Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park occupies the southern tip of Florida, covering 1,508,938 acres of subtropical wetland, sawgrass prairie, mangrove coast, and shallow marine estuary. The park is the largest remaining subtropical wilderness in the United States and is simultaneously a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance — the only site in North America to hold all three designations. At its core, the Everglades is not a swamp but a wide, shallow, nearly imperceptible river: fresh water from Lake Okeechobee flows south across a limestone plain at about a quarter mile per day, through 60 miles of sawgrass prairie, before dispersing into the coastal mangroves and Florida Bay. The park draws roughly 1.2 million visitors a year (rank 27 among 63 national parks), with nearly all visits occurring in the dry season between November and April, when lower water levels concentrate wildlife and mosquitoes are largely absent.

American alligators, present in virtually every freshwater habitat in the park and regularly seen at close range from boardwalk trails — the Anhinga Trail at Royal Palm is one of the most reliable places in the world to observe wild alligators.
Wading bird colonies that once numbered in the millions before the 20th-century drainage of the Everglades; roseate spoonbills, great blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, little blue herons, and wood storks are present year-round and most visible in the dry season when fish are concentrated in shrinking pools.
Canoeing and kayaking through backcountry waterways, including the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway from Everglades City to Flamingo — one of the longest backcountry water routes in the eastern United States.
The only place in the world where American alligators and American crocodiles live in the same habitat, with the American crocodile — far rarer and shier than the alligator — nesting at Flamingo at the park's southern end.

By car to the main entrance: From Miami, take the Florida Turnpike (FL-821) south to Exit 1 (Homestead/Florida City), then US-1 south to Palm Drive (SW 344th Street), and follow signs west on FL-9336 to the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center. The drive from Miami International Airport is approximately 45 miles and takes about 1 hour without traffic. The Florida Turnpike adds a toll; US-1 south is the free alternative and takes about 30 minutes longer.

By car to Shark Valley: From Miami, take US-41 (Tamiami Trail) west approximately 35 miles to the Shark Valley entrance on the left (south) side of the road. This entrance is open for day use only and is reached without paying the main park entrance fee; a separate $35/vehicle fee applies at Shark Valley.

By car to the Gulf Coast (Everglades City): From Miami, take US-41 west approximately 80 miles to the town of Everglades City, then south on SR-29 about 3 miles to the Gulf Coast Visitor Center. This entrance operates separately and serves the Ten Thousand Islands paddling area. The drive takes about 1.5 to 2 hours from Miami.

By air: Miami International Airport (MIA) is the primary gateway, roughly 45 miles northeast of the main entrance. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) is about 65 miles from the main entrance and often offers lower fares. Car rental at either airport is the standard approach; no public transit connects Miami to the park. A car is required to move between the three park entrances.

The Everglades occupies a flat, slightly tilted limestone plain — the exposed surface of the Florida Platform — that slopes gently from north to south at a gradient of only a few inches per mile. The bedrock is Miami Limestone and Fort Thompson Formation limestone, formed from marine sediments deposited when sea levels were higher during the Pleistocene. The limestone is porous and riddled with solution cavities that form the Biscayne Aquifer, the primary source of drinking water for millions of people in southeast Florida. The Everglades ecosystem is inseparable from the aquifer: surface water and groundwater interact continuously across the entire landscape.

The sawgrass prairie is not a static feature but a slow river. Fresh water enters the Everglades basin primarily from Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River watershed to the north, flowing south as a sheet roughly 60 miles wide and a foot or two deep, moving imperceptibly at about a quarter mile per day. The sheet is deflected and slowed by slight topographic highs — hardwood hammock islands a foot or two above the surrounding prairie — and by the saw palmetto and sawgrass that dominate the surface. Where the sheet reaches the coast, it enters the mangrove fringe and dissipates into Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

The flat topography makes the Everglades acutely sensitive to any change in elevation. Hardwood hammock islands — small, dense forest patches rising 1 to 3 feet above the surrounding marsh — are dry enough for tree growth precisely because of that minimal elevation advantage. The alligators maintain these islands, in part, by creating and deepening depressions called gator holes that retain water during the dry season and serve as refugia for fish, turtles, and the birds that prey on them. This feedback between large predators and habitat structure is one of the defining ecological dynamics of the Everglades.

Human drainage altered the natural system profoundly during the 20th century. The construction of the Central and Southern Florida Project after 1948 drained more than half the original Everglades for agriculture and urban development and redirected water flows through a network of canals and levees. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), authorized in 2000, is the largest ecosystem restoration project ever undertaken in the United States, aiming to restore more natural water flow patterns across the remaining landscape.

American alligators are the park's signature predator and a near-certain sighting on any visit from November through April. The Anhinga Trail at Royal Palm regularly has 20 to 30 alligators within a few feet of the boardwalk; they do not need to be sought out. American crocodiles — rarer, lighter colored, and with a narrower snout than alligators — occur near Flamingo at the park's southern end, where saltwater and freshwater meet. The Everglades is the only place in the world where the two species share habitat.

Wading birds are the park's most visually spectacular wildlife. Roseate spoonbills — large, pink, paddle-billed birds — are present year-round but most visible in winter and early spring, particularly in the mangrove and Florida Bay areas near Flamingo. Great blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, and little blue herons concentrate wherever water levels drop enough to strand fish. The wood stork, listed as threatened federally, nests in the park and forages across the sawgrass prairie; winter dry season is the peak foraging period. In good dry seasons, the aerial density of nesting wading birds above active colonies is one of the most arresting wildlife spectacles in North America.

The Florida panther, Florida's state animal, is one of the most endangered large mammals in the world, with a wild population of around 200 individuals — most of them in and around the Everglades ecosystem. Panther sightings in the park are extremely rare; cameras on park roads capture images periodically. Florida manatees are seasonally common in Florida Bay and the coastal waterways around Flamingo, particularly from November through March when they move south to warmer water. Bottlenose dolphins are regularly seen in Florida Bay.

Burmese pythons, introduced through the pet trade in the 1980s and 1990s, have become an ecological crisis in south Florida. Surveys have found dramatic declines in raccoon, rabbit, opossum, bobcat, and deer populations in areas of high python density. The NPS and state of Florida conduct active removal programs; visitors who spot a large python should report the location to a ranger rather than approaching the animal.

The Calusa people dominated the southern Florida coast and the Ten Thousand Islands for more than 2,000 years before European contact, building large shell mound villages and maintaining a complex chiefdom based on fishing rather than agriculture. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, the Calusa resisted all attempts at subjugation and prevented significant European settlement of the region for nearly two centuries. Epidemic disease, warfare, and enslavement had eliminated the Calusa by the early 18th century. The Seminole people, formed from Creek and other groups displaced from the southeastern United States, moved into Florida in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; a portion of the Seminole retreated into the Everglades after the Second and Third Seminole Wars of the 1830s–1858 rather than accepting forced relocation to Oklahoma, and their descendants — the Miccosukee and Unconquered Seminole — live in the Everglades today.

Large-scale human modification of the Everglades began with the drainage of the late 19th century and accelerated after the Central and Southern Florida Project authorized a vast system of canals, levees, and water-control structures in 1948. By the end of the 20th century, more than half of the original 3 million acres of the Everglades had been converted to agriculture and urban development; what remains is heavily managed. The natural sheet flow of water from Lake Okeechobee to the sea was replaced by a system that stores, releases, and diverts water primarily for flood control and agricultural use.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas published "The Everglades: River of Grass" on December 5, 1947, the day before President Harry Truman dedicated the park. Douglas's book gave the Everglades a widely understood identity — not a swamp but a river — and helped build the public constituency for its protection. She continued to advocate for the Everglades until her death in 1998 at age 108. Congress had authorized the park in 1934; it was formally established as Everglades National Park on May 30, 1934, and dedicated by Truman on December 6, 1947, as the first national park created specifically to protect ecological processes and biodiversity rather than scenic grandeur. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.