The subject of long and acrimonious debate, this attempt to build a canal across the Florida peninsula began in the 1930s and finally expired in 1990. Although it receives little attention today, the Cross-Florida Barge Canal stands as a landmark because it was one of the early cases in which the Army Corps of Engineers, whose primary mission has traditionally been to re-design and alter natural waterways, yielded to environmental pressure. The canal's stated purpose, aside from bringing public works funding to the state, was to shorten the shipping distances from the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico by bypassing the long water route around the tip of Florida. Rerouting barge traffic would also bring commerce into Florida, directing trade and transshipment operations through Floridian hands. An additional supporting argument that persisted into the 1980s was that the existing sea route brought American commerce...