Section 3.3: Everglades National Park

Exploring the Florida Everglades by airboat — a must-do adventure in South Florida. Photo courtesy of Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The largest subtropical wilderness in the United States sits right between the metro areas of Southeast and Southwest Florida—Everglades National Park, home to a number of threatened and endangered plant and animal species, including the Florida panther, American alligator and crocodile, West Indian manatee, wood stork and snail kite. In addition, there are countless native and migrating birds here as well as plant and animal species found nowhere else on the planet, all living in a range of habitats that include hardwood hammocks, mangroves, pinelands, coastal lowlands, sawgrass prairies, cypress forests and marine habitats. 

Small wonder this “river of grass” has been named a World Heritage Site, an International Biosphere Reserve, a Wetland of International Importance and a specially protected area under the Cartagena Treaty. But for those who visit, it is simply otherworldly and magical, stretching out in an endless expanse of green, with creatures great and small darting in and out of view, long-legged egrets picking their way across the marshes and gigantic, grinning alligators sunning themselves on the banks of rippling waterways. 

Everglades National Park itself has a total acreage of over 1.5 million in Miami-Dade, Monroe and Collier counties, with three different entrances in three different cities: Homestead, Miami and Everglades City, each offering an informative visitor center and educational programming. Note that these entrances are at least an hour’s drive from each other as well as from the interior Flamingo Visitor Center. 

Two hundred years ago, the Everglades flowed through nearly one-third of Florida, covering approximately three million acres. Photo courtesy of Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.