Florida's Caloosahatchee River
Crucial to Florida for centuries - Required knowledge if you're interested Florida's history
This is a map of the Caloosahatchee River in SW Florida. It extends from the west coast at Ft. Myers for about 67 miles eastward to Lake Okeechobee. Named after the Calusa people, sometimes spelled “Caloosa” in the past, the river has long been an important feature in the state’s geography.
This map comes from an article titled , “Altering the Calloosahatchee For Land and Water Development". The article does a great job showing how the river has changed since pre-Columbian times.
The river today has a big impact on the Gulf of Mexico, as run-off from agriculture has resulted in damaging red-tides in recent years. I’ll mention more about this at the end of this post.
The article describes how the river used to have a wandering, curving course. An area near the eastern end, Lake Flirt, which doesn’t exit today, fed the river. Lake Flirt, in turn, was filled by overflow from Lake Okeechobee during wet seasons. Several months back, I visited the Ortona Indian Mound Park located a few miles northeast of Lake Flirt
Early Calusas built a canal from the lake to Turkey Creek. The Calusas built several canals throughout their lands such as those at Naples and Pine Island. The Ortona canal is gone now, but when you go there, you can see the low area where it once was.
The Calloosahatchee was clearly an important corridor for travel for the Calusas, and I have included it in several key scenes in my upcoming historical fiction novel Shame of Kings. The Calusas had influence over much of south Florida, and there are many reports of people traveling on the river, so it makes sense to me that the Calusas used the river.
Today, the Calloosahatchee is straighter than it was when Calusas dominated the area. Boats cross the state from the Gulf to the Atlantic by following the Calloosahatchee, across Lake Okeechobee, and the St. Lucie Canal near Stuart. This route, called The Okeechobee Waterway includes several locks in the Calloosahatchee.
This waterway, while a benefit, it also the source of environmental hazards to the State’s coasts. Before the 20th century, Lake Okeechobee would regularly overflow its banks, filling Lake Flirt and sending water southward and eventually forming the Everglades.
Everything changed when the area was struck by a hurricane in 1926. Major flooding occurred, killing over 2000 people and even more cattle. As a result, the U.S. Government tasked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the Herbert Hoover Dike around the perimeter of the lake. At 140 miles long and with an average height of 30 feet, the dike blocks most of the southern flow of water, and the little water that is released is controlled. The dike was also built to prevent flooding of the extensive sugar cane fields south of the lake.
Today, high water levels in Lake Okeechobee are routed west through the Caloosahatchee River, and east, through the St. Lucie Canal. Problem occur because these routes also carry high concentrations of fertilizers from the adjacent farmlands. When these concentrations reach the coasts, they cause algae blooms and bigger problems like Red Tides to occur, killing many fish and making it hard for people to breath.
I’ve experienced Red Tides up near Cocoa Beach, and they are terrible. You can’t go outside without coughing.
I am sure the Calusas and other Native Americans would have been happy to know when hurricanes were approaching, but I also think it would have been nice to paddle on the Caloosahatchee River as nature created it without passing through man-made locks.
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