CREATIVE LOAFING MAR. 06-12, 2025
VOL.38, NO.1O
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CLTAMPABAY.COM
GROUND ZERO Egmont Key is a bellwether for sea level rise in Florida. BY BE N MON TG OM ERY A N D T H E FLOR I DA T R I DE N T
In January 1898, a group of local visionaries and businessmen escorted 17 visiting Congressmen with their wives and daughters aboard the magnificent steamer "Olivette" on an excursion 30 miles out to beautiful Egmont Key, a 500-acre island in the mouth of Tampa Bay. The lawmakers, all members of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors, ate sandwiches and imbibed on “product” from nearby Florida Brewing, according to The Morning Tribune. As they rounded the alluring key in Gilded Age pomp, they would’ve seen the island’s plentiful housing, troops barracks and the new Gulf of Mexico-facing Fort Dade fortifications, which were built to withstand intense hurricanes and which many believed could
protect Tampa Bay from the world’s fiercest navies. When the "Olivette" stopped near the northern channel with the 86-foot-tall Egmont Key lighthouse at their backs, the local capitalists—with names like Plant, Sparkman and Macfarlane—spread out maps of the shallow 400-square-mile bay before them. They were joined by harbor pilots, captains who lived on Egmont Key and knew the PHOTO BY BEN MONTGOMERY bay bottoms better than anyone. establish a commercial trading The pilots “pointed out where the port at Tampa, a young Florida shoals were located and exactly city which boasted a population what is needed to give a depth of of around 15,000 people. water sufficient to accommodate Over the next 127 years, Port the vessels that would come to Tampa Bay would grow to be the Port Tampa.” largest and most diversified in The city fathers began to con- Florida, supporting more than vince their powerful visitors of the 192,000 jobs, with an economic need to dredge shipping lanes and impact of $34.6 billion. At the
same time, millions of humans moved an enormous amount of wealth and resources onto the coastal wetlands around Tampa Bay—hospitals, airports, highrise hotels, sports stadiums, banks, data centers, U.S. Central Command—calling it progress and maybe it was, but it was accompanied by haunting risk.
THE LITTLE ISLAND HELD LESSONS FOR THOSE MEN IN 1898, HAD THEY LOOKED. (READ MORE pg. 17)