Egans Creek History
Egans Creek Greenway is located on the northern portion of Amelia Island. The island is one of the southernmost of the Sea Islands, a chain of barrier islands that stretch along the east coast of the United States from South Carolina to Florida.
Egans Creek’s headwaters, defined as the upper stream which flows into another body of water, lie in the center of the island that meander north into a delta that opens into the Amelia River not far from the St. Marys River. Saltwater flows on tides south into the Egans Creek basin, mixing with fresh water flowing from the island’s interior. The fresh water sources are surface water runoff and surface groundwater.
Egans Creek is located in an area of lower elevation within Amelia Island where the water table lies much closer to the surface than in the surrounding flatwoods and narrow forests. Egans Creek runs south to north for more than a mile through the center of the island.
Egans Creek was historically an inland tidal marsh whose mouth entered the Amelia River protected by the northern portion of Amelia Island in what is now Fort Clinch State Park area.
Amelia Island has been subjected to many man-made changes from the time the first jetties were installed in the St. Marys channel in the 1850s and the building of Fort Clinch during the Civil War.
According to interviews with long time local residents, the tidal floodgate was originally located at North 14th Street circa 1937 near where the present bridge exists. The tidal floodgate was installed by developers who planned to create a large lake within the Egans Creek Basin which would have served as an amenity for a development. In the 1950s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removed and relocated the tidal floodgate to Atlantic Avenue, restricting tidal flow to the south.
Due to the construction of the paper mills and the population growth in Fernandina Beach, available freshwater was significantly depleted on Amelia Island. It is believed that the tidal floodgate was installed to control saltwater intrusion into the shallow and deeper ground water wells, which had been developed to serve the Fernandina Beach area. At some point, the gate became nonfunctional, restricting not only saltwater flow to the south but also freshwater flow to the north.
Prior to the construction of the tidal floodgate, during high tide the saltwater typically went as far south as where Sadler Road crosses the historic marsh. Historic aerials from 1943 showed the extent of the salt marsh within Egans Creek.
Egans Creek was channelized in the late 1950s by the Amelia Island Mosquito Control District, converting the meandering stream into a north-south canal. Damage occurred to the Egans Creek basin during the channelization and construction of mosquito control ditches. The purpose of these mosquito ditches was to eliminate mosquito larvae that hatched in pockets of fresh water in marshy land areas. The ditches allowed tidal flooding from adjacent salt marshes, theoretically, eliminating the mosquito larvae dependent on fresh water that collected in the marshy areas. The ditches may have significantly altered the movement, distribution and quality of water of Egans Creek’s floodplain and adjacent narrow forest.
Over time, the creek itself has become increasingly isolated from the influence of saltwater. The wetland areas within Egans Creek succeeded into a monoculture red maple forest from several decades of segmentation from roadway crossing construction causing reduced flow connection and reduction of saltwater influence.