What coal mining is to Appalachian states, and gold and silver mining are to Rocky Mountain states, phosphate mining is to Florida.
Driving north on U.S. 17 to Bartow, the highway is lined with pastures or citrus groves or smatterings of agricultural-related businesses and small towns.
But west of downtown Bartow, along the 8-mile stretch between Bartow and Mulberry on State Road 60, a different landscape emerges, a landscape of 500-foot tall gravel-gray hills of phosphate ore and phosphogypsum, the waste from phosphate mining.
For Bartow, Mulberry and other Polk County residents, phosphate mining runs at least three generations deep. Mining companies have also been an integral part of southern Polk County -- known locally as Bone Valley.
But Bone Valley also extends south along the Peace River through Hardee County south into DeSoto County. Charlotte and DeSoto counties' own historical and economic roots were nourished by the growth of Florida's phosphate industry 100 years ago, making the industry a double-edged sword for the counties.
And what was, may soon be again.
The phosphate industry is making plans to move back south, down the Peace River Valley, and intensify its mining efforts in Hardee and DeSoto counties.
Boca Grande and Charlotte
Joggers and cyclists will soon be able to make their way south from State Road 776 to the Boca Grande Causeway on the Cape Haze Pioneer Trail. A similar pedestrian-bicycle path links the northern end of Gasparilla Island with downtown Boca Grande.
Those joggers and bicyclists -- as well as anglers dipping their lines from old trestles in El Jobean, Placida and Gasparilla Island -- owe a debt of gratitude to the phosphate industry.
The pedestrian-bicycle paths and fishing piers sit upon the old railroad bed for the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway, later known as the Seaboard Coast Line. The railroad to Boca Grande was first built in 1907.
Boca Grande's history is as tied up in phosphate as it is in mullet and other commercial fishing.
According to Patti Middleton, assistant curator at the Boca Grande Lighthouse Museum, the phosphate pier was constructed between 1909 and 1910. The pier, located at the southern tip of Gasparilla Island overlooking Boca Grande Pass, became operational in 1912. Phosphate was shipped out of Boca Grande until about 1980. The pier also included machinery to grind the phosphate to dust, so that enclosed trams would carry the phosphate to the holds of ships.
In "Florida's Phosphate Dilemma: An Historical Perspective," published by the Boca Grande Historical Society, Theodore B. VanItallie noted how in 1916, directors of the Boca Grande Land Co. named Burdett Loomis Jr., a manager of the Pierce Phosphate Co., as the manager overseeing the Hotel Boca Grande, built in 1911, and land development. The land company itself was an offshoot of the CH&N railroad.
In Lindsey Williams' and U.S. Cleveland's two-volume "Our Fascinating Past," Punta Gordans George Brown and Albert Dewey are described as building 70-foot barges to export phosphate ore from Punta Gorda.
Williams and Cleveland described how the barges hauled phosphate down the Peace River to Punta Gorda. According to their research, the Boca Grande pier had a "devastating" impact on the economy of Punta Gorda.
Digging into phosphate's past
Phosphate, a prime ingredient in fertilizers, is acquired by literally grinding Florida's paleontological past to dust.
VanItallie's research of the discovery of the value of phosphate to agriculture in the late 1700s, a time when English farmers ground bones into "bone manure" to fertilize their fields.
VanItallie wrote how scientists in the mid-1800s started looking at fossilized rock as a source of phosphate. England began mining for phosphate in the 1860s, and VanItallie identifies the Ashley River in North Carolina as the first site where phosphate-rich rock was mined in 1868.
And in 1881, the first "pebble phosphate" was first discovered along the Peace River.
"In 1881, Capt. J. Francis LeBaron, a chief engineer for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was surveying for the purpose of cutting a canal from the St. Johns River to the head waters of the Peace River," wrote Raymond L. Driver in his self-published history, "Bone Valley Comes to Life." "While surveying the Peace River, river pebble phosphate was found."
From that discovery, south of Fort Meade, an industry was built.
"In 1886, (John C. Jones and Capt. W.R. McKee) on a hunting trip along the Peace River found phosphate between Fort Meade and Charlotte Harbor," Driver wrote. The two men formed the Peace River Phosphate Co. and bought more than 48 miles of river bank. Phosphate companies began sprouting along the Peace River.
"In 1888, Capt. T.S. Moorehead, a mining engineer who had served under LeBaron, purchased the rights to mind sand bars in the Peace River," Driver wrote. "In May of 1888, Capt. Moorehead's company, the Arcadia Phosphate Co., sent 10 carloads of phosphate to (G.W.) Scott's fertilizer plant in Atlanta. In 1889, the Arcadia Phosphate Co. was the only plant commercially mining phosphate."
What the 1849 gold rush was to California, the phosphate mining "rush" was to Florida in the 1890s.
"Each train brought new prospectors, chemical testing kits, and tents to the open areas seeking the great find of new phosphate fields," Driver wrote. In 1891, 18 phosphate companies mined in DeSoto and Marion counties, but by the next year, more than 200 companies were mining Central Florida.
Life in the mining towns could be portrayed in a Clint Eastwood western.
"Saturday night fights were not peculiar to the early days in the phosphate area," Driver wrote of his hometown of Mulberry, located east of Bartow.
"As the larger companies took over the 'company towns,' the general manager of the parent company was usually responsible for the delegation of responsibility of upholding law and order," he wrote. The managers appointed the deputies, constables and town marshals to enforce the laws. In the late 1890s, public drunkenness was a common complaint, while gambling and killings were "the regular order of the day," according to Driver's research.
At the time of the phosphate rush, the price of land along the Peace River jumped from $1.25 an acre to $300 an acre in 1892. In wetlands, Driver described discoveries of phosphate deposits from 3 inches to no more than 3 feet, while drier lands produced deposits no deeper than 5 feet.
"The availability of phosphate so close to the surface was ideal for pick-and-shovel mining," Driver wrote.
According to Driver, Albertus DeVillers Vogt was among those who discovered extremely rich phosphate deposits in fossils near Dunnellon, southwest of Ocala in Marion County.
"In 1889, Vogt had found fossil deposits in a well that was being cleaned by a day laborer," Driver wrote, going on to describe how Vogt had the fossils tested for phosphate and how the discovery led to the creation of the Dunnellon Phosphate Co., which purchased 8,000 acres surrounding Vogt's property. Vogt himself earned the moniker "the Duke of Dunnellon" for the way he spent his newly found fortune.
According to Driver, nature helped the phosphate industry establish its dominant place in Polk and other Central Florida counties -- thanks to the worst recorded frost Central Floridians had seen.
"Phosphate became an economic giant for the area," Driver wrote. He also said, "The citrus left and moved south, and the phosphate stayed."
But the phosphate industry had other devastating impacts in Charlotte County's past.
Sun assistant city editor Bob Massey compiled a short history of phosphate industry in his 2001 article, "Phosphate Forever." Massey's article named two major phosphate spills in the Peace River:
* In April of 1920, Arcadian news reports described a phosphate "accident" that flooded the river with "mud and slush," killing thousands upon thousands of fish.
* In March 1967, a rupture of a Mobile Oil retention dike near Fort Meade killed millions of fish. It took two years for the Peace River to recover. At the time, experts estimated more than 2 million gallons of phosphate waste flowed down the rivers. The river swelled 5 feet over its banks with the waste.
The 1950s saw the first state efforts to "combat phosphate mining atrocities" in Charlotte, DeSoto, Hardee and Polk counties, the article states.
Residents began complaining about the spills occurring on a "regular basis" and the phosphate companies seeing no more than $500 fines. The University of Florida researchers found evidence that directly linked phosphate spills to fish kills in the Peace River.
One professor noted that 80 parts per million in the water is not harmful to fish. Unfortunately, the Peace River yielded a ratio of 1,500 parts per million.
Since then, the fight against economic damage by the phosphate industry has escalated on the local level. Charlotte County has taken the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to court over potential impacts of phosphate to the Peace River and its tributaries.
Hardee County has seen the strip mining for more than 25 years, but now county officials, worried about economic and environmental impacts to their county, are ready to stand up to the billion-dollar industry to save what remains of their county.
Through Hardee County the Peace River flows, and what can affect the river in Hardee can affect the river downstream where Charlotte, DeSoto and Sarasota counties and the city of North Port draw their water, and Charlotte Harbor sustains its life.
You can e-mail Steve Reilly at reilly@sun-herald.com
By STEVE REILLY
Staff Writer