Florida Fiber Company

In 1890 Duncan U. Fletcher purchased 1,300 acres of land at Middle River near present-day Fort Lauderdale from the Florida Coast Line Canal & Transportation Company. He deeded this land to his Florida Fiber Company, which started a plantation there to cultivate sisal hemp. The Company was based in Jacksonville and was the idea of businessman Jacob R. Kuchler. The Expedition party visited the Middle River plantation on April 13 in the company of C.G. Phillips, whom they had met while at the Fort Lauderdale House of Refuge at New River. The plantation was on west bank of Middle River, about two miles northwest of the House of Refuge. Phillips took the group on a tour, and the texts describe the land, the crops and the buildings in good detail. The efforts of the Fiber Company were highly publicized for a few years, but the project to create a sisal hemp industry ultimately failed. By the end of the 1890s the company had halted its sisal hemp operations and was instead attempting to sell off its lands to investors. In 1910, the company sold its last real estate in the region.

Name Variations:

• Florida Fibre Co.
• Florida Hemp Co.

Credits:

• "Sisal Plantation at New River," Illustration by Carlton T. Chapman in "Subtropical Florida," by Charles Richards Dodge, Scribner's Magazine, Volume 15, 1894

Sources:

• "The Florida Fiber Company: Duncan U. Fletcher and the Middle River Enterprise," by Rodney E. Dillon, Jr. and Joe Knetsch, Broward Legacy, Vol 21., No. 3-4, 1998
• "Duncan U. Fletcher," Wikipedia.org
• "Subtropical Florida" Scribner's Magazine, Volume 15, 1894

References in the Texts:

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• April 13, Wednesday

For other topics referenced in the Expedition texts, please refer to the Index to Subjects and Names.
1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition : Three Digital Texts, 2015