The Swamp

In 1881, Hamilton Disston, a wealthy enterpreneur cut a deal to purchase four million acres of Everglades, hoping to drain the land for selling and promised to drain an additional 12 million acres. But the wet season reclaimed the lands and six years later, the state commission declared his efforts a failure.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas advocated for conservation and joined the movement to make the Everglades a national park. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass and forever redefined the region as essential not only to wildlife, but to people.

In the summer of 1928, heavy rainfall raised Lake Okeechobee’s water level three feet above normal. That fall, a hurricane smashed the coast of Florida, and the impact flooded Lake Okeechobee. The inland flood obliterated 21 miles of the 47-mile earthen and an estimated 2,500 people died in Southern Florida, most of them migrant farm workers.

The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature.

Plume, an arrangement of feather as ornament, especially the prized plume from wading birds in the Everglades surpassed the price of gold. The mass killing of these birds soon led to anti-plume campaign by the Florida Audubon Society, with support from the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs and resulted in grassroots conservation movement.