Now, That's a ...

A clue -- these usually aren't painted lavender.

It's the shovel bucket from a dragline, used in Florida to mine phosphate. It's hard to tell from this picture, but this shovel is really big. You could walk around in there. Draglines and shovels like this were a tremendous step forward in efficiency compared to the handheld shovels and wheelbarrows used when phosphate rock was discovered in Florida in the 1880s. At first, miners dug for river-pebble phosphate, but draglines let them pull off the oveburden and get to buried phosphate rock deposits more easily.

Florida phosphate is a major source of fertilizer for the nation and the world, and has been economically important to the state for over 100 years. Downsides to mining are primarily environmental, from the actual soil removal to energy and water use, to the slightly radioactive by-products stored in mountainous gypsum stacks. Most of Florida's phosphate comes from the Central Florida Phosphate District or Bone Valley, where the corners of Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, and Hardee counties meet.

This particular shovel can be found to the side of MOSI in Tampa. Yes, that's a red dinosaur in the background.

More Reading about Phosphate in Florida:

Phosphate Primer

Phosphate at the Crossroads

Mulberry Phosphate Museum

One Last Big Push for Phosphate Mining

Florida Mine Map (pdf)

Add Three Cans Cold Water and Stir

Before anyone figured out how to ship large volumes of fresh-squeezed juice long distances, growers struggled to market the seasonal and perishable orange. How could the market be expanded with new products or new ways of shipping, preserving, or packaging their product? Some fruit was sectioned and jarred, and in the 1930s, Dr. Phillips found a way to flash pasteurize canned juice to avoid the metallic taste. However, when juice was dried and powdered to reduce shipping volume, the good taste evaporated as well.

During World War II, the United States government turned to orange juice as a source of Vitamin C for troops in Europe. In what Gary Mormino calls “Florida’s equivalent of the Manhattan Project,” scientists devised the “cutback process” where full-strength juice and fruit oils added to evaporated juice yielded satisfactorily tasty frozen concentrates.

After World War II, Americans fell in love with technology and the wonders of modern science. Prosperity and growth put new freezers in family kitchens; innovations in food processing filled those freezers with frozen food products including frozen orange juice concentrate.

Frozen orange juice concentrate was easy, convenient, predictable, nutritional, and became a common household item. Its popularity dramatically changed Florida’s citrus industry as grove owners shifted from growing fruit to be eaten fresh to growing juice oranges. Large corporate growers such as Minute Maid and Tropicana took the place of small, independent growers. Recent challenges for juice producers are competition from Brazil, citrus canker, popularity of low-carb diets, and development.

(For anyone interested in the story of Florida oranges and the people who grow them, I highly recommend John McPhee’s Oranges. Actually, I highly recommended this book even if oranges make you break out in a rash, and it’s only 150 pages, so give it try.)

Factoid: In 1967 orange juice became the official state beverage.