Where Are the Everglades?

Where Are the Everglades?

On December 6, 1947, in a small Florida fishing town, 4,500 people gathered to celebrate the establishment of the United States’ twenty-eighth national park and its third largest: Everglades National Park.

Distinguished guests included Florida’s governor and first lady, two senators, the leader of the Seminole tribal nation, and the president of the United States. After the Fort Myers High School Band played Florida’s state song, the program began.

Senator Claude Pepper predicted “one million visitors soon will come each year to enjoy this marvelous museum of nature.” Among its “constellation of sparkling lakes, streams, bays, and inaccessible swamps,” they would find crocodiles, manatees, and countless other exotic creatures found nowhere else in the country.

Senator Spessard Holland acknowledged the members of the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs and the National Audubon Society, whose years of hard work had made this day possible.

A century earlier, south Florida had been a swampy frontier land, home to fewer than a hundred white settlers. The Everglades—a vast, flat landscape of sawgrass fields, subtropical forests, and watery marshes—were dominated by clouds of biting mosquitoes and multitudes of poisonous snakes. Frequent floods made farming difficult.

But humans changed the Everglades to suit their needs. They constructed canals, reservoirs, dams, and levees to drain millions of acres of wetlands for housing developments and large-scale farming.

This threw off nature’s delicate balance. Now, some areas flooded more, while others dried out—and, later, caught fire.

By 1947, as President Harry Truman addressed the crowd at the dedication ceremony, south Florida had become one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. The national park was established to keep the Everglades from turning into more highways and shopping centers.

President Truman warned that protecting the nation’s public parks required constant vigilance. “Like liberty itself, conservation must be fought for unceasingly to protect earlier victories . . .”

He spoke of the Everglades’ uniqueness. They were so different from the dramatic landscapes of the country’s more famous national parks, like Yosemite or Rocky Mountain.

“Here are no lofty peaks seeking the sky,” Truman said, “no mighty glaciers or rushing streams wearing away the uplifted land. Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty.”

Chapter 1
The Rise of Florida

During the time of the dinosaurs, the land that would become Florida lay underwater, beneath a warm and shallow sea. Over millions of years, shells of dead marine animals and the remains of ancient coral reefs became fossilized, forming a porous rock called limestone. (Porous means full of pores, or holes.) Layers of limestone piled up, building Florida from the seabed upward.

During glacial periods—ice ages—when Earth’s temperatures dropped, ocean waters froze and glaciers formed. As glaciers grew, sea levels dropped, creating more land. Twenty-three million years ago, Florida emerged from the ocean for the first time.

More ice ages came and went. Sea levels rose and fell. At times, Florida lay underwater—other times, above it. But it continued growing higher. Sand, clay, and silt from hundreds of miles away, in the Appalachian Mountains, was carried to Florida by rivers and ocean currents. Layers of sandy soil formed atop Florida’s limestone crust.

Twenty thousand years ago, at the peak of the last ice age, glaciers covered much of North America. Many animals migrated to Florida, where it was warmer. At the time, Florida was three times larger than it is today. It became biodiverse: home to a great variety of plant and animal species.

Mammoths and mastodons. Giant armadillo-like glyptodonts. Saber-toothed cats.

Some animals, like alligators and crocodiles, still live there today. The Everglades are among the most biodiverse places on Earth.

Eventually, the planet warmed again. Glaciers retreated to the North and South Poles and up the highest mountains. Sea levels rose, and Florida assumed the narrow, peninsular shape we know today. (A peninsula is an area of land surrounded on three sides by water.)

Around four to six thousand years ago—after a lot of rain!—the Everglades formed.

Chapter 2
River of Grass

Everglades National Park covers more than 1.5 million acres at the southern tip of Florida. That’s bigger than the state of Rhode Island! But the Everglades ecosystem is much larger. (An ecosystem is a community of living things interacting within a particular area or environment.) The Everglades’ ancient headwaters—their “birthplace”—lay near present-day Orlando, in the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes.

During the wet season, from May to November, it rains practically every afternoon in Florida. Rainwater fills lakes and soaks the soil. Some water drains down into Florida’s porous limestone crust. Some is carried away by the Kissimmee River as it snakes its way southward to Lake Okeechobee.

Oki means “water” and chubi means “big” in the language of the Hitchiti, a Native American people from Georgia. Lake Okeechobee, or “Big Water,” the largest lake in the southern United States, lives up to its name. Some people call it “Lake O” for short.

Even though Lake O is big, it is also shallow—around nine feet deep on average—and during the rainy season, it overflows and floods the surrounding area. This immense, shallow sheet of water—six inches deep and sixty miles wide—flows down the gentle slope of southern Florida. Because the elevation lowers so gradually, just two inches every mile, the water moves at a snail’s pace—only half a mile per day.

The landscape is dominated by massive fields of sawgrass, a rough and toothy high-growing sedge plant, dotted by “islands” of trees and wildflowers. While sawgrass is not technically a grass (grasses have hollow stems, and “sedges have edges”), the Seminoles call the Everglades “Pa-Hay-Okee,” or “Grassy Water.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a writer known as the “Mother of the Everglades,”
described it as something similar: a River of Grass.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890–1998)

Marjory Stoneman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a violinist mother and judge father. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1912, she moved to Newark, New Jersey, and met her husband, Kenneth Douglas. They separated, and in 1915, Marjory moved to Miami, Florida, to work for her father, the founder of the Miami Herald newspaper.

During World War I, Marjory became the first woman in Florida to join the Navy Reserves. She also joined the American Red Cross and served in Europe. At the Herald, she wrote articles that supported women’s and civil rights and spoke out against the reckless land development taking place in Florida.

Marjory left the newspaper in 1923 to write books and short stories for children and adults, including a book about the Everglades. For five years, she focused on the Everglades project. In 1947, The Everglades: River of Grass was published, and it changed the way Americans thought of the Everglades. Marjory ended the book with a call to readers to save the unique landscape from further destruction.


Chapter 3
A Unique Ecosystem


“There are no other Everglades in the world,” wrote Marjory Stoneman Douglas in River of Grass. “They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known.”

The Everglades are the only subtropical ecosystem in the continental United States. That means they sit between the tropical Caribbean climate and the cooler North American climate. Plants and animals from both regions live together here.

Red maple trees, black bears, and alligators from the north. Crocodiles, manatees, and royal palm trees from the tropics. The Everglades are the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles coexist—although crocodiles, which can live in salt water, are typically found in coastal habitats.

A habitat is an area providing food, water, and shelter for plants and animals—a place where they can live. The Everglades are a complex, interconnected ecosystem of nine different habitats. Hardwood hammocks, also known as tree islands, are the most solid landmasses in the Everglades. These habitats sit on the highest ground, which may be only a few feet above the waterline. But that’s high enough for the hammocks to avoid flooding. The trees here grow high and thick, creating shady forests.

Pine rocklands, another higher-elevation habitat, are forests of pine trees that are rooted in exposed limestone. When hardwood hammocks grow near pine rocklands, their high and thick leaves make the area too shady for pine seedlings to grow. But there is something that can help: fire.

Fires sparked by lightning strikes help pine cones release their seeds. Pines are fire-resistant, but faster-growing hardwoods (the pines’ biggest competition) are not. The hardwoods burn, making room for young pines to grow.

Pine rocklands and hammocks attract mammals like opossums and deer, as well as predators like the gray fox—the world’s only tree-climbing fox—and panthers.

The Florida panther is the only subspecies of cougar east of the Mississippi River. From nose to tail, they measure up to seven feet long, and males can weigh 160 pounds. These big cats once lived across the southeastern United States. But due to overhunting and habitat loss, only about two hundred remain alive today, all in southern Florida. Panthers hunt anything from rats, rabbits, and armadillos to white-tailed deer and alligators.

Freshwater sloughs (say: SLEWS) are deep channels that gently move water throughout the Everglades. They remain flooded all year long, even during the dry season, from December through April.

Freshwater marl prairies border the sloughs. They are full of low-lying vegetation that rabbits and deer nibble on. These marshes are also home to perhaps the most important life—form in the Everglades: periphyton.

Periphyton (say: puh-RIFF-it-on) is a rich stew of different microscopic organisms—living things so tiny they can be seen only through a microscope. It grows in spongy gray-green or yellowish “mats” that cover the prairie’s soil and plants. This community of life-forms—which can contain bacteria, algae, fungi, and more—is an ecosystem unto itself.

Like a plant, periphyton absorbs energy from the sun to help it grow, in a process called photosynthesis. Small animals like shrimps, snails, tadpoles, and fish feed on periphyton, absorbing the sun’s energy through it. Birds, bigger fish, and snakes receive that energy when they feed on those smaller creatures. Then come the largest predators, like bobcats and alligators. Everything is interconnected in the Everglades.

Periphyton mats also provide homes to tiny animals like worms and insects. As periphyton grows, it helps create the rich, organic soil that keeps the marl prairies healthy.

Cypress swamps, another Everglades habitat, are covered in standing water for much of the year. Cypress trees are flood resistant and require lots of water to grow. Some of the trees’ roots grow from the ground up, breaking above the water’s surface to help the tree “breathe.” These roots, called “cypress knees,” can grow to be six feet high!

Groves of cypress trees, called cypress domes, dot the landscape in the Everglades. They are called “domes” because the tallest trees grow in the center of the grove, and the shorter trees grow along the edges.

Cypress trees root in solution holes. Solution holes are formed over time when fallen leaves, branches, and other materials decompose, or break down. This process produces acid, which eats away at the limestone bedrock. As the hole grows deep, it fills with water and soil.

These deep wells of water are magnets for wildlife. Alligators often call cypress swamps home. And once they move in, they like to expand their living quarters! They use their broad snouts and clawed feet to dig the well deeper, allowing more water to fill the swamp.

During the dry season, these “alligator holes” become lifelines for local animals—like an oasis in the desert. Fish, birds, and raccoons find refuge here. They also keep the gators fed.

Alligators have been known to sit still in the water, their eyes peeking just above the surface, balancing a stick on their snouts. The stick acts as bait for birds, which use sticks to build their nests. When an unsuspecting bird approaches to grab the stick, the gator snaps into action, grabbing its feathery meal.

More habitats can be found as the River of Grass approaches the sea.

Mangrove forests grow along the coast in brackish water (where fresh and salt water mix). Mangrove trees absorb the fresh water they need either by blocking the salt at their roots, or by discharging it through their leaves. Because water levels in these forests rise and fall with the tides, some mangrove roots grow aboveground.

Mangroves act as nurseries for young marine life, like sharks and barracudas. Here, with plenty of hiding spots among the maze of roots, fish can grow large enough to survive in the open ocean. Mangrove forests are also the mainland’s first line of defense against tropical storms and hurricanes, forming a buffer to absorb the worst of the high winds and pounding waves. The Everglades are home to the largest mangrove forest north of the equator.

Coastal lowlands are prairies near the shoreline. They’re formed by the shifting sands and pounding waves kicked up by storms.

Hurricanes are also responsible for much of the plant life in the Everglades. Storms carry seeds there from Caribbean islands. Migratory birds that nest in the Everglades have also transported seeds.

More than 360 species of birds live in the Everglades.

There are birds of prey: bald eagles, great horned owls, and fish-eating osprey—the only species of raptor with two opposable toes, which help it grip wriggling fish. There are diving water birds, like anhinga and white pelicans, whose nine-foot wingspan is the second widest in North America. And there are long-legged wading birds, such as sandhill cranes and great blue herons, whose great night vision helps them hunt fish by moonlight.

The River of Grass journeys more than one hundred miles before meeting shallow Florida Bay, the largest body of water in the park. And it is home to the final two Everglades habitats: the estuarine (brackish water) and marine (saltwater) habitats.

In Florida Bay, the River of Grass mixes with salt water from the Gulf of Mexico, and with fresh water from rainfall and groundwater bubbling up through the limestone. It forms a brackish estuary—an area between land and sea—that includes miles of seagrass beds growing along the bottom. Bottlenose dolphins, lemon sharks, and large fish such as silvery-scaled tarpons frequent Florida Bay to feed on the many species of fish that live in its waters.

Manatees, also known as sea cows, graze on the seagrass beds, consuming a hundred pounds of the stuff daily. These marine mammals—whose closest living relative is the elephant—-grow to about ten feet long and can weigh more than a thousand pounds!

Along with the creatures that inhabit them, these nine habitats—hardwood hammocks, pine rocklands, freshwater sloughs and prairie marls, cypress swamps, mangroves, coastal lowlands, and estuarine and marine habitats—form the unique and fragile ecosystem that is the Everglades.

Changes in water level of just a few inches can make a huge difference in what kinds of plants and animals can survive there. Wading birds hunt for fish by walking through the marsh. If the water is too deep for their feet to reach the bottom, they can’t hunt there. If not enough fresh water from the River of Grass reaches Florida Bay, salt water intrudes farther into freshwater marshes, causing problems for plant and aquatic life that isn’t suited to live in salty water.

The health of the Everglades—indeed, their very existence—relies upon the natural and uninterrupted flow of water through its habitats.