The River She Loves
Mrs. Ritter’s Daughter
Captain Erika Ritter remembers the Ocklawaha River before the destruction, when the springs ran clear and the stripers spawned in the swift, cool waters.
She was only a child when it started to change—6 years old when President Lyndon B. Johnson stood in Palatka at the Cross Florida Barge Canal groundbreaking and suggested the canal would “create a value where none existed before,” and 10 years old when the Rodman Dam was completed and the river flooded.
“I have a vague visual of it as a child,” said Ritter, now 67. “My interpretation was that they were taking my river away. By the time I was 12, I was two years into this thing being destroyed.”
Despite her youth, those early years of fishing the river with a cane pole and tramping along the muddy banks would shape the woman she became: a link to the river that was, and a champion for the river to come.
It was twilight when I met Ritter at the Eureka West boat ramp on a Saturday morning. She and her late ex-husband started the first pontoon charter on the river in 1983. Today, Ritter continues that legacy, offering private tours aboard her 1990 Harris FloteBote, the Anhinga Spirit.
After a brief introduction, we boarded her pontoon boat and headed north, following the river downstream through a stretch Ritter calls her childhood backyard.
Ritter is a sixth-generation Floridian; her ancestors moved to the area in the late 1800s following the Civil War. Her grandparents eventually built a log cabin on the Ocklawaha River in the small town of Eureka, where Ritter lives today.
Ritter was born in between—between two sisters, between two parents with opposing views on the barge canal, between two rivers, one running wild and free, the other with a dam across its throat.
As we meandered around the cypress-lined bends, Ritter told stories of her childhood: the time in fourth grade when her mom, Gwen Ritter, tested her eyesight by handing her a rifle and pointing to a squirrel in the trees—it turned out she needed glasses—and when her mom rerouted an approaching construction crane, subtly reshaping a small corner of the barge canal.
It was said the Cross Florida Barge Canal, a project intended to connect the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida, would bring jobs and economic growth to rural towns like Eureka. But Ritter said the majority of locals were against the project.
Her father, Tex, was one of the few exceptions. After contracting malaria in the Philippines during World War II, he hoped construction would help kill the mosquitoes.
“I had to hear about my mom crying because the river was being destroyed, and my dad saying, ‘It’ll get rid of the mosquitoes,’” Ritter said.
Her mom never stopped fighting. Gwen Ritter remained a vocal defender of the river until her death in 2013. Even now, people call Erika “Mrs. Ritter’s daughter”—a title she wears proudly.
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Not If, But When
The 24-foot Anhinga Spirit rounded a bend and slowed to a stop. A school of longnose gar was spawning in the shallows, and we waited in dead silence for the female to leap from the water in a strange, primordial dance.
There’s a general perception surrounding the Ocklawaha River controversy that those who support keeping the dam are fishermen, while those in favor of restoring the river are simply “environmentalists.” But my journey with Ritter revealed a more complex narrative.
Near the back of her boat, tucked inside a beige and red tote bag, were three family photo albums. I had asked earlier if she might share any family photos. These are what she brought.
Inside the old yellowed pages lay a legacy of fishing on the Ocklawaha: men, women and children—her family and friends—proudly holding their catches. Monster largemouth bass, striped bass, channel catfish the size of your thigh, stringers of river bream. Many of the photos were taken between the 1930s and 1960s, before construction of the dam.
In one photo, Ritter holds a striped bass, or “striper,” beaming at the camera after a late-night trip to Salt Springs. A group of men fishing nearby had offered to help, but then they realized how capable she was.
By that time, stripers were rare on the Ocklawaha River, a side effect of the dam. Striped bass live in saltwater but require a long and swift channel of freshwater in which to reproduce. The historic connection between the Atlantic Ocean, St. Johns River, Ocklawaha River and Silver River had made this the only viable spawning route for stripers on Florida’s Atlantic coast. When the dam went up, the fish were shut out.
Ritter believes it will be the manatees who ultimately save the Ocklawaha—people tend to be more sympathetic to them than to fish. But she said it’s the fish who are suffering the most. Manatees can still migrate through Buckman Lock between the St. Johns and Ocklawaha rivers. The fish cannot.
Striped bass, American shad and other migratory species once common in the Ocklawaha have vanished upstream.
“There’s a generation or two or three that has no idea what the fish looked like,” Ritter said.
Some anglers claim breaching the dam would destroy the prized largemouth bass fishery in the Rodman Reservoir. But Ritter’s photos suggest that trophy-sized bass were pulled from the river long before the reservoir existed. It’s just a matter of fishing a river instead of a lake.
The Ocklawaha River is also home to 20 freshwater springs, currently submerged beneath the flooded waters. Ritter took me to Cannon Springs, a third-magnitude spring and one of the largest of the 20. Accessible to the public only by water, it appeared beautiful even through the dark river. But Ritter said it looks entirely different during drawdowns, when water levels drop and the approach from the river runs crystal clear.
Over the years, she’s hosted all kinds of passengers on her boat, from artists and photographers seeking out Cannon Springs, to scientists, journalists and even prospective residents of the reservoir. Like the steamboat captains of the late 19th century, Ritter offers access to a world unknown by many Floridians.
“I don’t think people know what wilderness looks like anymore,” she said. “People need to get out here and see it.”
As we passed Indian Bluff and entered Cypress Bayou, a section of the river where the cypress trees are dying beneath elevated water levels, Ritter pointed to the passing houses and said, “I’ve taken most of these people out on my boat, and they understand.” She believes many residents who live along the reservoir quietly support restoration but don’t speak up for fear of clashing with neighbors.
After decades of advocacy, resistance and bureaucratic delays, Ritter admits the fight has worn on her. “I did all these things, and it just gets frustrating,” she said. “I just want my river back.”
Still, she remains confident restoration of the river is inevitable.
“It’s not if,” she said. “It’s when.”
The Florida Senate recently approved its budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which includes more than $6 million for Ocklawaha River restoration, a major win for Ritter and others who support removing the dam. The plan requires the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to develop a restoration strategy by July 2026 and implement it by 2035. However, the budget is currently stalled in the House, where negotiations are ongoing between the Senate, the House and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Ritter, who turns 68 in June, said she’s been telling people she really needs to take care of herself now so she can live long enough to see it.
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Girl at the Bridge
When we returned to the boat ramp, we spent more time flipping through the photo albums.
There was one photo tucked inside those yellowed pages that has stayed with me. It doesn’t show a trophy-sized largemouth bass, or a striper, or a catfish the size of your thigh. It’s a simple photo, one that might be overlooked.
In it, a 10-year-old Erika Ritter sits near the construction site of the Eureka Bridge, one of the high-profile bridges built for the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Behind her, men are working. She’s turned from the camera, looking back over her shoulder—not smiling, but glaring.
It’s a powerful photo, in part because I’ve always loved that bridge. To see it under construction, to know that it, too, had a beginning, and that its beginning was part of a larger plan to turn the river into a “carrier of commerce,” feels oddly dissonant. But more than that, the photo says something about Ritter.
She told me she was never good at smiling in pictures. Maybe it was just bad timing. Or maybe she didn’t want to be photographed. But I can’t help but see something deeper in her expression: a quiet revolt. A young girl staring down the lens, already discontent with the idea that a river’s value must be proven, quantified, reshaped.
Even then, she seemed to understand that the river didn’t need to be improved. It was already valuable.
To me, that photo doesn’t just show a child at a construction site. It foreshadows the woman she would become—
Someone who has spent a lifetime fighting for the river she loves.
