Everglades Historical Facts

Everglades Tours – 10 Facts About the Culture & History of the Everglades National Park

The Everglades National Park is not just about the airboat tours or the swamp buggy tours. The park has a rich and diverse historical and cultural heritage that goes back many years ago. Book your trip to the Everglades at halfpricetourtickets.com for unbeatable prices. Here are ten interesting facts about the history and culture of the Everglades National Park.

• At one time, the waters of South Florida flowed all the way from the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee, moving south to the Biscayne Bay estuaries, Florida Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands, covering over 11,000 square miles of sawgrass marshes, ponds, hardwood hammocks, sloughs, and forested prairies. This intricate system then went on to form the unique ecosystem that the Everglades is today.
• In the early 1900s, the Everglades were meant to be drained for farming and developmental purposes. But in 1947, with the help of many environmental conservationists, the Everglades National Park was established to preserve the natural ecosystem and the wildlife that inhabit it.
• The native tribe of the Calusa Indians emerged around 10,000 BC and were one of the earliest inhabitants of the Everglades National Park. Even today you can find many traces of their existence in the park such as shell tools, large architectural shell works, canoe trails, and carved wood to name a few. These people were almost entirely wipes out by the 1700s due to diseases that were brought by the early settlers.
• The Creek people such as the Miccosukee and the Seminole tribes were forced south for settling and hunting.
• Most of South Florida was still wilderness by the end of the nineteenth century. There were only three small settlements around Cape Sable, Chokoloskee, and Flamingo. These settlements were rural at best and everyone that lived here, lived off the land itself. The only way to reach Chokoloskee and Flamingo was by boat and inhabitants needed to rely on supplies arriving by boat from Fort Meyers, Key West and Tampa. They traded things like fish, cane syrup, and other produce for supplies.
• The people who lived in the Everglades before it became a park in 1947 were called ‘Gladesmen’. They lived off the land and were experts in hunting, camping and surviving in the Everglades. The airboat tours and alligator tours may be a famous tourist attraction today but back in the day, the Gladesmen used their own boats to steer through the marshy wetlands of the Everglades.
• The Spanish were the first to discover Florida in the early 16^th century but it still was largely unknown to the rest of the world until the 19^th century and was even left blank on many maps!
• The museum of the Everglades National Park has over 2.8 million specimens, archival photographs and documents, and other objects and artefacts that point to the culture, history and research of the park.

• There are over 62,000 biological specimens at the park including insects, amphibians, birds, molluscs, and many plants as well

• The 300 diverse archaeological sites have been the site for the recovery of over 675,000 objects of historic value.