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Everglades National Park
A vast subtropical wetland — a "river of grass"
Everglades National Park, established in 1947 at the southern tip of Florida, protects the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States — a vast, slow-moving sheet of water famously described as a "river of grass." Unlike most parks, it was created not for scenery but to save a unique and threatened ecosystem, a shallow flow of fresh water creeping south across sawgrass marsh toward the mangrove coast and the sea.
The park is a mosaic of sawgrass prairie, cypress stands, mangrove forest, and coastal estuary, home to alligators and crocodiles — the only place on Earth where the two coexist — along with manatees, wading birds, and the elusive Florida panther. It is gravely threatened by the diversion of its water supply to South Florida's cities and farms, and is the focus of one of the largest ecosystem-restoration efforts ever attempted.