Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park covers more than 1.5 million acres at the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, west and southwest of Miami. It protects about 20 percent of the original Everglades, a slow-moving sheet of fresh water sometimes called the River of Grass. It is the third largest national park in the lower 48 states.

The park was established in 1947 after a long campaign by conservationists, including the writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas, whose name is given to the park's wilderness area. UNESCO made it a Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and a World Heritage Site in 1979, and it is a Ramsar wetland of international importance, one of only three places in the world on all three lists.

Habitats include sawgrass prairie, cypress swamp, hardwood hammocks, pine rocklands and the mangroves and bays of Florida Bay. It is the only place where American alligators and American crocodiles live side by side. Manatees, wading birds and the endangered Florida panther also live here.

The main entrances are the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center near Homestead, Shark Valley on the Tamiami Trail with a paved loop and tower, and the Gulf Coast area at Everglades City. Flamingo, at the end of the main park road, offers boat tours and camping. A private vehicle pays $35 for seven days, and winter, the dry season, is the best time to see wildlife with fewer mosquitoes.

Shark Valley and the other starting points

Your starting point depends on where you are staying. From Miami, Shark Valley on the Tamiami Trail is the quickest drive, about an hour, and its 15-mile paved loop can be walked in part, cycled or ridden on a tram tour, with alligators often lying beside the path in the dry season. From the Florida Keys or Homestead, the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center leads to the Anhinga Trail, a short boardwalk known for birds and alligators, and on 38 miles to Flamingo.

From Naples or Florida's west coast, the Gulf Coast entrance at Everglades City is the base for boat trips into the Ten Thousand Islands, where dolphins and manatees are common sightings.