Part of The US National Parks
- Where
- Southern tip of Florida,
United States - Coordinates
- 25.29° N
80.90° W - Area
- About 1.5 million acres
(National Park Service) - Established
- 1947, the first US national park
created for its biodiversity - Highest point
- About 8 feet above sea level
(National Park Service) - UNESCO
- World Heritage Site
since 1979 - Best visited
- December–April
(the dry season) - Advisory
- United States
(no State Department level)
Behind me a whole city’s traffic; in front of me grass with teeth along its edges, running flat to the sky, and water moving through it too slowly to watch. A dark bird hung its wings out to dry like washing. On the boardwalk a large reptile lay across my path in the winter sunshine, and I waited, politely, for a very long time.
The short answer
Everglades National Park covers 1.5 million acres of wetland, forest and marine habitat at the southern tip of Florida, in Miami-Dade, Monroe and Collier counties, the National Park Service says; its directions page gives 1,509,000 acres. It was established in 1947 as the first national park created for its biodiversity, and UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1979, the Park Service notes. It protects part of the Greater Everglades, which the Park Service calls the largest freshwater marsh in the United States: sawgrass marsh, marl prairie, pineland, cypress, hardwood hammock, mangrove and, along its southern edge, the shallow water of Florida Bay. It has three entrances, at Homestead, at Shark Valley on the Tamiami Trail and at Everglades City, and they do not connect inside the park.
February 2024Mangroves around open water at the coast of the park.
Photograph: NPS via Flickr · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
Why it's worth knowing
A river you cannot see moving. Before the canals, the Park Service explains, summer rain overflowed the south shore of Lake Okeechobee and travelled about 100 miles to Florida Bay, dropping only 12 to 14 feet on the way, as a slow sheet of water through the sawgrass. Marjory Stoneman Douglas named it in The Everglades: River of Grass, published in 1947, one month before the park was established. The sawgrass is not a grass at all: the Park Service notes that it is a sedge, Cladium jamaicense, with sharp teeth along the edges of each blade. Height does the rest. A few inches decide whether a patch becomes marsh, prairie, pineland or hammock, and the park’s highest point is about 8 feet above sea level.
January 2013The sun setting over flooded sawgrass.
Photograph: G. Gardner, NPS via Flickr · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
A park made for living things. With the park’s dedication in 1947, the Park Service writes, for the first time in American history a large tract of wilderness was protected not for its scenery but for the variety of life it sustained. It counts 36 threatened or endangered species in the park, among them the Florida panther, with more than 350 species of birds and 40 of mammals, and calls its mangroves the largest continuous mangrove ecosystem in the western hemisphere. It also describes the seagrass of Florida Bay, inside the park, as the largest seagrass prairie in North America, which is why everyone who operates a motorboat in the park must first take its free boater education course.
The field notes
Saved by a hammock and a women’s club
The first piece to be protected was Paradise Key, a hammock of royal palms and live oaks standing in the open prairie. Campaigners led by the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs and its preservation chairwoman, May Mann Jennings, won 960 acres from the state as Royal Palm State Park in 1916, the Park Service records, and Mrs Flagler matched the acreage. Congress authorized a national park in 1934; it was established in 1947, and President Harry S. Truman dedicated it on 6 December that year, describing the land as “serving not as the source of water, but as the last receiver of it.”
Missiles in the sawgrass
Inside the park stands Nike missile site HM-69, which the Park Service calls one of the best-preserved relics of the Cold War in Florida. The Army chose the site, about 160 miles from the Cuban coast, after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962; the base was completed in 1964, and from 1965 its A Battery kept 41-foot Nike Hercules missiles ready until official use ended in 1979. Twenty-two buildings and structures survive, among them three missile barns, a missile assembly building and a guard-dog kennel, and the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. The Park Service opens it most days from early December to late March, between 10 am and 2 pm; from April to November it is reached only on the Everglades Institute’s own programmes.
Canoe roads and shell mounds
People lived and travelled here long before the drainage. On the south-west coast the Calusa piled oyster shells into planned ridges, mounds, platforms and canals, the shell works, which archaeologists place between the late Archaic period and the sixteenth century, the Park Service writes. Mud Lake Canal, a canoe canal 3.9 miles long through marl prairie and mangrove, was built in the Glades II period, between AD 750 and 1200, by carbon dating of its bed, and was made a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Tree islands, the raised patches of forest in the marsh, almost always hold archaeological remains, and many were later used by the Seminole and Miccosukee; some are still kept as hunting camps.
On UNESCO’s danger list
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee placed the park on its List of World Heritage in Danger from 1993 to 2007, and again in 2010, and Wikipedia records it as listed in danger since; UNESCO’s own site refused our request, so the current status is given on Wikipedia’s account. The repair under way is the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, which Congress authorized in 2000. The Park Service describes it as costing more than $10.5 billion over 35 years or more, the largest hydrologic restoration project ever undertaken in the United States, intended to put more fresh, clean water back into the river of grass.
January 2019An American alligator among the grass at the Anhinga Trail.
Photograph: Mary L. Beach, NPS via Flickr · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
November 2023American flamingos in the shallows. The Park Service notes that sightings are rare.
Photograph: Peter Zarba, NPS via Flickr · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
April 2020The Anhinga Trail boardwalk over a pond of lily pads at sunset.
Photograph: Dylann Turffs, NPS via Flickr · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service) · cropped
- Walk the boardwalk slowly and look down as often as up. Half of what lives here is lying perfectly still beside it.
- Give every alligator the whole path and a little more. It was here first, and it knows it.
- Write down every bird. (One page, then a second, then a heron landed on the notebook to see what the fuss was about. Page three is mostly heron.)
- Park in the sun and cover the rubber on the car. The vultures here are fond of windscreen wipers, and they do not ask first.
- Some of the high ground out here has been somebody’s home and camp for a very long time. Look, and leave it exactly as it was.
A blade of sawgrass. The Everglades were called the river of grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1947, for the slow sheet of water moving through their sawgrass marshes, but sawgrass is not a true grass: the National Park Service notes that Cladium jamaicense is a sedge, with sharp teeth along the edges of each blade. It grows where it grows; the river goes on through it.
Tally, in the marginI took it for an ordinary meadow and ran a paw along one blade by way of greeting. The blade greeted me back, briskly. It was only later, nursing the paw, that I understood the whole slow river had been flowing through a field of very small saws all along, and had never once complained.
Getting there
How to get there. By car: the Park Service says a car is needed, because distances are long and no public transport runs inside the park. The three entrances do not connect, and each of them and the Flamingo visitor center are at least an hour’s drive apart. The main entrance, with the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center, is at Homestead, reached from Miami by the Florida Turnpike; from it the Main Park Road runs 38 miles to Flamingo on Florida Bay, past Royal Palm. Shark Valley is 25 miles west of the Turnpike on US 41, the Tamiami Trail; private cars stop at its car park, and its 15-mile loop is open only on foot, by bicycle or on the concession’s tram, with an observation tower halfway round. The Gulf Coast entrance, a water-based one at Everglades City, is the closest to Naples. From about December to April the City of Homestead runs a trolley to the Coe Visitor Center and Royal Palm, the only public transport into the park. The Park Service warns that visitors dropped off by ride-hailing services often cannot find one to take them back.
September 2018The observation tower at Shark Valley and its ramp over the sawgrass.
Photograph: Andrea Sanchez, NPS via Flickr · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
When to go. The Park Service divides the year into a dry season, typically December to April, and a wet season from May to November. The dry season is the busy one, with the largest variety of wading birds; the wet season is rainy, with a lot of mosquitoes, and many ranger programmes stop for it.
What to arrange ahead. An entrance pass, sold online and at the Shark Valley and Homestead entrances; on busy winter weekends the Park Service advises arriving before 10 am, coming on a weekday if you can, and buying a digital pass ahead to shorten the wait. Tram tours at Shark Valley and boat tours at Flamingo are run by the park’s concessioners. Flamingo has a campground, eco-tents, houseboats and the new Flamingo Lodge, which the Park Service’s Flamingo page says is open. Wilderness camping needs a permit all year. The park sells only a limited range of snacks and drinks, at the Coe and Royal Palm visitor center bookstores and the Flamingo marina store, with a food truck at Flamingo, and the Park Service recommends that visitors bring their own food and drinks.
Safety. The State Department’s travel advisories cover other countries, so none applies here; the hazards are the park’s own. The Park Service asks visitors to stay at least 15 feet from alligators and crocodiles, which can move fast, and notes that feeding or harassing them is a criminal offence; swimming is prohibited in the park’s canals, ponds, freshwater lakes, marked channels and boat basins. It also warns of heat and humidity, mosquitoes, poison ivy and poisonwood, and vultures that damage the wipers and seals of parked cars. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November, the National Hurricane Center says; its outlook of 25 October 2026 expected no tropical cyclone to form in the following seven days. The park’s alerts page, last updated 9 September 2026 and read on 25 October 2026, listed all entrances open, with the East Everglades day-use area closed for construction and a few wilderness campsites closed.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is Everglades National Park?
Everglades National Park is at the southern tip of Florida, in Miami-Dade, Monroe and Collier counties, the National Park Service says. Its main entrance is at Homestead, south of Miami; Shark Valley is on US 41, the Tamiami Trail; and the water-based Gulf Coast entrance is at Everglades City, near Naples.
Why is the Everglades called the River of Grass?
Marjory Stoneman Douglas called the Everglades a river of grass in her book The Everglades: River of Grass, published in 1947, for the shallow water moving slowly south through its sawgrass marshes. The National Park Service notes that the water once flowed about 100 miles from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, falling only 12 to 14 feet.
Is sawgrass a grass?
No. Sawgrass, Cladium jamaicense, the plant behind the Everglades’ River of Grass, is a sedge, the National Park Service notes, with sharp teeth along the edges of each blade. Everglades National Park also holds more than 100 species of true grasses, among them muhly grass, whose purple flowers blanket the marl prairies in autumn.
Do the Everglades National Park entrances connect?
No. Everglades National Park’s three entrances, at Homestead, Shark Valley and Everglades City, do not connect inside the park, the National Park Service says, and each of them and the Flamingo visitor center are at least an hour’s drive apart. A car is needed, because no public transport runs inside the park.
When is the best time to visit Everglades National Park?
The National Park Service gives the Everglades’ dry season as typically December to April and calls it the busy season, with the largest variety of wading birds. The wet season, May to November, is rainy, with a lot of mosquitoes and fewer ranger programmes.
What is the Nike missile site in Everglades National Park?
Nike missile site HM-69, inside Everglades National Park, is a Nike Hercules base the US Army built about 160 miles from Cuba after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was completed in 1964 and used until 1979, and the National Park Service opens it to visitors most days from early December to late March.
Is Everglades National Park a World Heritage Site?
Yes. UNESCO listed Everglades National Park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, the National Park Service notes. Wikipedia records that UNESCO placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1993 to 2007 and again in 2010, and that it is also a Biosphere Reserve (1976) and a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance (1987).
When is hurricane season in the Everglades?
The Atlantic hurricane season, which covers south Florida and Everglades National Park, runs from 1 June to 30 November, the National Hurricane Center says. It overlaps the park’s wet season, May to November, as the National Park Service defines it.