Landbridge West

This land was transformed twice. It was once part of the construction of the sea level Atlantic-Gulf Ship Canal, a major engineering feat in which men and machines moved about 13 million cubic yards of dirt. The workers earned $7.80 a week in 1935, and a rowdy entertainment district grew in Ocala where they drank and mingled before returning to the digging. The area is now being transformed again as Florida Park Service staff restore 1,000 acres of scrub habitat by removing invasive species and mimicking natural processes where workers once scraped the soil. As the habitat has been restored, native plants and animals have returned. Florida scrub-jays, driven away by habitat loss, now flourish here; because they live only in Florida, do not migrate, and rarely move more than a few miles from where they hatched, their habitat is crucial. After the Florida Park Service began restoring scrub on the greenway in 2004, scrub-jay populations quadrupled within a decade.

Liberty Triangle, Florida · United States