Alligator Alley Florida

Where is Alligator Alley?

Alligator Alley (I-75) is one of the major east-west highways that cross South Florida. Driving east to west along Alligator Alley, one travels through the populated Naples area with its manicured golf courses, Big Cypress Swamp’s wilderness, and the sawgrass marshes of Water Conservation Area 3, which extends to eastern Ft Lauderdale.

Along the Alligator Alley, you may see wading birds in flight and at rest, and yes, alligators are along the canal banks adjacent to the highway. Take the time, step out from behind the vehicle window and see some of the alligators and sawgrass marshes found along Alligator Alley.

What road is known as Alligator Alley?

The marsh of Water Conservation Area 3 leaving Ft Lauderdale, driving to Naples, seems east-west. But because I-75 starts down in Miami from the south and ends north near Ocala, it is considered north and southbound when crossing Alligator Alley.

Heading north on I-75 Alligator Alley, from Ft Lauderdale, there are many recreation areas along the way. Which are on the Google maps located below? Coots are swimming along with the dense plants, a vast sawgrass expanse of Water Conservation Area 3 (WCA-3). Sawgrass is the most abundant plant in the Everglades’ “River of Grass.” It grows 100 miles north and south from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico and 50 – 70 miles east to west.

Can you turn around on Alligator Alley?

A newly built recreation area along I-75(Alligator Alley), located about mile marker 35, provides viewing areas of the marshland that makes up Water Conservation Area 3 and is one of the only locations with restroom facilities, snack machines, and boat ramps. Although there is “no fuel” at this location, there are picnic areas with pavilions that make the Alligator Alley journey much more enjoyable.

What is there to do in Alligator Alley?

• Everglades Nat’l Park Boat Tours
• Everglades National Park
• Fakahatchee Strand Preserve Park
• Shark Valley Tram Road
• Everglades Safari Park
• Wooten’s Everglades Airboat
• Big Cypress National Preserve

How much does Alligator Alley cost?

Alligator Alley was initially built as a two-lane toll freeway connecting the two coasts of Florida and has since become a popular recreational area, extending east-west as an extension of Interstate 75. It is still a toll road, but now a four-lane freeway. Automobile drivers started paying $2.50 to cross, and now it is as high as $17.00 with a boat tow. Before completing its re-engineering, Alligator Alley was signed as State Road 84; it is now I-75, but it still has a concurrency with SR 84 designation. The I-75 designation, I-75, and SR 84 split again in Naples.

Why is it called Alligator Alley?

The AAA thought up the name of Alligator Alley to express supreme contempt for a road which it said was “designed with a flagrant disregard for essential safety; that didn’t happen to where its proponents said it would go, and that charged a toll besides.”

The AAA plan to route its membership away from the road was announced in mid-August 1966’s the director of public relations said the organization opposed toll roads and fought the construction of the Alley since it was first conceived. The AAA joined the then Miami Mayor, Robert King High, and the City of Miami to block the road, going to the Supreme Court. But the effort was of no avail. The Alligator Alley argument set the city against the city. It became a factor in politics. 

In the state election, some gubernatorial and other candidates seek to get on the opposition bandwagon for publicity purposes and attract the Dade County vote. The argument for and against, and the hard feelings engendered. Among some of the then-controlling Democratic officeholders and office-seekers contributed in part to Florida’s first Republican governor’s election since the days of Reconstruction.

Alligator Alley is the most controversial road ever built in Florida. Never in Florida history had so many favored building a road, nor so many battled to prevent its construction, reported the Associated Press.

The City of Miami fought it bitterly. Tampa, St. Petersburg, and other more northern west coast metropolitan areas wanted the existing Tamiami Trail to be widened and improved. Newspapers of different communities already had their east coast-west coast connecting highways opposed.

The AAA went so far as to issue a unique Anti-Alligator Alley tabloid newspaper in which it reprinted much of the acrimonious argument denigrating the route. In it, it quoted the Miami News: “Appropriate tag for Everglades Expressway, after Road Board’s approving action: ‘Chickee Quickee.’

A Miami News cartoon had a cross-eyed Road Runner labeled “the State Road Department,” standing by its offspring, an odorous little skunk hatching out of an egg — labeled “‘Glades Parkway Road Plan.”

“The State Road Department’s OK of the Pike,” the AAA charged, “swamps public opinion.” The paper continued: “The national AAA joins swamp pike fight.” Under a Toronto, Canada, dateline: “The proposed two-lane toll road across the wilderness of Florida’s Everglades came under sizzling condemnation here (Toronto) at the Annual Convention of the AAA and its affiliate, the Canadian Association. The National Convention condemned the pledging of state gasoline tax revenues paid by highway users to guarantee payment of principal and interest on toll road bonds.”

The Everglades road was dubbed: “Spurnpike,” “Shunpike,” “Narrow Gauge Tollway,” and “Death Row.”

It reprinted Florida newspaper headlines: St Petersburg Times: “A Bond Risk We Can’t Take;” Bradenton Call: “Expensive Drag Strip;” Manatee County Call: “That Turnpike Again;” Miami Herald: “A Few Curves in the Spurnpike;” Tampa Tribune: “Slow Down That Railroad;” Miami Daily News: “What’s Going On In Tallahassee? Time to Bury Swamp Pike;” St. Petersburg Times: “Where’s Bonding Protection?” The Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “Alligator Alley!” and the Fort Lauderdale News: “Model T Type Road.”

In 1968 the Seminole Tribe of Florida, in recognition of his forty-five years as a friend of the Indians, gave Guy Stovall the title Chief Halpatah. Chief Allegator. O. E. “Sonny” White, the project engineer and a veteran State Road Department man, said the fifty or more men who worked on the problematic Alley construction did so by their own choice.

Hurricane and other high winds three times tipped over the two 45-foot steel towers set up so that the engineers could keep a straight line through a sixteen-mile tangent.

The Alligator Alley project began work on the first twenty-seven mile stretch on November 2, 1964. Cone Brothers contracted for the east portion for $5,500,000. R. H. Wright, Fort Lauderdale, was awarded the contract for a ten-mile piece from Naples eastward for $1,375,000. To build any section, required super-equipment and, frequently, supermen.

The solid crushed limerock base was scooped from below the muck and waterways of the adjacent canal. Big-scale demucking and embankment building required many, many workers. This work was indeed a modern-day miracle over a route where no white man had ever ventured before. The road proper started when massive draglines, walking on unique mats, inched their way out into the sawgrass to strip off the muck. Barges carrying dynamite drills floated in behind these draglines to blast out the lime rock of the ‘Glades floor. Other dredges cast the dynamited material out of the canal.

The rock was crushed from Alligator Alley, placed on the

roadbed, stabilized to form a compact base eight and a half inches thick, and then a binder material was placed on the road. Finally, the surface material on which the traffic rolls were placed.

An anonymous construction worker summed up the hazards of road-building. He wrote this prayer in an “Alley” outbuilding:

“Please, Lord, I’ve been a good man. So if I get cotton-mouth bit or attacked by some of Oscar the Alligator’s brothers, and if I get to that Big Job in the Sky, oh, please, Lord, let it be on dry land. Amen!”

Alligator Alley, the name the American Automobile Association used for the road, became official on August 19, 1966, when the State Road Board, meeting in Naples, adopted it. “Alley’s a good name,” said County Commission Chairman A. C. Hancock. “It’ll attract tourists.”

Controversy over the building of Alligator Alley began abating in the spring of 1966. The state, from the beginning, had ample right-of-way for four-laning as soon as traffic warranted. The highway surface was 24 feet, more expansive than either U.S. 27 or State Road 84, initially only 20 feet wide. The highway was twelve feet above sea level and seven feet higher than the ‘Glades’ adjacent water. Motorists, particularly those crossing the state in the early morning or late afternoon hours in winter and spring months, see a wide variety of bird and animal life.

Bridges every mile or two add to the scenic route and permit the uninterrupted natural flow of Everglades water southward from Lake Okeechobee. The western terminus is at the interchange of Radio Road, five miles from Naples and its beaches, shops, and hotels on the Gulf of Mexico.

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