Many of you are aware that there is a fence across the Wakulla River several miles south of the springs which allow the river to flow and manatees and fish to transit the river, but prevents boat access into the park.

The presence of this fence for decades has had the effect of creating one of Florida’s rare nature preserves where wildlife exist with very little contact with man or their boats, even canoes.  The park presently restricts boat traffic below the point where the tour boats makes the turn back up the river, except for two wildlife surveys.  These surveys are conducted by canoe only two times a year in that area and on the lower part of the river, otherwise the area and wildlife are left undisturbed.  Why is it that the FPS can close a river that is a popular canoeing and kayaking destination on the lower portions?  Here is the story.

Edward Ball, the Trustee of the Jessie I DuPont Foundation and president of the St. Joe Paper Company purchased the property around the springs and lands along the river to the south in the 1930s.  At some point, Ball erected a fence across the river to prevent boat traffic from coming into the springs-effectively shutting off the river to human impact.  As his attraction grew, he created channels in the river for the “jungle cruise” that took tourists on trips along the river the upper portion.  These channels are what we use today for the tours.

In 1971 Thomas A. Morrill sued Ed Ball and the Florida Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund arguing that Ball had illegally kept the public from accessing the river.  The argument was made that the river from the fence to the springs was navigable and that the public had a right to access.  Morrill wanted the fence removed.  He lost the case in 2nd Circuit Court when the court ruled that the river was not navigable.  Ball’s attorney argued that the river, prior to Ball’s efforts to dredge a channel for the tour boats was not navigable because of the shallow nature of the waterway.  An early court case before the Supreme Court of Florida defined navigability as the condition of a stream that allows the commercial transport of products which are produced along its banks.   This common interpretation of the navigability has not generally included canoeing and kayaking unless used for commerce and trade.  At any rate, Ball convinced the court that the shallow, upper stretches of the river were not navigable and that just because he made portions navigable at his cost, that action did not make the stream legally navigable.  (OK, a lawyer might confuse you even more).  The Board of Trustees and Morrill then joined together to appeal the court’s decision to the 1st District Court of Appeals which upheld the judge’s decision on October 11, 1974 by denying to hear the appeal.  So Ed Ball got to keep the fence.

Twelve years later in 1986 the state purchases Wakulla Springs.  When that happened, many residents in Wakulla County and the surrounding area believed that the state would then open the river when it became a state park.  However in an effort to preserve the integrity of the protected portion of the river, the FPS kept the area closed to boat traffic in a sort of ironic turn of events since the Trustees had aided in an appeal in the Morrill suit in an attempt pursue control of the river bottom.

Today the fence is still maintained across the river which effectively has been closed now for over 70 years.  The wildlife flourish without significant interference with man.  Examples of the impact are numbers from the annual wildlife count in the winter of 2010.  During that time 20 alligators were sighted above the fence and only two below.  Twenty-eight lesser scaups were sighted in the sanctuary and none below and 380 American coots were above the fence and 14 below.  In the 2008 summer survey 41 white ibis were found above the fence and 9 below and 29 anhinga above and 5 below.

So the FPS inherited the legacy of a land and ownership rights dispute which allowed one man to establish a wildlife sanctuary which then became a state park.  Some stories around Ball’s fence have claimed that it was just Ball’s political power that protected the river, while that might be; it was a long standing legal principle that settled the affair and helped preserve this beautiful river.

PS. Thanks to Sarah Warner of State Lands for the copy of the court case and Brian Fugate for getting me a photo of the fence and the wildlife counts.

Phillip A. Werndli
Assistant Chief
(Historic Resources Administrator)
Bureau of Natural and Cultural Resources
Florida Park Service

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