Cutting Sebastian Inlet

Sebastian Inlet was cut for good in 1948, when surplus U.S. Navy demolitions blasted the last plug of sand, after settler attempts that went back to 1872 (Sebastian Inlet District).

Sebastian Inlet was cut by people, not storms. Florida State Parks describes Sebastian Inlet as a manmade cut through the barrier island, joining the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian River Lagoon east of Sebastian. The permanent opening dates from 1948, when Sebastian Inlet District commissioners and their helpers used surplus U.S. Navy demolitions to blow out the last sand plug. Every earlier channel, beginning with a hand-dug attempt in 1872, had closed again.

The path from first shovel to permanent channel took 76 years and three stages. Settlers dug and failed from 1872 to 1905. Brevard County residents then fought for a federal permit and a taxing body, winning the Sebastian Inlet District as a special district created by act of the Florida Legislature in 1919. Finally the district opened, lost and reopened the cut between 1923 and 1948.

At least six settler attempts to cut Sebastian Inlet were made between 1872 and 1905, beginning with Gibson's Cut, and every one filled with sand (Sebastian Inlet District).

The earliest documented digger was D.P. Gibson. The Sebastian Inlet District history says a U.S. Geodetic Survey map in its collection, drawn in the winter of 1880-81, already labels Gibson's Cut, and historians believe that first known attempt took place in 1872, ahead of Rev. Thomas New's try in 1881. The district's 2023 feature on the 1948 opening adds that Gibson attempted to cut a channel in 1872 and again in 1886. By 1905, there were at least six substantiated attempts to open a passage, each refilled by sand and storm almost as soon as it was dug.

The record is not consistent. The 1963 state marker titled Sebastian, on U.S. 1, says pioneers failed in 1886, that a channel was successfully cut in 1895 before a storm filled the inlet with sand, and that it was reopened in 1921. The district archive dates differ, which is why the 1872, 1918, 1923 and 1948 dates above follow the Sebastian Inlet District history.

Roy O. Couch, who reached Brevard County in 1905, turned digging into politics. In 1914, a petition was circulated asking for an appropriation of $1,200 to open an inlet, and 100 signatures were gathered and a delegation of 40 individuals from southern Brevard County presented it to the Brevard County Commission. In 1915 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers refused the War Department permit, objecting to an inlet at Sebastian because the Corps already had to keep the East Coast Canal dredged. The Corps insisted that for approval a local tax district would have to be created. A 1917 ballot measure for that district failed because north Brevard voters opposed it.

The 1918 cut at Sebastian Inlet was dug with a six-inch suction dredge under a short War Department permit, and sand filled it within about a year (Sebastian Inlet District).

The breakthrough came in spring 1918. On April 25, 1918, local residents in favor of an inlet formed the Sebastian Inlet Association, and the War Department answered two days later with a conditional permit. Its terms were harsh: the association had to remove shoals, a $10,000 bond was to be posted, and the permit would expire on December 31, 1918. Couch built a six-inch suction dredge and hired Charles W. Sembler to dredge the cut, and district photographs record first water flowing through the inlet and the first boat passing it in late 1918.

The 1918 cut at Sebastian Inlet did not last into the next year. The district history repeats a rumor that a night crew, sent by residents who wanted to protect grove, cattle and railroad interests, plugged the channel; whether by that crew or by the surf, it filled. With the permit expired, association board members were warned that work had to cease. Couch lobbied Senator Duncan Fletcher in Washington, and a new bill drawn so that its boundaries were amended to exclude northern Brevard County and those who had defeated the bill on the ballot passed and was signed by Governor Sidney Johnston Catts. On May 23, 1919, the Sebastian Inlet District was formed with a charter of maintaining the navigational channel.

Sebastian Inlet opened at its present location in June 1923, stayed open roughly 16 years, then closed in 1941 and stayed shut through World War II (Vero News).

On August 31, 1920, the District was granted a permit to dig which would remain valid until December 31, 1923. The district beat that deadline: in June 1923 Sebastian Inlet opened at the spot it occupies today, held by small jetties of coquina rock that Couch hauled with a converted Model T Ford. Vero News reported in 2019 that this opening started a 16-year run of the inlet being open, but running more north-south than the present-day inlet.

Keeping the 1923 channel open at Sebastian Inlet took money the district did not have. In 1938 commissioners Roy O. Couch and Albert VorKeller asked the federal Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors for help, and in 1939 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put $1,000 toward its dredge Congaree while the district paid $5,000. This channel maintenance dredging project removed an estimated 61,000 cubic yards of sand for total cost of $6,000.

Then the ocean and the war shut the inlet. A strong nor'easter closed Sebastian Inlet in 1941, and Vero News reported that it remained closed during World War II for fear of German U-boats entering the Indian River. The district gallery holds a 1944 photo showing the inlet with a 14-foot dune and tower, and the site was turned over to the U.S. Navy as an amphibious training ground for demolition squads.

After bulldozers failed in 1947, Sebastian Inlet District commissioners and helpers blasted the inlet open with surplus U.S. Navy demolitions in 1948, and it has stayed open since (Sebastian Inlet District).

Machines came first. The district feature says Couch, Harry Goode Sr., Jake Brannin and others spent months shuffling mountains of storm-tossed sand with bulldozers as they attempted to cut a fresh inlet channel at Sebastian Inlet in 1947, and the gallery shows excavators with an 18-inch pump, the dredge Summer Dade and floating dredge pipe. None of the bulldozed cuts held.

Explosives finished the job. Using surplus U.S. Navy demolitions left behind, Roy O. Couch, Harry C. Goode, Sr., Jake Brannin and others blasted the inlet open again in 1948, and the district history states that it has remained open ever since. A gallery photo dated October 1948 shows crews working the final plug of sand between the Indian River and the Atlantic.

The paperwork outlived the dynamite. District records show that in 1949 Brannin submitted a typed expense report for the 1948 Sebastian Inlet work, and it included more than 40 entries for beer, bourbon, lunches, dinners, whiskey and parties. Goode went on to serve on the Sebastian Inlet District Commission from 1948 to 1976. Vero News reported that the channel was realigned in 1965, configured more east-west as the State Road A1A bridge opened between Brevard and Indian River counties.

A permanent channel also redrew county lines and public land at Sebastian Inlet. The district history says the Sebastian Inlet Bridge opened on February 27, 1965, and that Brevard County, in return for help finishing the span and paving A1A on the south side, gave almost 3 miles of land south of the inlet to Indian River County. Six years later, in 1971, Sebastian Inlet State Park was established after the State of Florida acquired the land around the cut the year before, which put both banks of the 1948 channel in public hands.