Despite the sale of to Disston and the skyrocketing price of land, by the turn of the 20th century the IIF was bankrupt due to mismanagement.Douglas, p. 309. Legal battles ensued between the State of Florida and the railroad owners about who owned the rights to sell reclaimed land in the Everglades. In 1904 gubernatorial campaigning, the strongest candidate, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, made draining the Everglades a major plan. He called the future of south Florida the "Empire of the Everglades" and compared its potential to that of Holland and Egypt: "It would indeed be a commentary on the intelligence and energy of the State of Florida to confess that so simple an engineering feat as the drainage of a body of land above the sea was above their power", he wrote to voters.Douglas, p. 312. Soon after his election, he fulfilled his promise to "drain that abominable pestilence-ridden swamp"Carter, p. 78. and pushed the Florida legislature to form a group of commissioners to oversee reclamation of flooded lands. They began by taxing counties that would be affected by the drainage attempts, at 5 cents an acre, and formed the Everglades Drainage District in 1907.
