necting Lake Okeechobee. The death of Mr. Disston eventually
caused the suspension of this attempt.

Therefore drainage efforts meandered along slowly until
Everglades Drainage District was created in 1905, when it received
enough impetus to produce some results.

In 1929 the Okeechobee Flood Control District was created,
and now life was again injected. It had seemed a simple thing, in
theory, to cut auxiliary canals, to widen, deepen, and straighten the
natural ones, and so carry off the excess water from the lake in high
stages. But it was dismaying to find this ineffectual in practice. So
sluggish was the flow, particularly near the lake, that the canals could
not even rid themselves of the tenacious water hyacinths; one of the
worst problems of the marine engineer. Overtaxed by draining
inflow, and the rank growth of the hyacinths, the canals drew little
or no water from the lake.

The Lake Okeechobee Florida Project of 130, set to work to
widen, straighten, and deepen the St. Lucie and the Caloosahatchee
canals, the only effective outlets from the lake.

The inviting richness of the muck for miles around the lake
for years had lured farmers into planting, taking the chance of an
overflow. Today, the lives and property of these inhabitants are
protected by a lake under control by the canals, locks, dams,
spillways, and levees that have been constructed.