Everglades
Satellite image from NASA showing the Ever-
glades ecoregion as delineated by the World
Wide Fund for Nature. The region south of
the yellow line includes Lake Okeechobee,
the Everglades, the Big Cypress Swamp, the
Atlantic Coastal Ridge, the estuarine man-
groves of the Ten Thousand Islands, and Flor-
ida Bay.
The primary feature of the Everglades is the
sawgrass prairie.
Everglades is also the name of a city in
Collier County, Florida.
The Everglades are a subtropical wetland
located in the southern portion of the U.S.
state of Florida, comprising the southern half
of a large watershed. The system begins near
Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which dis-
charges into the vast but shallow Lake
Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the
wet season
forms a slow-moving river
60 miles (97 km) wide and over 100 miles
(160 km) long, flowing southward across a
limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern
end of the state. The Everglades are shaped
by water and fire, experiencing frequent
flooding in the wet season and drought in the
dry
season. Writer Marjory Stoneman
Douglas popularized the term "River of
Grass" to describe the sawgrass marshes,
part of a complex system of interdependent
ecosystems that include cypress swamps, the
estuarine mangrove forests of the Ten Thou-
sand Islands, tropical hardwood hammocks,
pine rockland, and the marine environment
of Florida Bay.
Human habitation in the southern portion
of
the
Florida
peninsula
dates
to
15,000 years ago. Two major tribes eventu-
ally formed in and around Everglades ecosys-
tems: the Calusa and the Tequesta. After
coming into contact with the Spanish in the
late 16th century, both tribes declined gradu-
ally during the following two centuries. The
Seminoles, a tribe of Creeks who assimilated
other peoples into their own, made their liv-
ing in the Everglades region after being
forced there by the U.S. military in the Semi-
nole Wars of the 19th century.
Draining the Everglades was first sugges-
ted in 1848, but was not attempted until
1882. Canals w