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The following year, 1924, the Florida State Road Department officially recognized the project. The Legislature incorporated the Tamiami Trail as part of the State Highway System and assumed the responsibility for completing it. The job began with surveyors and rod men clearing the right-of-way, working breast-deep in the swamp. After them came the drillers, blasting their way through more than ninety miles of hard rock under the muck. Ox carts were used to haul dynamite. When bogged down, men would shoulder the explosives and
By 1923, with vast sums expended,
several workmen dead from
drowning or dynamite explosions,
and little progress made, south
Florida residents seemed ready
to give up. Then in the spring of
1923, a group of public-spirited
citizens calling themselves "The
Tamiami Trailblazers" set out to
rekindle the Tamiami fire. In a
dramatic attempt to revive interest,
a trail blazing expedition of ten cars filled with twenty-three white men and two Indian guides made a perilous three-week trip across the Everglades swampland. They proved that the route of the proposed Tamiami Trail was feasible, opened the way for land development, captured the imagination of the public with their exploit, and reaffirmed the need for "Florida's Greatest Road Building Achievement."
In the meantime, the State legislature carved out Collier and Hendry counties from the southern portion of Lee County. In 1923, the newly founded Collier County floated
$350,000 in bonds to continue building the cross-state highway. The Collier Company provided men, equipment and supplies. It vowed not to build a swamp road on brush mats, to construct instead a hard-surfaced automobile highway ballasted on rock. Under the mire and much of this section was Florida limestone, which, when blasted
could be dug out and piled up to form a base for the Tamiami Trail.