Maritime Heritage Background
Most were side-wheel steamboats, which were more powerful and maneuverable than stern-wheelers. The naval stores industry was based on back-breaking work to collect pine sap, which fell drop by drop into containers attached to tree trunks below cuts in the bark.
During the Civil War, salt was Florida’s primary contribution to the Confederate States’ economy, and the industry was centered in the Big Bend.
Think about the environment Keeping rivers open to traffic by barges has its price. Fifty years of dredging the Apalachicola River channel has damaged 25 miles of riverbank and left scores of sloughs and stream mouths buried in sand. This has resulted in a decline in fish populations.
|
|
|
© Florida Foresight All rights reserved. |
Steamboats first visited the Big Bend in 1829, and they remained a vital mode of travel until the turn of the century. They transported cotton, timber, naval stores, and other commodities down the Suwannee, St. Marks, and Apalachicola rivers to coastal towns. 
These products were taken by shallow-draft vessels called lighters to ships anchored offshore, which carried them to national and international ports. Between 1828 and 1861, 64 steamboats listed Apalachicola—the third largest port on the Gulf—as their home. 
Wooden sailing ships relied on naval stores―which included resin, tar, turpentine, lumber, and cordage―for their construction and maintenance. 
Large and small production efforts arose along the miles of flat coastline and marshes. Salt works in Taylor County produced 1,500 bushels of salt a day, which sold for $12.50 a bushel. 
In 1855, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company began operations in Cedar Key. Trees in Big Bend forests were cut and dragged by oxen to the Gulf, then rafted down the coast to Cedar Key. 
They were processed into pencils and moved by rail to Fernandina for shipment to New York. 
