Everglades History & the Army Corps
The River of Grass Before the Canals
How water once moved through the Everglades: a slow, shallow sheet flowing from the Kissimmee River through Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.
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From the River of Grass to the Magic City
Forty stories about the Everglades and Miami: the people, the engineering and the history behind the place your group is about to explore.
Everglades History & the Army Corps
From drainage dreams to the Army Corps of Engineers and today’s restoration.
Everglades History & the Army Corps
Everglades History & the Army Corps
First Peoples of the Everglades: Calusa, Tequesta, Seminole and Miccosukee
Long before drainage and highways, people lived with the Everglades for thousands of years. A short history of the region's Native nations.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
The Swamp Land Act and Hamilton Disston's Four Million Acres
In 1850 Congress handed Florida its 'swamp and overflowed' lands. Three decades later a Philadelphia industrialist bought four million acres and started digging.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
'Water Will Run Downhill': Governor Broward and the Drainage Era
Napoleon Bonaparte Broward made draining the Everglades a political crusade. The canals, land rush and frauds that followed shaped South Florida.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
The 1926 and 1928 Hurricanes and the Building of the Herbert Hoover Dike
Two deadly hurricanes overtopped Lake Okeechobee's low muck levees. The response was a massive Army Corps dike that still rings the lake.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
The Army Corps of Engineers and the Central and Southern Florida Project
After the floods of 1947, Congress launched one of the largest water-control systems in the world. Here's what the Army Corps built and why.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
Building the Tamiami Trail: Dynamite, Dredges and a Road Across the Glades
It took 13 years and millions of sticks of dynamite to build the road between Tampa and Miami. Today it is also SW 8th Street, and it is being raised on bridges.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
The Kissimmee River: Straightened by the Corps, Then Brought Back
In the 1960s a winding river at the head of the Everglades was turned into a straight canal. Decades later, the same agency helped put the bends back.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
How Everglades National Park Came to Be
A landscape architect, a journalist and a president: the people behind the 1947 dedication of the first national park created to protect an ecosystem.
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Everglades History & the Army Corps
CERP and the Long Road to Restoring the Everglades
The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is a multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar effort to re-plumb South Florida. What it is and how it works.
Read articleThe Everglades Today
Sawgrass, wildlife, seasons and the people who protect the marsh.
The Everglades Today
Plume Hunters, Guy Bradley and the Birth of Bird Protection
At the turn of the 20th century, fashion nearly wiped out the Everglades' wading birds. A young game warden paid with his life to stop it.
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The Everglades Today
A Short History of the Airboat
Why a flat-bottomed boat pushed by an airplane propeller became the classic way to cross the Everglades.
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The Everglades Today
Sawgrass: The Plant That Defines the Everglades
It isn't really a grass, its edges can cut, and it built the soil of the Everglades. Meet the plant you'll ride through.
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The Everglades Today
Who Lives in the Everglades? A Wildlife Guide for First-Time Visitors
Alligators, wading birds, turtles and fish: what you might see from an airboat, and why no two trips are the same.
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The Everglades Today
Wet Season, Dry Season: When to Visit the Everglades
South Florida has two seasons that matter in the marsh. Here's how each one changes an airboat trip and how to plan a group outing.
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The Everglades Today
Pythons, Melaleuca and Other Invaders of the Everglades
Some of the biggest threats to the Everglades arrived from other continents. A look at invasive plants and animals and how Florida fights back.
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The Everglades Today
Tree Islands and Hammocks: The High Ground of the Everglades
Those clumps of trees rising out of the sawgrass are some of the most important places in the Everglades, for wildlife and for people.
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The Everglades Today
Where the River Ends: Florida Bay and the Mangrove Coast
Everything upstream in the Everglades eventually reaches Florida Bay. Why the health of the bay depends on fresh water from the marsh.
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The Everglades Today
The Everglades and Your Glass of Water
Millions of South Floridians drink water that depends on the Everglades. How the marsh and the Biscayne Aquifer are connected.
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The Everglades Today
The Everglades Jetport That Never Was
In the late 1960s a giant airport was planned in the Big Cypress. The fight to stop it helped launch the modern Everglades movement.
Read articleMiami History
How a riverside trading post became a world city: the railroad, the boom and beyond.
Miami History
The Tequesta and the Miami Circle: Miami Before Miami
Two thousand years before skyscrapers, the Tequesta lived at the mouth of the Miami River. The Miami Circle is one of the clues they left behind.
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Miami History
Miami's First European Outpost: The Spanish Mission of 1567
Within decades of Columbus, Spain tried to plant a mission at the mouth of the Miami River. It didn't last, but it put Miami on the map.
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Miami History
Fort Dallas and the Seminole Wars on the Miami River
Dade County takes its name from a battle, and downtown Miami began as an Army post. How the Seminole Wars shaped early Miami.
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Miami History
William and Mary Brickell: The Pioneers of the South Bank
Before Brickell was a skyline, it was a family. The Brickells' trading post helped turn a frontier river into a city.
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Miami History
Julia Tuttle: The 'Mother of Miami'
A widow from Cleveland bought land on the Miami River and convinced America's railroad king to come south. Miami is often called the only major U.S. city founded by a woman.
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Miami History
The Great Freeze and the Legend of the Orange Blossoms
Did Julia Tuttle really send Henry Flagler orange blossoms to prove Miami was frost-free? The story behind Miami's favorite founding legend.
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Miami History
April 1896: The Florida East Coast Railway Reaches Miami
Henry Flagler's railroad turned a riverside settlement into a city almost overnight. How the tracks reached Biscayne Bay.
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Miami History
July 28, 1896: The Day Miami Became a City
Months after the first train arrived, Miami's voters gathered to incorporate. Who was there, and why the vote mattered.
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Miami History
Flagler's Royal Palm Hotel and the Birth of Miami Tourism
Miami's first great hotel stood where the river meets the bay. It introduced the city to winter visitors and set the course for a tourism economy.
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Miami History
The Railroad That Went to Sea: Flagler's Overseas Extension
From Miami, Henry Flagler pushed his railroad across the ocean to Key West. It was called the eighth wonder of the world and lasted only 23 years.
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Miami History
Coconut Grove: Bahamian Roots and Bayfront Pioneers
Before Miami incorporated, a village on Biscayne Bay was already thriving. Coconut Grove's story is one of Bahamian builders and sailing pioneers.
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Miami History
Overtown: Miami's 'Harlem of the South'
Built by the Black workers who helped create Miami, Overtown became a thriving cultural center before highway construction tore it apart.
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Miami History
From Mangrove Island to Miami Beach: Collins, Fisher and the 1913 Bridge
A Quaker farmer's bridge and an Indianapolis promoter's money turned a mangrove barrier island into Miami Beach.
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Miami History
Binder Boys and Boomtowns: Miami's 1920s Land Boom
In the mid-1920s Miami became the center of one of the wildest real-estate frenzies in American history. Then it all came crashing down.
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Miami History
The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926
A direct hit at the height of the land boom killed hundreds, left tens of thousands homeless and changed how Miami built.
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Miami History
Pastel and Neon: How Miami Beach Got Its Art Deco
During the Depression, Miami Beach built hundreds of small, stylish hotels. Decades later, a preservation fight saved them.
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Miami History
Vizcaya: James Deering's Bayfront Palace
An industrialist built a Renaissance-style villa on Biscayne Bay in the 1910s. Today it is one of Miami's great museums.
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Miami History
Flying Boats at Dinner Key: When Miami Was the Gateway to the Americas
In the 1930s, Pan American Airways' giant flying boats took off from Coconut Grove. Their terminal is now Miami City Hall.
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Miami History
Boot Camp on the Beach: Miami During World War II
Hotels became barracks and golf courses became drill fields. How World War II transformed Miami and Miami Beach.
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Miami History
Calle Ocho and the Making of Modern Miami
Since 1959, waves of Cuban exiles and immigrants from across the Americas have reshaped Miami, starting along SW 8th Street.
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