equipment used, but a coquina rock ridge that runs north-south proved insurmountable, and the canal was never completed. The consortium went broke and the project was abandoned. The canal never reached a useful depth, and construction ended just east of the scrub/coquina ridge in Addison Creek. A FLORIDA HERITAGE SITE SPONSORED BY THE BREVARD COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION, THE BREVARD COUNTY TOURIST DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL AND THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF STATE - F-602 - 2007 Marker is located within the Enchanted Forest Nature Sanctuary off of SR 405, 1/4 mile west of U.S. 1.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 01:53:17 +0000
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