The East Pass, Cut by Hand

The channel of open water beneath the bridge here, the East Pass, connects Choctawhatchee Bay behind Destin to the Gulf of Mexico. And the strange thing is that this exact pass was partly made by human hands, in a hurry, with shovels. In the late nineteen twenties the old natural outlet that had let boats reach the Gulf closed up, by most accounts, and local men took matters into their own hands.

Without any heavy machinery, using nothing but hand shovels, they dug a narrow drainage ditch across the sand to let the rising bay water escape. The rushing water did the rest. It tore the little ditch wide open, and the sea poured through, carving out the deep pass we see today.

Sources disagree on the exact year, with accounts pointing to nineteen twenty six and to nineteen twenty nine, so the precise date is genuinely uncertain. What is not in dispute is the result. That improvised cut became the main channel to the Gulf, and it created the sheltered harbor that made Destin's modern fishing fleet possible.