Why Florida Wrapped Lake Okeechobee in a 143-Mile Dike

In September 1928, a Category 4 hurricane crossed Florida toward Lake Okeechobee, a lake bigger than New York City and Chicago combined but only nine feet deep on average. Its north winds shoved the shallow water against the south shore, rolled it over a levee of sand and muck only four or five feet high, and left farm towns like Belle Glade under more than twenty feet of water. Stronger levees came in the 1930s; after another flood in 1947, engineers decided to circle the whole lake. By the late 1960s the Herbert Hoover Dike ringed it for 143 miles, with gates and canals to let water out. Water still seeped through, so giant cutters built a buried wall inside it. Sources: • U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Herbert Hoover Dike history and rehabilitation (DVIDS, Jan 25, 2023) — https://www.dvidshub.net/news/437213 • NOAA AOML Hurricane Research Division, 90th anniversary of the Lake Okeechobee hurricane — https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hurricane_blog/90th-anniversary-of-lake-okeechobee-hurricane • ASDSO, Trench Cutting Remixing Deep (TRD) cutoff wall construction — https://damsafety.org/content/trench-cutting-remixing-deep-trd-method-vertically-mixed-place-cutoff-wall-construction