Everglades National Park stretches across 1 5 million acres 607,000 ha It is located at the southernmost tip of the Florida peninsula The park’s environment is unlike any other national park This is because it is close to the equator Much of the park is made up of everglades or swampy grasslands Prairies woodlands and islands can also be found here Many animals and plants thrive in this warm and wet climate Preserving Florida’s Wetlands Everglades settlers in the late 1800s and early 1900s saw the wetlands as an inconvenience They could not farm land that was A World Heritage Site Everglades National Park became a World Heritage Site on October 26 1979 The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO chooses World Heritage Sites The site must benefit the community and the world as a whole Everglades National Park was nominated and chosen because of its diverse habitats and wildlife UNESCO also recognized it as a park that protects many threatened animal species 6
Workers dug the Miami Canal in the 1920s underwater They also could not build houses or roads on this landscape So they began digging canals A canal is a long and narrow passageway Water from the marshes flowed into these canals It drained south into the Atlantic Ocean Settlers turned the northern Everglades into sugarcane plantations cattle ranches and vegetable fields Ernest Coe was one of the first to speak up against land development in the Everglades Coe was a landscape architect He was shocked to learn about 7
habitat loss in the Everglades He formed the Tropical Everglades National Park Association in 1928 This organization fought for the creation of a national park in south Florida Coe enlisted the help of writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas Douglas visited the area in the 1920s Her observations later led her to write a book called The Everglades River of Grass It was published in November 1947 Readers were excited by Douglas’s descriptions of the Everglades scenery and landscapes PERSPECTIVES Truman’s Speech President Harry S Truman gave a speech during the opening of Everglades National Park He described why the area needed to be preserved This Everglades area has more than its share of features unique to these United States Here is land tranquil in its quiet beauty serving not as the source of water but as the last receiver of it To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in the country 8
The Park’s Beginnings Everglades National Park opened on December 6 1947 Coe and Douglas’s efforts had helped convince the public that the Everglades were worth saving But the fight for the park’s creation had been a long battle Activists helped the public discover the Everglades natural beauty They helped protect a land that might have been ignored or destroyed Now many people travel to the Everglades This river of grass contains many plants and wildlife that cannot be found anywhere else in the world EXPLORE ONLINE Chapter One talks about key features of Everglades National Park The website below goes into more depth about this topic How is the information from the website the same as the information in Chapter One What new information did you learn from the website Everglades National Park 9
