Okeechobee Waterway
canal in Florida, United States of America
The Okeechobee Waterway or Okeechobee Canal is a relatively shallow artificial waterway in the United States, stretching across Florida from Fort Myers on the west coast to Stuart on Florida's east coast. The waterway can support tows such as barges or private vessels up to 50 feet (15 metres) wide x 250 feet (76 metres) long which draw less than 10 feet (3.0 metres), as parts of the system, especially the locks may have low water depths of just ten feet. The system of channels runs through Lake Okeechobee and consists of the Caloosahatchee River to the west of the lake and the St. Lucie Canal east of the lake.
Geologically and geographically, the canal splits the southern part of the Florida Peninsula from the mainland.
History
It was built/finished in 1937 to provide a water route across Florida, allowing boats to pass east–west across the state rather than traveling the long route around the southern end of the state and through The Florida Keys.
Management
Lake Okeechobee and the Okeechobee Waterway Project is part of the complex water-management system known as the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project. The projects cover 16,000 square miles (41,000 km2) starting just south of Orlando and extending southward through the Kissimmee River Basin to the Everglades National Park to Florida Bay.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages five locks and dams along the Okeechobee Waterway.
Locks and dams
St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Okeechobee Waterway” as canal in Florida, United States of America. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7081903. VIAF identifies the subject as 315131329. The Library of Congress control number is sh91000522. Authority coordinates are 26.806, -81.113. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Okeechobee Waterway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.