ALLIGATOR ALLEY NOW A MEMORY

Alligator Alley is history.

After seven years of construction, the two-lane Alley, best known for alligators, the Everglades and bloody head-on crashes, has disappeared beneath the last link of Interstate 75.

This month, workers will finish fencing the four-lane superhighway, and the $189 million, 75.2-mile widening project will officially end.

For years, travelers dreaded the drive between Florida’s coasts on the dark and desolate two-lane road through the Everglades.

Today, drivers can go from Gulf Coast to Gold Coast in under two hours.

“It’s a beautiful highway now,” said Florida Highway Patrol Capt. Richard Rossman, who was a young trooper in Broward County when Alligator Alley opened in 1969.

“A lot of people didn’t like it because it was so desolate,” Rossman said. “There was nothing but swamp, sawgrass and wildlife there. If you broke down or got into a crash, you were in trouble. You were a long way from help.”

The American Automobile Association began warning motorists and tourists not to use Alligator Alley shortly after it opened. The warning continued until last December.

With the interstate’s four lanes, 88-foot-wide grassy median and wide shoulders, the Alley crashes that killed 53 people during the past four years and more than 100 in the past decade are likely to become a footnote.

In the early years, accidents were not that frequent because so few people used the road, Rossman said. Instead, troopers got calls about tourists who were bitten by snakes or about motorists involved in a collision with hapless gators trying to cross the road.

If there was a wreck, or if a car broke down, the only way to get help was to have passing drivers notify workers at the toll booth once they reached the end of the Alley.

“It was definitely old Florida,” Rossman said. “Right out in the Everglades. We couldn’t envision then how they could build a road across the wilderness. You would never have envisioned a four-lane superhighway.”

Although Rossman and most drivers are happy to see the Alley gone, some say the interstate has swallowed a piece of old Florida and shut out those who savored its pristine beauty.

Widening the Alley into an interstate is certain to bring more travelers into the Everglades. That worries James McManus, 37, of Gloucester, Mass., who traveled across the Alley last week to visit the Big Cypress Preserve.

“So they’re going to open it up and make it a tourist boom,” McManus said. “Then I’m glad I’m here now. Anywhere there are people, there’s damage to the ecology. It’s going to spoil it.

“There’s not a protected acre anywhere in the world,” he said. “Pretty soon they’ll start building hotels and gas stations out here. They’ll start digging and building and polluting. . . . Look at the fence.”

Beer cans and trash litter the bases of the 6-foot chain-link fences put up to seal off I-75 from the swamp and the canals beside the road.

Gaping holes have been cut in the fence by fishermen who travel for miles to the Alley’s canals ripe with catfish and bass.

Fishermen, froggers and airboaters are supposed to use the interstate recreational areas – a parking lot with a boat ramp. Signs warn that the fish are contaminated with mercury.

John Crafton, 54, and Nate Poole, 55, are native Floridians who have fished the Alley for years. They found a dirt path off the highway, where someone had peeled back the fence, and a quiet spot to cast their lines.

“The fish are still here,” Crafton said. “We don’t worry about the mercury. We don’t care if the fish have Mercury, a Cadillac or a Ford. If it’s on a pole, we’ll eat it.”

For anglers, the interstate is an intruder, but for others – motorists and wildlife alike – it is a lifesaver.

Last year, as the new lanes began to open, the number of crash fatalities plummeted.

The fences have spared deer, panthers and alligators. They can cross under the highway. There are 36 tunnels for wildlife.

Some things on the Alley will never change.

Tourists still park on the shoulder to gawk at alligators sunning on the canal banks. Blue herons and snowy egrets soar over the sawgrass prairies. Waterfowl feed from the canals.

Despite the blue-and-white I-75 signs, few will ever call the Alley by another name.

“On our maps, we’re now showing it as an extension of I-75,” said John Swartchick of AAA. “But in small red type below, we haven’t changed the name.

“It will always be Alligator Alley.”

Originally Published: March 7, 1993 at 5:00 AM EST