How Everglades National Park Came to Be

Most early national parks protected dramatic scenery: canyons, geysers, mountains. Everglades National Park was different. It was created to protect a living system of water, wildlife and plants, an idea that was new in the 1930s and 1940s.

Ernest Coe's campaign

Landscape architect Ernest F. Coe moved to Miami in the 1920s and became convinced the southern Everglades deserved national-park protection. He organized the Tropic Everglades National Park Association and lobbied relentlessly. He is often called the father of Everglades National Park.

Authorized in 1934, dedicated in 1947

Congress authorized the park in 1934, but acquiring the land took years. On December 6, 1947, President Harry S. Truman dedicated Everglades National Park. The same year, journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas published The Everglades: River of Grass, which changed how Americans thought about the marsh. Instead of a useless swamp, it became a river worth saving.

A protected area with a problem

The park protected land, but it did not control the water flowing into it. Upstream, the drainage canals and flood-control works of the Central and Southern Florida Project shaped how much water reached the park, and when. That dependence became one of the central issues of Everglades policy.

International recognition

Everglades National Park was named an International Biosphere Reserve in 1976, a World Heritage Site in 1979 and a Wetland of International Importance in 1987. It has also been placed on UNESCO's list of World Heritage in Danger because of the threats to its water supply.

Visitors to the park today see many of the same birds and plants Coe and Douglas championed, along with the results of decades of work to get more water flowing back in.

A park for wildlife, not views

Everglades National Park was the first U.S. national park established primarily to protect a biological system rather than scenery. Its enabling legislation emphasized preserving wildlife and plants. That approach influenced how later parks and preserves were designed and managed.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Douglas was a Miami journalist and author who covered the city's growth from the 1910s on. Her 1947 book reframed the Everglades for a national audience. In 1969, in her late seventies, she founded Friends of the Everglades and spent the rest of her long life advocating for the ecosystem. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 and lived to 108.

Growing the protected area

The park has expanded since 1947. Congress added the East Everglades lands in 1989, protecting more of Shark Slough, the main channel of water flowing into the park. Big Cypress National Preserve, Biscayne National Park and other protected lands now surround it.

Visiting the park

Popular areas include Shark Valley, off the Tamiami Trail, with a tram road and observation tower; the Anhinga Trail near the Homestead entrance; and Flamingo on Florida Bay. Combining a morning in the park with an afternoon airboat ride outside it is a great way for a group to see different sides of the Everglades in one day.