Everglades National Park leads readers on a photographic journey through natural wonders, cultural legacies, and the historic events that led to the creation of the nation’s first biological park, as well as the first 75 years, that have led to worldwide fame.

Vast, mysterious and for centuries inaccessible, the Everglades’ fame is worldwide. Much of this unique landscape is protected within Everglades National Park, as are places with such exotic names as Flamingo, Ten Thousand Islands, Florida Bay, Anhinga Trail, Shark Valley, and Pahayokee. Dedicated in 1947, the park receives nearly a million annual visitors to experience the Everglades and its alligators, crocodiles, Florida panthers, anhingas, roseate spoonbills, and egrets. It was egrets, or rather their courtship plumes decorating lady’s hats, that jump-started the movement to save their wetlands as a park. The Everglades was home to indigenous people for thousands of years and holds the stories of these archaic peoples, the indigenous Tequesta, Spanish and British colonialists, Mikasuki-speaking Indians and the soldiers who sought their expulsion, pioneer settlers, activists who created the park, south Florida’s residents, and generations of visitors to the tropical wilderness of Everglades National Park.