Will I love The Everglades?

What makes Miami the Magic City isn’t in Miami. It starts about 40 miles south. It’s the Florida Everglades, 1.5 million acres of wilderness spread across three counties.

It’s much more than its storied swamp and alligators. The Everglades is also tangled hardwood hammock, pine rockland, sawgrass prairie, cypress stand, and Florida Bay.

I kinda grew up in the Everglades and feel a kinship with Douglas, who understood, loved, and articulated the Everglades to the world. I wish I could write about it with half her poetic language and passion. Because as urban sprawl eats away at the Everglades, we’re… show more.

Miami Herald columnist and author Marjory Stoneman Douglas can rightfully be described as the woman who saved the Everglades. The Everglades: River of Grass was published in 1947, the same year Everglades National Park opened. For over fifty years Douglas fought tirelessly against human encroachment on the Everglades and devoted nearly all her time to explain how vital it was to the entire state of Florida. In the 1960s (while in her late seventies) she became involved with the Audubon Society of Miami’s efforts to halt the building of an international airport in the Everglades. She also formed the Friends… show more.