Industry
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At the end of the 19th century, prospectors and entrepreneurs flocked to Dunnellon, 10 miles east of here, to mine phosphate, a valuable ingredient in fertilizer, and in just five years Dunnellon transformed from a sleepy farming village to a boom town. Phosphate mining had far-reaching environmental consequences as piles of mining waste changed the area's terrain, and steamships clogged the Withlacoochee River on their way to the Gulf of Mexico to meet seagoing freighters. Intensive mining operations demanded electricity, so the Florida Power Corporation built a hydroelectric dam here in 1909. The dam stopped up the Withlacoochee River, creating a 3,500-acre body of water today known as Lake Rousseau, and it was replaced in the 1960s during the construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal.
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