What Everglades is known for

The Everglades Region is made up of cities, lakes, rivers, national preserves, and national parks. The region is named after the Everglades National Park, which is home to one of the largest wetlands in the world. Within the park, there are nine distinct habitats. These habitats include pine Rocklands, marine waters, and coastal lowlands. The park is best known for sawgrass, mangroves, prairies, and a freshwater slough that gets water from Lake Okeechobee. Preservation of the area started nearly twenty years before the park was actually established in 1934. The Everglades National Park is full of animals that are unique to the area, including over 360 different species of birds. Other animals in the park are Florida panthers, American crocodiles, and manatees. The park also gets an average of 60 inches of rain every year, which usually falls during the winter months. In the Everglades National Park, there is evidence of people living in the area thousands of years ago.[9] In the park, there is an assortment of things to do. Some of these things are the Everglades Safari Airboat Tour in Everglades National Park, Everglades National Park: Airboat Tour and Wildlife Show, Marco Island: 2-Hour-Dolphin, Birding and Shelling Tour, and From Miami: Half-Day Everglades Airboat Ride and Wildlife Show. Many of these activities involve seeing the wildlife and scenery in the area, and most of them are tours that range from one hour to a full day.[1] 

Miami, a city in the Everglades Region, is one of the largest cities in Florida. Miami gets its name from a tribe called the Mayaimi that lived in the area in the 16th and 17th centuries. The city welcomes over fourteen million guests a year.[10] In 2018, the city had 16.5 million overnight visitors, along with 6.8 million people who came for day trips. The total number of visitors in 2018 was 23.3 million. Because of the number of visitors, nearly $18 billion was contributed to the city by the tourists. The money went on to support jobs and various other things within the city.[8] Within the city of Miami, there is a variety of things for people to do. Some of these events are things such as the Bayside Marketplace, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, South Beach, Little Havana, Wynwood Walls, Fisher Island, and Wynwood. The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens was built for James Deering in 1916 and is decorated with tapestries, paintings, and decorative arts. The gardens on the property have fountains, sculptures, pools, a Florentine gazebo, and multiple trails. The architecture of the building is inspired by Veneto and Tuscan Italian Renaissance models. Around 200,000 people visit the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens every year. The Wynwood Walls is an art exhibit that spans 80,000 square feet of wall space. The walls are decorated with graffiti from various street artists, along with some murals. Fisher Island is located three miles off the coast of Miami and is an exclusive beach community. The island is cut off from the mainland because of a canal that was built in 1906. On the island, there are golf courses and private shoreline accesses. The island is accessible through ferries or by private invitation, and there are no bridges that lead to the island. Also on Fisher Island are mansions, an observatory, a private marina, and one hotel.[4]

Geography

The Everglades Region consists of the southern tip of Florida. The north end of the border goes up past Fort Pierce and goes in a diagonal line across the top, going beneath Sarasota all the way to the water. The rest of the border goes around the tip of Florida, including multiple islands. The region is flat with multiple lakes, rivers, beaches, and cities. Some of the cities within the region are Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, Marco Island, Homestead, Miami, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, West Palm Beach, Port St. Lucie, and Fort Pierce. Other things within the zone are the Everglades National park, Big Cypress National Preserve, and the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area. Animals in the Everglades National Park include over 40 species of mammals. Some of these species of mammals are deer, gray foxes, raccoons, opossums, rabbits, cottontails, river otters, red foxes, bobcats, Florida panthers, and Atlantic bottlenose dolphins.[6] Animals that are native to Florida and that are located in the Everglades Region are beach sunflowers, black-eye Suzans, blanket flowers, blazing stars, Carolina jessamine, columbine, coral beans, coral honeysuckle, Elliott's asters, milkweed, and passion flowers.[7] 

The weather in the region is warm and doesn't fluctuate significantly throughout the year. The average high temperature within the city is around 84 degrees Fahrenheit while the average low is about 68 degrees. The hottest months in the year are July, August, September, and October, while the coldest month is March. The region gets a large amount of rain. The months that get the most rain are June, July, August, and September. Humidity in the region is high, with the most humid time of the year being in September. The best time to visit the region is from the middle of November to the beginning of April, though the busiest season in the region is in March.[5]

History

Before settlers came to the area, the Everglades National Park, which is located in the Everglades Region, used to have a body of water that flowed in southern Florida from Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee. Water also flowed southward over low-lying lands to Biscayne Bay, Florida Bay, and the Ten Thousand Islands. The water covered almost 11,000 square miles, creating an assortment of ponds, sawgrass marshes, sloughs, forested uplands, and hardwood hammocks. When early colonial settlers came to the area and began to develop farms and communities, the water receded and left more dry areas. The result was a damaged ecosystem, along with the species it supported. The Everglades National Park was established in 1947 to protect the wildlife in the area, along with the natural landscape.[2] 

Close to the Everglades National Park, the Royal Palm State Park was created in 1916. Naturalists first proposed the idea of the area becoming a national park in 1923. Five years later, the Tropical Everglades National Park Commission was established to study the formation of a protected area. The search was coincided because of the Great Depression, and money for land purchase became sparse. In 1934, the U.S. House of Representatives authorized the creation of a new national park, but no money would be available for the project for another five years. The national park was created in 1947 and was dedicated by President Harry Truman on December 6, 1947.[3]