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Ditch of Dreams: The Cross Florida Barge Canal and the Struggle for Florida's Future. By Steven Noll and David Tegeder. Florida History and Culture Series. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2009. Pp. [idi], 394. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8130-3406-5.)
In Ditch of Dreams: The Cross Florida Barge Canal and the Struggle for Florida's Future, Steven NoU and David Tegeder detail the difficult birth, convoluted life, and extremely drawn-out death of the Cross Florida Barge Canal project. Started in the 1930s and then again in the 1960s but never completed, the canal is portrayed by Noll and Tegeder as "the story of modem Florida," with lessons to tell about differing visions of land use, water and transportation poUcy, environmentalism, and politics in the United States (p. 7).
Ideas for a cross-Florida canal trace back to the British in the mid- 1700s, but funding awaited the New Deal, when the envisioned ship canal "offered a solution to...