As Everglades Nationwide Park prepares to have fun its anniversary, on 6 December, the HistoryMiami Museum is marking the event with two exhibitions trying again on the growth and preservation of South Florida’s showpiece park. An internet present, The Everglades: Exploitation & Conservation, is complemented by the in-person exhibition Traversing the Wilderness: Exploring Human Transportation Throughout the Everglades (till 12 February 2023).
The third-largest nationwide park within the contiguous US (excluding in Hawaii and Alaska), the Everglades is house to an distinctive vary of natural world, and proof of occupation by the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes courting again hundreds of years. And although its panorama—flat, moist and teeming with wildlife—might really feel faraway from the colourful crush of humanity in Miami, the 2 are intimately linked.
“Miami is tied to the Everglades—the Miami River and numerous rivers all through southern Florida stream out of the Everglades and into the Gulf of Mexico, Biscayne Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean,” says Christopher Barfield, the curator of exhibitions at HistoryMiami Museum and co-curator of Traversing the Wilderness—together with Alan Scott, Bonnie Ciolino and Ashley Trujillo. “When you’re a Floridian, the Everglades is essential to you. The state is making strides towards restoring and preserving the park, and that’s good for the complete state.”
Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum
Staff on the Tamiami Path, 1921
Steam-powered backhoes, barges, dynamite—and laborious labour—have been all used to construct the Tamiami Path, the primary main street to chop throughout the Everglades.
Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum
Airboat on sawgrass prairie, round 1960
Flat-bottomed airboats grew to become fashionable within the Nineteen Thirties, on the time they have been invented, and used for frog searching within the shallow Everglades prairies.
Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum
Exploring the park by automobile, round 1955
By the mid-Fifties the Nationwide Park Service had paved the Ingraham Freeway and begun accumulating entrance charges at this thatch-roofed entrance station.
Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum
Pa Hay Okee Path, 1960
The primary guests to the park needed to slog by way of the water. Now there are roads, parking heaps and boardwalk trails to make exploring the park simpler.
Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum
Clearing paths, 1955
Seminole foreman Corey Osceola (centre) and his workforce use small skiffs to clear a path for the Midway Creek boat tour path within the 10,000 Islands space of the park.
Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum, Miami Information Assortment
Putting in boundary indicators, 1953
Park rangers use a modified tractor to entry distant elements of the then newly established Everglades Nationwide Park.
