[Everglades] may not be our largest national park (that honor belongs to Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska), but it is certainly the wettest. During and after the rainy season, when not only the [mangrove] [swamp] but also the sawgrass prairie is under water, most of the park abounds in fish and other water life, and even the white-tailed deer leads a semi-aquatic existence.
Despite the fact that it is low, flat, and largely under water, [Everglades] is a park of many environments: shallow, key-dotted Florida Bay; the coastal prairie; the vast [mangrove] forest and its mysterious waterways; cypress [swamps]; the true everglades—an extensive freshwater [marsh] dotted with tree islands and occasional ponds; and the driest zone, the pine-and-hammock rockland.
The watery expanse we call “[everglades],” from which the park gets its name, lies only partly within the park boundaries. Originally this river flowed, unobstructed though very slowly, southward from Lake Okeechobee more than 100 miles to Florida Bay. It is hardly recognizable as a river, for it is 50 miles wide and averages only about 6 inches deep, and it creeps rather than flows. Its source, the area around Lake Okeechobee, is only about 15 feet above sea level, and the riverbed slopes southward only 2 or 3 inches to the mile.
As you can see by the maps on pages [2] and [3], the works of man have greatly altered the drainage patterns and the natural values of south Florida, and you can imagine how this has affected the supply of water—the park’s lifeblood.
The park’s array of plants and animals is a blend of tropical species, most of which made their way across the water from the Caribbean islands, and species from the Temperate Zone, which embraces all of Florida. All of these inhabitants exist here through adaptation to the region’s peculiar cycles of flood, drought, and fire and by virtue of subtle variations in temperature, altitude, and soil.
HISTORIC DRAINAGE PATTERNS OF SOUTH FLORIDA
DRAINAGE PATTERNS OF SOUTH FLORIDA TODAY
