The Walking Dredge

The Walking Dredge. . , The first highway from Tampa to Miami, called the Tamiami Trail, was built in the 1920's. The "walking dredge” was a piece of specialized equipment used to dig a canal, which provided rock fill for the roadbed and drainage for the completed road., It could walk over rough, swampy or slippery ground and among close-cut stumps, where other types of earth excavators would find it difficult or impossible to work., Built in Bay City, Michigan, these dredges followed the drilling and blasting rigs, averaging 80 feet per 10 hour shift. , Camp on Wheels , Portable bunk houses followed close behind the workers, providing good food and shelter. Each worker carried a small fan made from saw palmetto fronds to swat the swarms of bugs during the day and slept in individual mosquito nets at night., Harsh, wet conditions caused painful foot irritations So most workers wore knee high, lacing leather boots without socks so their feet would dry faster. Despite the hard work and extreme climate, salaries ranged from only $75.00 to $150.00 a month., Drilling and Blasting , Once clearing had been accomplished, holes were drilled into the ground and filled with dynamite, in order to blast the limestone into chunks small enough for the dredges to lift. By the fall of 1926 Barron Collier had spent more than one million dollars on the Tamiami Trail but still had 31 miles of trail remaining, which required 2,584,000 sticks of dynamite to complete. If placed end to end, the dynamite would have stretched from Tampa, Florida to San Francisco, California. , (photo captions, top to bottom) , - Camp on Wheels , - Drilling Holes for Blasting , - Tamiami Trail Builders , - The Walking Dredge , - Tamiami Trail 1927