The Everglades Jetport Was Supposed To Be a World Wonder. Now It’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’
The government of Florida is proud of how quickly it built a new prison for immigrants. “Eight days, Mr. President,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis, grinning, as he stood next to President Donald Trump on the tarmac of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, which has been converted into a rapid deportation camp. Footage of the camp shared by conservative influencer Benny Johnson showed cages full of bunk beds inside a bare tent.
The airfield was originally designed for much greater things. Founded in the 1960s, the Everglades Jetport was slated to be the largest airport in the world and a hub for supersonic travel. Environmental concerns and the decline of the supersonic jet industry killed the jetport project; only one out of six planned runways was built, and the airport was converted into a training airfield. The final fate of the project—a place for jailing people over bureaucratic offenses—shows just how badly America’s political class has forgotten how to dream.
For all its problems, the Cold War was a time of optimism about the high-tech future to come. In the field of air travel, the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union were all working on supersonic passenger jets; the working assumption on both sides of the Atlantic was that almost all long-haul flights would be supersonic soon. New York and Los Angeles broke ground on airport expansion projects to accommodate supersonic jets. The problem, however, was that these flights caused loud, disruptive sonic booms, a nuisance for anyone living nearby.
Enter the Dade County Port Authority. Officials hoped that the Everglades would be an ideal trans-Atlantic flight hub, both far enough from Miami to avoid sonic booms over populated areas and close enough to service passengers from those areas. Planners envisioned a massive road and rail corridor running from the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf of Mexico throu
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