American Experience (1988–…): Season 31, Episode 4 - The Swamp - full transcript

In 1947, an improbable
best-seller

redefined one of the most remote
regions in America

a place long considered
impenetrable and dangerous.

Author Marjory Stoneman Douglas
saw the Everglades differently

as a vital,
invaluable ecosystem,

not a useless swamp.

Nothing anywhere else
is like them.

Their vast glittering openness,

wider than the enormous visible
round of the horizon,

the racing free saltness
and sweetness

of their massive winds,



under the dazzling blue heights
of space.

They are, they have always been,

one of the unique regions
of the Earth...

Remote, never wholly known.

The Everglades
had been essential

to south Florida's rise
from a remote backwater

to an urban and industrial
empire.

Now, Douglas warned,
the vast wetland was dying.

The story of the Everglades

is the story of man's quest
to drain the swamp,

to reclaim, and develop,
and improve the Everglades.

We dug canals.

We fortified a lake
without really understanding

what those consequences
would be.



They didn't really give
any thought

to how the natural system
worked.

It resulted in large-scale
ecological collapse.

The endless acres of saw grass,
brown as an enormous shadow

where rain and lake water
had once flowed,

rustled dry.

What had been a river of grass
and sweet water,

that had given meaning and life
through centuries,

was made, in one chaotic gesture

of greed and ignorance
and folly,

a river of fire.

In winter 1877,
a steamboat plied the waters

of the St. Johns River
in central Florida.

It was one of many excursion
trips for northern tourists

looking to trade

the cold, crowded streets
of industrial cities

for the pleasures of a pristine
tropical wilderness.

Aboard the steamer was a wealthy
33-year-old Philadelphian

named Hamilton Disston,

on his first visit to Florida.

A restless entrepreneur
who soon would inherit

his father's lucrative
saw manufactory,

Disston had come to fish.

But in the wilds
of central Florida,

he saw a spectacular
business opportunity.

Hamilton Disston has this vision

of Florida as a place
that will make him

even more wealthy
than what he is.

And in the late 19th century,

the American heroes of the day
are people like Rockefeller,

and Carnegie, and Vanderbilt...
Businessmen.

Florida, it's a paradise
for the sportsmen and women...

But it's also an opportunity
for the businessman.

This was a way

for this heir
to an industrial fortune

who had always lived
in his dad's shadow

to kind of step out

and create something
that was truly his.

Where Disston saw potential,

most others saw
an insurmountable obstacle:

a massive wetland
known as the Everglades

that covered much of Florida's
southern half,

inhibiting settlement
and development.

"We want immigration
and capital,"

Florida's governor admitted,

"come from whatever source
it may."

Disston was sure
he could deliver both...

By turning the Everglades
into dry land.

Hamilton Disston had this
very simple grand vision.

He was going to transform
this wasteland

into the new hub of America.

People saw it as man's duty
to conquer the wilderness.

The people who talked about
draining the Everglades,

and reclaiming the Everglades,
and improving the Everglades,

they thought they were
literally doing God's work.

They thought that they were
taking this useless swamp

and turning it into something
productive for mankind.

In 1881, Disston cut a deal

to purchase four million acres
of the Everglades

for $1 million in cash,

enough to pull Florida
out of its post-Civil War debt.

He also promised to drain
12 million acres...

One-third
of the state's landmass...

In exchange for half the land

his dredges successfully
reclaimed.

One local newspaper predicted
the project would give Florida

"the most vigorous push forward
on the road to progress

that it has yet received."

When asked why he'd chosen
to invest

in such a
"colossal undertaking,"

Disston replied, "The truth is,
I wanted a plaything.

I am having a vast amount of fun
with it."

Hamilton Disston
was really the first guy

who made a serious effort
to drain it.

His drainage scheme was
at the time

considered the most ambitious
drainage project

in the history of the planet.

There had never been
this kind of assault

on an entire landscape.

Hamilton Disston
is not just simply

one of Florida's early
big real estate developers.

He's one of its early boosters.

His vision was to drain
this land,

turn around and sell it.

To get the word out, he invited
President Chester Arthur

down to Florida for a tour

of his, if you will,
"kingdom"...

And took Chester Arthur
on a boat ride

down the Caloosahatchee River.

And so he's generating
this excitement about Florida

and Florida land.

Soon, pioneers began venturing

to the fringes
of the Everglades.

The cow town of Fort Myers,

the base for Disston's
dredging operation

on the west side
of the peninsula,

tripled in population
almost overnight.

Thomas Edison,
lured by the fishing,

bought a winter home there,

prophesying that
"there is only one Fort Myers,

and one day, 90 million people
are going to find it out."

Disston's dredges, meanwhile,

were busily carving
drainage canals

through the saw grass marshes.

Within two years,

water levels in some areas
had reached record lows,

opening pastures
and grazing land for cattle.

Bullish on the prospects
for agriculture in the region,

Disston established
an 1,800-acre sugar plantation

and generated impressive yields.

The tropics was a vitally
important environmental region

both from a biological
standpoint

and, increasingly,
from an agricultural standpoint.

Things like sugar, and citrus,

which could be produced in ways
that they couldn't be

in most of the rest of
the continental United States.

Disston was trying
all these ventures:

little towns
that he was planning,

and bringing people in to live,

selling land and sugar
as a capitalist.

He was there to demonstrate
that south Florida...

And not just south Florida,

but drained land
in the Everglades...

Could be made productive
and profitable.

Then, after a handful
of relatively dry years,

the rains came with a vengeance,

and the land
Disston had reclaimed

began to flood.

A state commission in 1887

declared most of his efforts
a failure,

dismissing them as the result
of a temporary drought,

not permanent drainage.

The great foil in Florida
is rain.

Even though you may think
you've drained the land,

as Hamilton Disston
thought he had,

one big rainstorm comes along,
or a hurricane comes along,

and that dry land is suddenly
swampland once again.

When he saw that things

weren't going so well for him
in Florida,

Disston mortgaged
the Disston Saw Company...

This old and prestigious firm
in Philadelphia...

For $1 million

to try to bail himself out.

Disston's financial gambit
ultimately came to nothing...

Sunk by heavy rains

and a pair of cold snaps
that ruined his crops.

On April 30, 1896,
Hamilton Disston died suddenly

at the age of 51.

He's failed as a self-made
businessman, he realizes.

And the rumor is...
And it may or may not be true...

That he was so depressed

that he sat
in one of the bathtubs

in his house in Philadelphia

and put a gun to his head
and, and committed suicide.

The official cause of death
was a heart attack.

But to many, that didn't matter.

The moral was the same:

The swamp had claimed
another victim.

This is the greatest
concentration of saw grass

in the world.

To try to make one's way
among the impenetrable tufts

is to be cut off from all air,

to be beaten down by the sun

and ripped by the grassy
saw-toothed edges

as one sinks in mud and water.

There is no earthly way

to get through
these interminable miles.

Before Hamilton Disston's
failed effort to tame them,

the Everglades had been
mostly unknown to white people.

When the place first appeared

on a British engineer's map
of Florida in 1823,

it was identified only as
an "extensive inundated region

generally called
The Everglades,"

situated in the midst of an area
labeled "Unexplored Lands."

It wasn't until the late 1830s,
when U.S. soldiers attempted

to remove a few thousand
Seminole Indians from the state,

that whites began to grasp
the character

of Florida's imposing wetland

and categorized it,
unflatteringly, as a swamp.

There was a sense
that swamps were miasmatic

and disease-producing,

as well as being the habitat
of noxious reptiles,

and insects,
and things like that.

It certainly gave places
like the Everglades

a bad reputation.

"Campaigning in Florida
was intolerable... excruciating!"

a young Army surgeon wrote
of the experience.

"It was certainly
the most dreary

"and pandemonium-like region

"I ever visited;

"nothing but barren wastes.

"It is in fact a most hideous
region to live in,

"a perfect paradise for Indians,
alligators, serpents, frogs,

and every other kind
of loathsome reptile."

One officer bemoaned

the overwhelming swarms
of mosquitoes

in the summer months.

"This country should be
preserved for the Indians,"

he concluded.

"I could not wish them all
in a worse place."

The Seminole hadn't chosen
to live in the Everglades.

They were driven there.

Pushed out of north Florida
by encroaching white settlement,

they fiercely resisted
all efforts to remove them

from the territory.

Rather than surrender,

they fought a series
of bitter wars

and moved ever farther south,

until finally, in the watery
labyrinth of the Everglades,

they found a sanctuary:

abundant in fish and game;

suitable for farming

on the islands
that dotted the marshland;

the forbidding terrain
an advantage against intruders.

I was always taught
that if our ancestors

didn't have the tenacity and
the bravery to do what they did,

and to stand their ground,

we wouldn't be here today.

And as an indigenous person,
growing up,

we're always taught
that we're related

to the environment around us.

We believe that everything
was put here for a purpose,

just like we have our purpose.

The plants, the animals,
the trees,

everything have their purpose
in life.

Florida is very long,
very narrow,

and surrounded on three sides
by water... very warm water.

So, that means that this place
is defined

not by the four seasons
that you typically find

in the temperate zone,

but by the rhythms
of the tropics,

the wet and dry season.

It's very warm, very humid,
and there's water everywhere.

The water's journey
to the Everglades began

just south of today's Orlando.

Fed by rainfall, it meandered
through the Kissimmee Basin

to the huge, shallow
Lake Okeechobee.

In the rainy season,
the water would overtop

the lake's southern bank,

then slowly spread
across the peninsula...

Some of it seeping down

to replenish
underground aquifers,

the rest wending its way
through dense mangrove forests

before finally exiting
into Florida Bay

and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Everglades is really
a water management system

that's perfectly tuned

to the conditions
in the subtropics.

If it rained a lot,
the wetlands would just expand.

And if it stopped raining,
and there was a drought,

the wetlands would contract.

But it's extremely flat.

So water just doesn't run off.

It looked like it sat there,
but actually it didn't.

It flowed...

Just very, very slowly.

Called Pa-Hay-Okee...
or grassy water...

By the Seminole,

the Everglades
was but one component

of a vast, interconnected
ecosystem

that included Biscayne Bay,

off the coast
of what would one day be Miami,

the coral reefs
of the Florida Keys,

and a patchwork of pinelands
and blackwater bogs

known as the Big Cypress Swamp.

Altogether, the greater
Everglades ecosystem

covered 18,000 square miles...

And water was its lifeblood.

But when Hamilton Disston...

And those who would follow
in his footsteps...

Tried to drain it,

none of that
was well understood.

At the turn of the 20th century,

there is a growing sense
that engineers

and industrial-era machinery

gave Americans the capacity

to truly master
the natural world.

It's an era of arrogance
or hubris.

And I think that is
an important transition point

in the history
of the Everglades.

Every generation in America
has new technological conceits.

The idea
that this new generation...

The Panama Canal generation...

That they were gonna be able
to do massive drainage

down in the Everglades,

that it could be done,

that the technology was there...

All that was missing
was money and willpower

and some political finesse.

On January 3, 1905,

the State of Florida swore in
its 19th governor:

a burly, rough-hewn native son

with the unlikely name
of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward.

Orphaned as a teenager,

Broward had made his own way
in the world,

earning a reputation
as a straight-talker

and a fair-dealer

with a knack
for getting things done.

Now, as his inauguration speech
made plain,

Governor Broward intended to do
something about the Everglades.

"The state owns several million
acres of unreclaimed lands

as fertile as any in the world,"
he declared.

"They should be drained
and made fit for cultivation."

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward
was a force.

He wanted to do something,
he did it.

He was smart, he was savvy,

he had ambitions.

And he campaigned on the promise
that he would drain

millions of acres
in the Everglades.

Broward told Floridians

that water was the common enemy
of the people of Florida,

and he was gonna be the man
who got rid of it.

Known for his slogan
"Water Will Run Down Hill!,"

Broward was convinced
that draining the Everglades

was a simple proposition.

Not only
could it be accomplished

for just a dollar an acre,
he proclaimed,

"I can do the whole business
in five years at the outside."

This was a vast part
of his state

that he wanted to see developed,

that he wanted to bring
onto the tax rolls,

that he wanted to see

people gainfully using to
advance the economic development

of his state.

And I think there was
a real sense that the person

that could bring
this intractable landscape

into its economy

would be a kind of hero.

By draining the Everglades,
Broward vowed,

he would make Florida
America's new heartland.

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward
was a populist politician,

meaning that what he would do

would be for the people.

He envisioned the Everglades
becoming a place

in which
the ambitious individual,

the independent yeoman farmer...
The Jeffersonian farmer...

Could make a living
for himself and his family.

Florida had been granted
statehood in 1845.

But when Broward took office,
more than 50 years later,

it was still considered
the frontier.

The second-largest state
east of the Mississippi,

Florida was also
among the least settled,

with a population
of roughly half a million.

This was the wilderness.

When they were talking
about making Florida a state,

there was one member of Congress
who said,

"Why on Earth
would we want this place?

"It is a God-forsaken swamp

"full of alligators
and mosquitoes,

"and nobody would want
to immigrate there,

even from Hell."

Florida was like
the last Wild West.

Nobody was gonna move
to south Florida.

If you're a politician
from down there,

nobody's coming to live
in a swamp.

So you had to have schemes
to drain the swamp.

Broward meant to finish what
Hamilton Disston had started.

With 80 miles of canals
already dredged,

and working
from a recommendation

made by Disston's own
chief engineer,

Broward ultimately planned
a huge and costly canal

that would lower the level
of Lake Okeechobee

by siphoning water east
to the St. Lucie River

and out to the Atlantic.

But the governor wanted to
quickly show proof of concept,

and he decided to start digging
much farther south,

on the New River, near the
tiny hamlet of Fort Lauderdale.

On July 4, 1906,

Broward commemorated
the nation's independence

by launching the first of two
specially constructed dredges...

Then wired back
to the state capital,

"The first dredge
is digging mud!"

The fanfare was premature...

The line through the saw grass
hadn't even been surveyed.

But Broward was a man
on a mission.

He was not just the governor.

He was the chief engineer.

He wrote the specifications
for the dredges.

He went and inspected them
as they were being built

every month.

At one point, he wrote a letter
to the manufacturer,

asking why he had thickened
a bulkhead

by one-sixteenth of an inch.

Broward was very hot
on drainage.

And this was a hot topic around
the United States at the time.

People were draining

the prairie potholes
of the Midwest.

They were developing ways
to dry out the river basins.

It's really hard to overstate
the excitement

that Broward's drainage project
was creating,

not just in Florida,
but around the country.

I mean, Teddy Roosevelt was
very excited about reclamation.

He saw it as a top priority
for his administration.

And his Agriculture Department
was especially excited

about the drainage work
that was going on in Florida,

which they saw as potentially
the greatest act of reclamation

in American history.

The new canals
around Fort Lauderdale

made an instant impression.

Swampland bought
for 25 cents an acre

now produced harvests
of $600 an acre for tomatoes,

$1,000 for lettuce,
$1,500 for celery.

"This great Everglades district
will not only develop

into a most beautiful
and prosperous country,"

predicted a satisfied farmer,

"but will prove itself
the Eden of America."

Enthusiasm for Broward's project
was far from universal.

Critics attacked the drainage
effort as "a wildcat scheme"

that would succeed
only in draining the pockets

of taxpayers.

Others worried the canals
would lead to overdrainage,

which would then cause fires...

Or underdrainage
that would cause more floods.

"Some men believe the Everglades
should be drained,"

mocked one newspaper,

"while others urge
the annexation of the moon."

Even the chief of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's

new drainage division

expressed reservations,

suggesting
the Everglades enterprise

would cost as much as 50 times
more than Broward estimated.

Broward is under fire
by many people who say

his plan is flawed,

that what Broward was proposing
just simply wouldn't work.

The U.S.D.A sends an engineer

by the name of James O. Wright

to south Florida

to do a study
of the Broward drainage project.

And apparently, Wright
and Broward became chummy.

Broward was very eager

to get a kind of
seal of good housekeeping

from the federal government.

And James Wright was more
than happy to give Broward

the kind of answer he wanted

as long as there were also
private opportunities

for him to have a little graft
on the side.

Ultimately, James Wright
put together a report

that was much more
Broward-friendly,

coming to the conclusion

that the Everglades drainage
was inevitable,

and it could be done
for about one dollar an acre,

which was what Broward
wanted to hear.

By the time Wright
finished his study, in 1908,

Broward was nearing
the end of his term,

in the midst of a run
for the U.S. Senate,

and badly in need of a boost
for both his drainage project

and his reputation.

Over the previous two years,
his dredges had dug

only about 12 miles of canals

and reclaimed fewer
than 12,000 acres...

Hardly a dent
in the massive wetland.

Worse still, Broward had failed
to pass a drainage tax

to support the effort,

and was now
woefully short on cash.

But the governor
had angles to work.

In December 1908,
just before he left office,

Broward negotiated
a million-dollar sale

of Everglades marshland

to a Western land speculator,

and rescued his drainage project
from financial ruin.

Not quite three months later,

excerpts from Wright's
optimistic report

somehow made their way
to Florida officials...

Despite the fact that Wright's
supervisors at the U.S.D.A.

had found the report lacking.

State lawmakers were delighted
by what they read.

"The drainage of the Glades,"
they declared,

"is absolutely feasible."

The State of Florida
is flaunting it

as if this is the gospel word
about Everglades drainage.

And used this flawed report

to generate this excitement
nationwide

about buying real estate
in Florida,

to bring flocks of people down
to buy this reclaimed land

that the state
was responsible for creating.

Thanks in part
to Wright's misleading report,

the State of Florida
managed to pass

a five-cents-an-acre
drainage tax,

then hired Wright
as Florida's chief engineer

at twice his federal salary.

Ex-Governor Broward's plan
for the Everglades

was now at the top
of the state's agenda.

After Hamilton Disston tried and
failed to drain the Everglades,

Broward came along,

and he didn't really succeed
in draining the swamp, either,

but he made it absolutely clear

that the swamp
was going to be drained.

The rush got underway
in March 1911.

In New York, Washington,
and Pittsburgh,

in Michigan, Iowa, Kansas,
and South Dakota,

Americans boarded trains
by the thousands

and made a beeline for Florida.

Upon arrival in Fort Lauderdale,

the early comers quickly filled
the small town's few hotels.

The rest rented rooms
in private homes

or scrambled
for a patch of ground

in a hastily pitched tent city.

They were schoolteachers
and clerks,

bricklayers and farmers,

all of them eager to claim
their very own parcel

of drained Everglades muckland

in what advertisements
had described

as one of "the greatest
land propositions ever offered

to the investing public."

These people saw
this golden opportunity.

They were told that this muck
was this rich, black, wet soil,

and it was like
you could throw a quarter down

and a tree would grow out of it.

The event had been organized
by Dicky Bolles,

the land speculator
who had purchased

a half-million acres
in the Everglades

from Governor Broward.

Now, Bolles was looking
to unload it at a profit.

Dicky Bolles calls it
the Progresso Land Lottery.

For $240,
you could buy into this lottery

with the chance of winning
either a large parcel of land

or perhaps a small parcel
of land.

And what he doesn't tell people
is that much of this land

that is part of this lottery

is still underwater.

Peddling the promise
that the whole of the Everglades

would be drained in a year,

Bolles and his so-called
swamp boomers

managed to sell 20,000 parcels
of muckland

in a matter of months...

Most of it sight unseen.

Dicky Bolles sent brochures
around the country

with fake quotes from
the Department of Agriculture

announcing that the land
was already drained,

that this project couldn't fail,

with sort of true quotes
from the state,

announcing
that the will of the state

was behind it.

The new Everglades land owners...

Locals called them
"land suckers"...

Soon discovered the reality
behind the sales pitch.

An Illinois teacher
searching for her new farm

discovered
"water... water everywhere."

"I have bought land by the acre,

and I have bought land
by the foot,"

said one Iowa purchaser,

"but, my God, I have never
bought land by the gallon."

When the news got out,

the rush to settle
the Everglades

abruptly slowed to a crawl.

Some disgruntled investors sued.

Eventually, Bolles was indicted
for mail fraud,

and his scheme denounced on
the floor of the U.S. Congress

as "one of the meanest swindles
ever conducted in this country."

People were talking about it
as the biggest swindle

in the history
of American real estate,

and this was
when Florida swampland

became a national punch line.

There was no doubt
that people thought the swamp

could be drained.

It was possible.

We could probably do it.

But it always smelled
of a scheme in some ways.

It always seemed
like a boondoggle.

What they really
didn't understand

is just the magnitude,

the sheer volume of water
they were dealing with.

The size of the landscape
was immense.

"The Everglades may be drained
some day,"

observed one south Florida
resident.

"But that day has not arrived."

This is the country
of the birds.

The man-o'-war birds
from the keys

float and tumble over it
in their effortless flight.

Thousands of sandpipers and
sanderlings rise in clouds.

In a slow roar of aroused wings,

they float high up and sail

and turn
in great concentric circles,

white against cloud dazzle.

The Everglades is unique

because it sits
at the crossroads

between North America,
the Caribbean, Central America,

and it's this big place
where all of those areas

are kind of jumbled together
in a big mosaic.

That makes it
amazingly biodiverse.

It has a profusion of plants
and animals found

nowhere else on this continent,

and they're all located together
in the Everglades.

South Florida attracted
a lot of attention

from botanists and explorers,

people who were interested
in the south Florida landscape

as it was, not in terms
of what it could produce.

There were always voices

questioning the route
that was being taken

in the development
of the Everglades.

From the moment he settled
in south Florida, in 1903,

naturalist
Charles Torrey Simpson

had been fascinated
by the Everglades.

By his own account,
he'd "loved Florida on sight,"

and he'd chosen to spend
his retirement

a few miles north of Miami,
in a place

where the natural wonders
of the Everglades

could be observed.

What people like Simpson and
others found in the Everglades

as they came to study
and appreciate them

was a vastness and a solitude

and a sense of smallness

in comparison
to the forces of nature

that they found
spiritually nourishing.

Already, the wildness
that so inspired Simpson

was being spoiled
by the hand of man.

A railroad built along
Florida's east coast

had increased Miami's population
fivefold in just five years

and laid waste to acres of pine
forests and hardwood hammocks.

"The charred ruin,"
Simpson lamented,

"glares in the sun
as a silent and pathetic protest

against useless waste
and folly."

Like famed preservationist
John Muir,

Simpson believed nature
should be left alone,

and in 1912, he began
churning out a steady stream

of books and articles
meant as a kind of wake-up call

to south Florida.

People like Simpson
begin to interpret the landscape

to south Floridians

in ways that becomes
particularly powerful.

Floridians needed
to come to recognize

what they were destroying

and to recognize
that there was great virtue

in protecting
at least some of it.

That without protecting
some of it, this Florida idyll...

This notion of the good life

in this benign climate
and environment...

Was gonna become
a kind of hollow promise.

In Simpson's view,

perhaps no spot
in the Everglades

was more urgently in need
of protection

than Paradise Key.

An island of trees situated

in the middle
of the saw grass marsh,

45 miles south of Miami,

the place was lush and green,

home to the country's largest
stand of towering royal palms

and a riot of rare orchids.

As Simpson once put it,

"My eyes have never rested
on any spot on Earth

as beautiful as Paradise Key."

Now it was under threat
from land developers,

orchid and palm poachers,

and a road that was being laid
straight through the island.

Simpson and many
of his colleagues

rose to the defense
of Paradise Key,

but it was a group
of Florida women

who ultimately determined
its fate.

The move to preserve
Paradise Key

didn't really gain traction

until May Mann Jennings
became the president

of the Florida Federation
of Women's Clubs

in 1914,

and May was a person
who got things done.

Her father was
a state legislator,

her husband had been
governor of Florida,

and if anybody knew everybody
in the state of Florida,

it was May Jennings.

She decided
that saving Paradise Key

was gonna be
her number-one priority,

and that changed everything
for Florida conservation.

Jennings mobilized
her federation... 9,000-strong...

To lobby the legislature
to designate Paradise Key

as Florida's first state park.

It proved a tough sell.

Convincing lawmakers

that the so-called wasteland
of the Everglades

held anything worth preserving
in its natural state

took patient persuasion.

But Jennings and her federation
persisted,

and eventually prevailed.

Women didn't have the vote
till 1920,

but they had the connections
that gave them power.

They could join together.

They could sign petitions.

They could wander the corridors
of power and demand change,

and they could do that
because they had the numbers,

and they had the influence.

On November 23, 1916,

nearly a thousand people
attended the opening ceremony

of Royal Palm State Park,
which Jennings dedicated

"to the people of Florida
and their children forever."

Only about a tenth
of one percent

of the Everglades ecosystem

had been saved in the bargain,

but amid the incessant calls
to drain and develop,

Jennings and her fellow
conservationists

judged the park a good start.

It was momentous.

What they had created was
the first state park in Florida,

and it was the first state park
in the United States

that had been created
by women's clubs.

So they set an example
nationally

for how to preserve land,
how to lobby to make it happen,

and how to realize this dream

that others hadn't been able
to accomplish.

Throughout the 19-teens,

earth was being moved
all over the Everglades.

Despite the scandal
over the Wright report

and the ensuing land swindle,

enthusiasm for draining
the Everglades remained high...

And in 1913, a state commission
had laid out a plan

to get the job done.

The top priority
was a familiar one:

putting an end to overflows
from Lake Okeechobee,

which the commission called

"the great liquid heart
of Florida."

The recommended fix:
a massive canal east

to the St. Lucie River
and the Atlantic...

The very canal that had figured
in the drainage schemes

of Hamilton Disston
and Napoleon Bonaparte Broward.

"Without that canal," the
commission's chairman advised,

"the efforts now being expended
are a sheer waste of money."

In addition, the last two
of the four main canals

running diagonally
from Lake Okeechobee

would be completed,

and dozens of new canals built.

In total, the project was slated
to cost nearly $25 million...

12 times what the state
had spent on drainage so far.

Meanwhile, in 1915,
construction began

on the Tamiami Trail,
a 275-mile road

that would connect

southern Florida's
east and west coasts,

and usher in the development
of both.

The Tamiami Trail was a road
from Tampa to Miami,

and it was a road
through the Everglades.

The building of the trail
suggested

that people were starting
to see south Florida

as the type of place

where it was worth investing
in infrastructure.

To some,

the dredges
that crisscrossed the wetlands

and the work crews struggling
to pave over the muck

were signs of progress.

To others,
they were a menacing intrusion.

The Tamiami Trail cuts right
through Indian country.

This is a really destructive
form of colonialism

that Seminoles,
and native people in general,

saw as really aggressive and
hostile to their way of life,

and it really was
a destructive force.

Before Florida was settled...

Before you had roads, and
canals, and other communities...

When it was mainly just

our people living here
off the land,

we were mainly
a hunter-gatherer society.

We followed where the game went.

And it was basically
a subsistence type of living.

Now there was a road
across the state,

and it kind of diced up
the Everglades.

With fish and game disappearing
from the Everglades,

and many of their island
planting grounds destroyed,

the Seminole did their best
to adapt...

Holding fast to their identity

even as the environment
that had sustained it

was systematically dismantled.

Instead of building your camp

where it was the best place
to grow crops

or to hunt for the game
in that area,

it was, "Okay, let's build
our camp close to the highway

"because we know tourists
are gonna travel that highway

"so we can open up a little shop

and start selling
our souvenirs."

They started making baskets and
dolls to sell to the tourists.

Sometimes they would do
little performances

of what you would call
alligator wrestling.

Tourists ate it up.

They know what they imagine
the Everglades to be,

and this fit what they thought
the Everglades would be.

Before the tourist attractions,

the men learned
how to trap the alligator.

They used those techniques
to put on a show

that the non-Indians
were willing to pay to see.

It's gone from a skill
for hunting to survive,

and now it's a sport.

White settlers start creating
these Indian camps,

these pay-per-view villages,
if you will.

And the people who are there

do remarkably stereotypical
Indian things...

Not necessarily Seminole things,
but Indian things.

They actually created
their village inside of it,

so the tourists could go in

and see the Seminole
and Miccosukee people

actually living in a village,
like, on display.

People paid a fee,
almost like going to the zoo.

My mom and some of her relatives

actually lived inside
the tourist attraction.

Our ancestors fought for us
to be who we are.

Even with all
the development of the lands,

our people stood their ground.

The Tamiami Trail did more

than upend the Seminole's way
of life.

It also dramatically altered
the landscape of the Everglades,

unleashing a torrent of
unintended consequences...

Consequences that one day would
imperil the very settlement

the road had encouraged.

What people did not understand
at the time

was that building a road

that bisected the sheet flow
of the Everglades

was an environmental disaster.

It was essentially a dam
in the middle of the Everglades.

The best way it could be
for the environment

was how Creator
originally intended it to be,

but the white man came
and thought he knew better.

Florida, folks!

Sunshine, sunshine!

Perpetual sunshine
all the year round!

Let's get the auction started
before we get a tornado.

800 wonderful residences

will be built right here.

Why, they're as good as up...
Better.

You can have any kind of a home
you want to.

You can even get stucco.

Oh, how you can get stuck-o!

In the first half of the 1920s,

south Florida just went nuts.

You had this just insane
real estate boom

where it felt like every Model T

that was rolling
off the assembly line

was being driven straight down
to south Florida.

They came in droves...
and not merely to vacation.

Wealthy Americans
with marquee names...

Jack Dempsey, Will Rogers,
Henry Ford...

Spent their winters
idling in the tropical sunshine,

while middle-class transplants
sought their fortunes

or settled in for retirement.

So sudden was the flood
of newcomers

that the supply of houses
was soon exhausted,

forcing some to live
in tents or houseboats

while they waited
for their Florida dream

to become a reality.

The image of the sun and sand
and beaches

is what they used
to lure the tourists in

and what they'd lure
retirees in.

This is the, "Come to Florida,

where retirement's going
to be easy."

And the idea of starting anew

and building a dream home

was remarkably alluring
for many.

Out west of Miami,
literally in the Everglades,

they would put in sidewalks
and street lights.

Not that anybody was ever going
to be able to live there

during the summer rainy season,

but they could say
in a northern ad in a newspaper,

"Sidewalks, yes.

Streetlights, yes."

The epicenter of the boom
was Miami,

which for a time

boasted the highest per capita
consumption of concrete

in the world.

By 1925, construction was
underway on 30 new high-rises

and nearly a thousand
subdivisions,

and real estate prices
were soaring.

The influx of cash found its way
into pockets all over town.

Moonlighting as a publicist

for a master-planned suburb
called Coral Gables,

Marjory Stoneman Douglas,

a columnist
for the Miami Herald,

managed to pull in
an extra hundred dollars a week.

A longtime New Englander
and a graduate of Wellesley,

the illustrious women's college
outside of Boston,

Douglas had decamped to Florida
in 1915, at the age of 25,

reeling
from a disastrous marriage

and her mother's recent death.

When Douglas arrived in Miami,

she was really a refugee
from life.

She was looking
for a brand-new start.

And she gets off the train,

and the first thing
that strikes her is,

as she described it,

the "white light
of the tropics."

And it immediately
lifted her spirits.

And she was attached
to that light

the rest of her life.

Miami was then a remote outpost
of some 15,000 people...

"no more than a glorified
railroad terminal,"

Douglas said.

But her father was the editor
of the Miami Herald,

and she'd come to town to work.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas
realized early on

that she was
this independent spirit.

Her chief ambition in life
was to be a successful writer.

A stint as a staff reporter
gave way

to one as the editor
of the society page,

and then to her own column.

Along the way,
she covered everything

that mattered in Miami...

From public schools

to prison reform
to conservation.

As she later put it, "The paper
was the perfect vantage point

from which to view
my new world."

Douglas is writing
for the Miami Herald

at the time of the land boom,

and she finds it
very discouraging,

because she sees it
for what it is,

and that's
a get-rich-quick scheme

that's eventually
going to go bust.

But along with that is this
tremendous uncontrolled growth,

and it's slapdash.

And she sees a major flaw
in that.

And so she's using her column,
calling for Miami...

And all of Florida,
for that matter...

To be smart about urban growth.

Douglas was no naturalist...

She'd been in Miami
for five years

before she made a day trip
to the Everglades.

But the place had left
a deep impression.

Nowhere else

in the United States

can a real tropic jungle
be seen.

And to wantonly destroy it
for building purposes,

and with a mistaken idea
of development,

is to wipe out
one of the greatest factors

of our regional life.

She sees this tropical
surrounding

being altered to look
more like northern environments.

She's seeing water turn dirt y.

She's seeing wetland areas
being drained away.

And she's seeing the wildlife
disappearing in some places.

Douglas urged caution
going forward.

But like many Americans who had
come to Florida to stay,

she didn't question
the path to the future.

The wealth of south Florida,
but even more important,

the meaning and significance
of south Florida,

lies in the black muck
of the Everglades

and the inevitable development
of this country

to be the great tropic
agricultural center

of the world.

Douglas believed
that you could have farming

out in the Everglades,

but she didn't wanna see
the entire Everglades drained.

There was a belief in those days

that you could drain your
Everglades and have them, too.

There's an inbred tension

between industrialization,
urban living,

and the natural world.

In Florida, they are really
trying to do both.

In 1923, a 41-year-old
politician from New York

made his first visit
to the Everglades.

He'd been recently stricken
with polio,

and though three terms as
president of the United States

lay in his future,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was convinced

his political career was over.

"I am going to Florida,"
Roosevelt told his doctor,

"to let nature take its course."

Franklin Roosevelt
was a very sick man in 1923.

And he believed
that by going to Florida,

he would feel better.

And he started coming back
again and again.

He was deeply enchanted
with Florida.

He loved it.

Roosevelt passed his days

birding, fishing, and swimming.

"I know it is doing the legs
good," he wrote his mother.

"The muscles are better
than ever before."

He goes to Florida
to get lost in nature

because he believed that nature
was like a cathedral.

It was sacred.

Many of Roosevelt's
happiest hours

had been spent
in the wilderness.

But never before
had he encountered nature

as it was in the Everglades.

"Went fishing in the inlet,"

read a notation
in the daily log he kept.

"Caught one sea trout,

"identified 33 different species
of birds,

including a very large flock
of black skimmers."

Convinced that such an abundance
of life should be protected,

Roosevelt strongly advocated
the establishment

of a bird sanctuary across
the southern end of Florida.

"To do so now is practicable,"
he told a friend.

"To wait another ten years

would be to lose
the whole project."

By the '20s, FDR has already
bought into the idea

of the Everglades
being worth preserving

because he'd been there.

He knew firsthand what it was,

and he starts talking about
the Everglades to friends.

They were determined
to try to create a large park

in south Florida.

Since 1872,

when Yellowstone had been made
the world's first national park,

the idea of preserving
large swaths of nature

for future generations

had been steadily
gaining traction.

By 1916,
so many wilderness areas

had been set aside
across the country

that the National Park Service
was established

to oversee them.

Now, Roosevelt and his
conservationist friends

hoped to create such a park
in the Everglades.

As with the bird sanctuary,
there was no time to waste.

"If we wait till these lands
show commercial values,"

urged one of Roosevelt's allies,
"we'll never get our park."

Sometimes we have
too much water.

Sometimes we have
too little water.

We never, or very rarely,
have an average amount of water.

Water was a fact of life for
anyone living in South Florida.

But likely, no one spent
as much time

thinking about water

as Fred Cotten Elliot,

the Tallahassee-born
civil engineer

tasked with managing
the state's drainage project.

Elliot exuded
an unflappable confidence,

honed by the rigorous discipline
of military school.

But by 1924,
he'd been on the job 11 years,

and controlling the water
was every bit the challenge

it had been on day one.

After more than
$11 million spent

and 427 miles of canals dug,

the Everglades remained
overwhelmingly a wetland.

There were pockets
of the Everglades

that drainage did open up
to agriculture.

But I think for every effort

engineers and drainage experts
made to drain the Everglades,

they created new problems.

The diagonal canals
that ran south

from Lake Okeechobee
to the Atlantic

had been completed,

but they were often too clogged
with silt and water hyacinths

to be truly effective.

More problematic still,
the St. Lucie Canal...

The key to controlling overflows
from Lake Okeechobee...

Was as yet unfinished.

Newly drained land
south of the lake

had been flooded more than once,

and complaints
from tax-paying farmers there

had grown too numerous
for Elliot to ignore.

The farmers had been settling
south of the lake for a decade,

etching their optimism
onto the map of Florida

with new towns
named Chosen and Hope City.

Early on, it was small,
mom-and-pop farmers

growing winter vegetables.

These winter vegetables
basically supplied

the entire Northeast.

If you had a head of lettuce
in New Jersey in the 1920s,

it came
from around Lake Okeechobee.

The work was backbreaking.

It could take as much
as several months

to clear the saw grass
from a single acre

before a farmer
could plant a crop.

And then, that crop might easily
wind up underwater.

The Everglades
had the right amount of water,

but it didn't have it
at the right times,

and when it came,
it came in buckets.

Even with those canals,
it was still impossible

to get it off the land
fast enough

to keep it
from drowning people's crops.

They had heavy rains that
could wash out an entire crop,

and if you're trying
to grow beans,

and every time
there's a heavy rain,

there's two inches of water
flooding your beans,

you've got a problem.

Fred Elliot's solution
was to build an earthen dike

along Lake Okeechobee's
southern rim...

A fix the Palm Beach Post hailed

as "absolute insurance
against any future overflow."

They said, "We need
to protect these farmers,"

so they put up this dike
to protect them from the lake.

And when you say "dike,"

you're talking about basically
a six-foot wall of muck.

The dike, as it took shape,
did not inspire confidence.

One section proved
so prone to crumbling,

it had be rebuilt five times.

To Howard Sharp, the editor
of the Everglades News

and the self-appointed advocate
for the farmers

in the upper Glades,

the dike
was almost beside the point.

"Lake Okeechobee
could be stopped

from menacing
the region's agriculture,"

Sharp insisted,

"if only Fred Elliot
managed the water better."

The decisions he made
were wildly unpopular

because everybody wanted water
in different places.

The farmers
in the upper Everglades,

they mostly wanted the lake
to be kept very low,

except when it was
a drought situation.

While steamboat operators
and fishermen

and people living
in the coastal communities

had very different ideas
of how much water

they wanted pushed
through these canals.

Elliot dismissed the complaints
as petty and partisan.

"It seems to be everybody
for himself

and the devil for all,"
he groused,

"and everybody knows more
about the drainage work

than the Drainage Board."

Elliot was
a pretty arrogant guy,

and the fact that
everybody was yelling at him

he took as proof
of a job well done.

But Howard Sharp saw him

as, essentially, this
out-of-touch pencil pusher

who was trying
to manage the Everglades

from an office in Tallahassee

and screamed at him,

particularly when Elliot wanted
to keep the water levels high.

In the summer of 1926,

heavy rains
raised Lake Okeechobee

to the edge of its dike.

"The lake is truly at a level
so high," Sharp warned,

"as to make a perilous situation
in the event of a storm."

Elliot countered
that lowering the levels

to protect the upper Glades

would only flood
the coastal communities

and waste precious water

needed for irrigation
that winter.

When the water levels were
starting to get pretty scary,

Sharp was trashing
the chief engineer every day

in his newspaper,

saying, "You have got
to lower the lake

or there's gonna be a disaster."

They'd dug enough canals

to drain the whole
of South Florida

when it rained 50 inches
of rain.

They had not dealt

with what water does
in a rainy year

and a great storm.

Not long after midnight
on September 18, 1926,

Miami was struck
by the most powerful hurricane

in its history.

140-mile-per-hour winds
and 15-foot storm surges

uprooted trees,
tossed yachts into the streets,

and swept roofs all the way
to the Everglades.

It was a very large storm.

It hit dead on
with the right-hand shoulder

coming across Miami Beach.

When the hurricane
cuts through Miami,

it's almost as if
the Titanic has sunk.

We have built this remarkable
city that is incredibly modern,

and the storm comes through,

and now most of Miami
is not inhabitable.

One estimate put the total
property damage at $100 million.

Miami Herald columnist
Marjory Stoneman Douglas

was visiting Massachusetts
when the storm hit.

She returned to find her house
still standing,

but strewn with seaweed
and crabs.

Miami's real estate boom,
she later noted dryly,

had been "blown away."

The boom busted
because it was a bubble.

It was a Ponzi scheme.

The boom busted,
literally and practically,

because the building materials

that were coming into the harbor
in Miami

couldn't get in
after the 1926 hurricane.

The destruction in Miami
was soon overshadowed

by the loss of life
in Moore Haven,

one of the farming communities
south of Lake Okeechobee.

The 1926 storm, after it came
through and smashed Miami,

it then continued
into the interior,

and it came up along the
south shore of Lake Okeechobee.

And it washed the water
out of the lake,

busted out
this little six-foot dike,

and drowned
several hundred people.

Howard Sharp's dire prediction
had been fulfilled,

and he squarely laid blame

for what he called
"the day of death"

on Fred Elliot.

Howard Sharp, he believed

that it was essentially
negligent homicide

by the chief engineer,

because he could have let
some of that water

out of the lake earlier,

but he didn't want to flood
the downstream communities,

people in Miami
and Fort Lauderdale

who had more political juice

than poor farmers
in the Everglades.

"We are in far more danger

from continued administration
from Tallahassee,"

Sharp insisted,

"than we are from any outbreak
of nature."

Elliot, for his part,
refused to take responsibility.

Instead, he put forward
a $20 million plan

to master nature
once and for all.

Fred Elliot

did at least recognize
that there were things

that could make
the system safer:

bigger canals

that could move more water
out of the lake in a hurry,

as well as a stronger dike.

Elliot did his best
to sell the project,

but the state legislature
couldn't raise the taxes

to pay for it.

As one Florida official
later observed,

"It is might y hard to get people
in other parts of the state

interested in whether
South Floridians perish or not."

For the first time since
the dawn of the Broward era,

this great drainage project
was essentially on hold.

In the end, although the
hurricane had claimed 400 lives

and left 40,000 homeless
in south Florida,

Elliot was able to do no more
than patch up the existing dike.

Still, many remained sanguine
about the region's future.

"To be sure, some lives
were lost in the hurricane,"

one Florida booster conceded,

"but hurricanes come only
once in a lifetime."

In Miami, the rebuilding
began almost immediately,

fueled by millions
in insurance settlements.

Within months,
tourists were returning

to America's favorite
winter playground,

and real estate prices
were ticking up once more.

In the upper Glades,

farmers waited
for the flood waters to recede

and then replanted.

In the winter of 1927,

they shipped over $4 million
worth of produce north,

making it a banner year.

And as planting season
approached,

a familiar sight returned
to the narrow, rutted roads

that led to the farms
of the upper Glades:

thousands of migrant laborers,
the vast majority of them black.

By the '20s, some of these farms
had gotten quite big

and had dozens,
or even hundreds, of employees.

It became very popular
to hire people

from either the Deep South
or from the Caribbean.

A sharecropper family
in the Deep South

had an opportunity
to come down to Florida

where they got paid in cash.

Some people lived
in ramshackle shacks.

Some people lived in tents.

But for them, it was better
than whatever they had had

back in Georgia
or in the Bahamas.

Novelist Zora Neale Hurston...

Who grew up in Eatonville,

an all-black town
just north of Orlando...

Later recalled
the migrants' arrival:

"They came in wagons
from way up in Georgia

"and they came in truckloads

from east, west, north,
and south," she wrote.

"All night, all day,
hurrying in to pick beans,

chugging on to the muck."

They clustered near the farms
southeast of Lake Okeechobee,

and temporarily swelled
the populations

of the towns of Clewiston,
South Bay, Pahokee,

and Belle Glade.

They came to plant
and to harvest:

vegetables, citrus fruit,
sugarcane.

In the fields, they often worked
alongside Seminole people,

who likewise spent their lives
on the move.

They had to adapt
when they couldn't hunt anymore.

So the families, instead of
just traveling to look for game,

they started following
the seasons

for the agricultural industry.

The late summer of 1928

brought an estimated
5,000 migrant laborers

to the farms
around Lake Okeechobee...

More than any previous year.

"The people who were pouring in
were broke," Hurston wrote.

"They didn't come
bringing money,

they were coming to make some."

The rains fell hard throughout
the month of August 1928.

By early September,
Lake Okeechobee's water level

was nearly three feet
above normal.

As he had in 1926, Howard Sharp,
now a county commissioner,

railed at chief engineer
Fred Elliot

to discharge water
from the lake.

Again, Elliot refused.

"Advocates of a high lake
level,"

Sharp cautioned on September 7,

"take a terrible responsibility
on themselves."

Four days later,

the U.S. Weather Bureau
reported a gathering storm

1,600 miles southeast
of Florida.

There was a storm that was
out there in the Caribbean.

They knew it was there.

The weather service said,
"Don't worry about it.

It's not gonna hit Florida."

Over the next several days,

as the tropical depression
ratcheted up to hurricane force,

the Weather Bureau
stuck to its forecast,

predicting on the night
of the 15th

that South Florida would be
spared the worst of the storm.

By the time an updated forecast
was issued the next morning,

most of South Florida
was woefully unprepared.

Early that afternoon,
September 16,

the hurricane smashed
into the coast of Florida

at West Palm Beach,

then hurtled west
toward Lake Okeechobee.

It was a tremendously powerful
windstorm

that caused tremendous damage
along the coast

and some loss of life,

but that was not what happened
in the interior.

In the interior,
it was the water.

Amid darkening clouds
and periodic squalls

in the upper Glades
that morning,

a few of those lucky enough
to own a car had fled.

Hundreds more found shelter

in one or another
of the area's few hotels.

But the vast majority
had nowhere to go.

Now, as evening came on,

150-mile-per-hour winds
were whipping the swollen lake

into a 15-foot-high wall
of water.

It was not simply that the water
rose up to the top of the dike.

The wind took it and blew it
literally at a slant

all the way to one side
of the 400,000-acre lake,

and then the wind blew
the other way

and came right on up
over the dike.

It was as if a gigantic hand
had tipped that lake

and pushed all of that water

from the north end of the lake
down to the southeast corner.

Which is where
all the people were.

The onrush of water
obliterated 21 miles

of the 47-mile earthen levee.

Zora Neale Hurston
later recounted

the terror of that night:

"The monstropolous beast
had left his bed.

The sea was walking the Earth
with a heavy heel."

There are stories of people

whose house collapsed
around them

and they were floating
in 20 feet of water

over farm fields,

grasping a piece of wood.

This storm just slowly
but methodically

washed across the countryside.

The Okeechobee hurricane
claimed a higher death toll

than any other natural disaster
in American history

after the Galveston hurricane
of 1900.

All told, an estimated 2,500
people died in south Florida,

most of them
migrant farm workers

who'd been swept from
their tents and lean-to shacks

and drowned in the vegetable
fields of the Everglades.

Hurricanes have been a part of
Florida history from the start,

but in the past,

there really hadn't been
a lot of people

living in harm's way.

This was the moment when Florida
really had to come to grips

with the notion that this
was no longer a natural system.

It was an engineered system.

By building the dike
and concentrating that water,

and then once the lake
blasted through the dike,

it was way more powerful
and way more water.

My father told me a story

of being one of
the first reporters in

after the '28 hurricane.

He said they were
rowing rowboats in

with ropes behind the rowboat,

towing bodies with a string
of heads bobbing in the water

behind the rowboats.

The state mobilized
the National Guard

to conduct the clean-up,

and the Guard, in turn,

conscripted black survivors
at gunpoint

to search for bodies.

In the 1920s,
Jim Crow was in full force.

Blacks were second-class
citizens or invisible.

When it came time
to bury people,

they weren't going to waste
a coffin or a casket

on a black migrant worker.

And when it came time
to create the mass graves

on the coast in West Palm Beach,

70 white victims
were placed in a marked grave

in the back of the city cemetery
with great fanfare and dignity.

But for 700 or so
black migrant workers,

they were trucked
to a paupers' cemetery

in the black neighborhood,

and a big hole was dug,
and they were dumped in.

As corpses started to decay,

they were tossed into piles
by the hundreds

and burned
in roadside funeral pyres.

"Ugly death,"
one clean-up worker recalled,

"was simply everywhere."

The hurricane of 1928 is one
of those transformative events

in Florida's history.

There's immense human suffering,

immense economic catastrophe
for Florida,

and it changed the way
people looked at the Everglades.

Lake Okeechobee was

sort of something you had
to conquer before,

but now it looked
positively menacing.

It could kill you at any time.

There was a sense
we had to do something.

We had to chain this beast.

Five months after the hurricane,

a visitor from Washington, DC,
arrived to inspect the damage...

The newly elected president
of the United States,

Herbert Hoover.

An engineer by training, Hoover,
as commerce secretary,

had led the massive relief
effort for the victims

of the catastrophic
1927 Mississippi River flood.

But he could see
that south Florida

needed more than relief.

"I'm going to help you
with this thing," Hoover vowed.

1928 made it clear
that the federal government

was needed to solve the problems
of the Everglades.

It also made clear
that the biggest problem

was the potential
for catastrophe

that would kill
thousands of people.

And in Florida,
they really started

an assault on the Everglades

to prevent 1928
from happening again.

The new engineering solution

to the problem
of Lake Okeechobee

would take ten years
and $20 million to build:

a concrete wall as tall
as a four-story building

and more than twice as wide,

standing solidly between
the lake and the Everglades.

The ostensible purpose

was to protect the communities
around the lake,

and it did that.

But that transformed
how the Everglades worked.

Now, the very heart
of the Everglades

would be forever cut off.

For thousands of years,

we've, in Western civilization,
been under the impression

that our decisions about nature
are only going to improve it.

And we believe
that we can make changes

without really understanding

what those consequences
would be.

On February 11, 1930,

100 miles south
of Lake Okeechobee,

Marjory Stoneman Douglas
joined a group of officials

from the National Park Service

aboard a Goodyear blimp

to tour the lower Everglades...

A trip
Douglas had helped arrange.

The visitors looked down through
flocks of blue and white herons

tossing and falling
like scraps of paper

between them and the Earth.

The land alone, with all
its great potentialities,

seemed strange, a region which,
if the plans succeed,

will become the second-largest
national park

in the United States of America.

Ever since the federal
government had proposed it,

in 1923,

the idea of establishing
a national park

in the Everglades

had steadily gained followers.

And Douglas, like many of them,

had been drawn into the effort
by Ernest Coe,

a single-minded
landscape architect

known as
"Papa of the Everglades."

Coe had come to Miami in 1925,

hoping to capitalize
on the boom.

Instead, he arrived just in time
for the bust...

And wound up falling in love
with the Everglades.

"It is the spirit of the thing
that holds you," Coe explained,

"and arouses in you

a deep feeling of reverence
and wonder."

Ernest Coe was obsessed.

He believed that the Everglades
was not just a wasteland.

He believed that it was
a unique creation of God,

a place that should be preserved

not just for the sake
of the birds,

or for the sake
of the royal palms,

but for the sake of itself.

Coe had taken Douglas

on numerous field trips
to the Everglades

over the years,

and had convinced her
the massive wetland

was a treasure to be preserved.

"The purpose and the power
of the idea," Douglas recalled,

"would dominate his every moment
for the rest of his life."

Ernest Coe promotes
the Everglades

like nobody's business...

Letters to everybody, newspaper
articles, photographs...

To the point of annoying people
in Tallahassee.

But he put his shoulder
to the wheel

and enlightened people about it,

preaching the gospel of the
Everglades wherever he went.

The boundaries Coe had drawn
for the park

reflected his expansive vision:

More than two million acres
were to be included,

from 15 miles above
the Tamiami Trail

to the Big Cypress Swamp

to the coral reefs
that dotted the Florida Keys.

The challenge
was to convince people

of the Everglades' value...

And for that,
Coe turned to Douglas for help.

Ernest Coe sees in Douglas
the opportunity

to bring somebody
into this movement

who could generate publicity.

The great challenge
that Coe and Douglas were facing

in convincing Washington
and the American public...

Even many people
in south Florida...

That the Everglades is worthy
of national park status

is that it didn't have

what every national park
before the Everglades had.

Most national parks in America

had been created
out of scenic value.

You can't walk into Yosemite
and not get it.

Or the Grand Canyon,

you totally understand
why that needs to be preserved.

It's just amazing,
it's awe-inspiring.

But when you look
at the Everglades,

uh, not so much.

They're... it's a lot of sky,

and it's a lot of saw grass
and water.

At the time,
the Everglades was still seen,

to most Americans,

as a useless swamp.

It was an uphill climb
in Congress

to try to convince people

that, "You may be a congressman
from Iowa,

"but you should care
about these snakes

"and mosquitoes and rats
down in south Florida

that are now going to be part
of America's natural heritage."

Coe also was anxious
to overcome the perception,

as he put it,

"that the
Everglades National Park

was just another
Florida promotion scheme."

So he supplemented the aerial
tour with a rare up-close view,

leading his guests
on a three-day boat trip

into the heart
of the so-called swamp.

The problem of marketing
the Everglades

as a national park

is, how do you experience it?

The Everglades
was hard to access.

It was work.

The park advocates were
really brilliant, I think,

in their campaign.

They understood

the real value of the Everglades
was really in its biodiversity

and all of the plants
and animals that it contained.

And they knew that if they could
get these congress people

from outside
of the state of Florida

to see that big picture,

then they could win
their support.

They could see the enormity
of it, and then they got it.

People say, "What in the world
can anyone see in that country

to make a national park of?"

And yet even as they say that,
their eyes are widened a little.

They are affected
by an extraordinary simplicity.

They are touched by it.

They remember.

Although the visiting committee

recommended Coe's proposal
to Congress with enthusiasm,

it wasn't until 1934...
Following the election

of longtime south Florida fan
Franklin Roosevelt...

That the Everglades park
figured prominently

in the nation's plans.

Roosevelt called 1934
the "Year of the National Park,"

and he toured the whole country
visiting them.

The Everglades became a
principal part of that campaign.

The idea was a new kind
of biological park,

a Galapagos of America.

It was a place
that you would see animal life

like nowhere else.

This shows an enlightenment.

This is the national park idea
coming into maturity.

On May 30, 1934,

President Roosevelt
signed a bill

authorizing the creation
of Everglades National Park.

But before any park
could be created,

the State of Florida
would have to buy back the land

it had sold to homesteaders,

speculators,
and business concerns...

Each of which imagined
a different future

for the Everglades.

In the West,

the federal government owned
most of the land,

so it was pretty easy
to just decide not to sell it

to private landowners

if you wanted to preserve it.

In south Florida,

most of this land
was in the private domain,

and that meant
a lot of horse trading,

it meant a lot of delays,

and it meant
some very difficult decisions

about what was going to be in
and what was going to be out.

Throughout the 1930s,

as the Depression crippled
much of the nation

and drought decimated crops
across the Southern Plains,

people flocked
to the upper Everglades,

to work the fields in the shadow
of the massive dike

rising along the shore
of Lake Okeechobee.

Long before it was finished
in 1938,

locals began calling the dike

the "Great Wall
of the Everglades,"

confident that it would protect
their families and their farms.

And while vegetables
remained the primary crop,

the long-held dream
of producing sugar

on a grand scale

now became reality.

Sugar is a hugely important
commodity to the United States

in the early 20th century,

and much of the sugar that
the United States is getting

is coming from offshore,

and particularly places
like Cuba.

Sugar is also the subject
of intensive debates

over tariffs and protectionism,

and so there are many Americans
who want to produce sugar

within the United States.

In 1931, on the southwest edge
of Lake Okeechobee,

a General Motors executive
established

the United States
Sugar Corporation...

And soon built it

into the largest sugar producer
in America.

"It has been demonstrated
beyond any doubt,"

the company's president
proclaimed,

"that the Everglades has
possibilities and potentialities

"for the immediate future

far beyond
the dreams of the past."

But increasingly, the Everglades
also had problems.

The Everglades system
was starting to come

more and more
under the management of humans.

For those in the
agricultural business,

it was a boom time,

because this drained
Everglades peat

was initially
wonderful for agriculture.

But the soil also subsided
very rapidly.

And so this tropical
agricultural Eden

was proving to not be operating
in the way

that they had hoped it would.

The soils of the Everglades
that are formed as a result

of being fairly constantly
inundated with water,

once they are exposed
to the atmosphere,

break down very rapidly.

They dry up and blow away.

It's almost like a form
of desertification

similar to what happened
in the U.S. West.

It's Florida's version
of a Dust Bowl.

Not only was the prized soil
disappearing on the wind,

but the water table
had dropped precipitously,

choking off the supply of fresh
drinking water to Miami,

now a city of more than 100,000.

The city of Miami
got its water from wells.

They immediately went salty.

Salt water intruded.

They lost their water supply.

But what captured attention
across the country

was the fires...
Seemingly unquenchable blazes

that swept
across the saw grass prairies

and burned up
the precious peat and muck.

This dried, desiccated peat soil
becomes flammable;

something that had held water
is now capable of burning

on a wide scale.

What burns is literally
the soil.

You can lose

a thousand years of accumulated
plant soil build-up

in an afternoon's fire.

This smoldering, smoking soil

that just keeps burning
and burning and burning,

and that can last for days,
weeks, or even months

until the water comes back
and puts it out.

Take it very slow.

Go about 15 miles an hour.

Keep to the right...

In 1939 alone, one million acres
of drained wetland

were incinerated,

destroying potential farmland
worth an estimated $40 million.

So much smoke hovered
over the region

that roads were declared
impassable

due to low visibility,

and schoolchildren
all the way in Miami

had to cover their faces
with wet handkerchiefs.

It was apparent that something
was amiss in the system.

It's been manipulated by humans,

and it's not responding
in a natural way.

There was a sort of sense of,
"What is going on out there?"

They'd never seen anything
like it.

It just seemed like something
was really wrong.

And that's when you start to see

people going out
to the Everglades

and seeing if they could
figure out what it was.

Over the years
that she'd been in Florida,

Marjory Stoneman Douglas
had been inspired

to write about the Everglades
on more than one occasion.

She'd hailed
the region's virtues

as a site for development,

and called for the preservation
of its natural wonders.

In 1943,
she decided to take a new tack,

and write about the Everglades

as an environment
to be understood.

She had published many, many
articles in national newspapers,

particularly
the Saturday Evening Post,

and she was asked to contribute
a volume

to the Rivers of America series,

and she was asked to write
her book on the Miami River.

They thought the Miami River
might be a good subject.

But Douglas knew

that it wasn't
a very long river,

and there wasn't a whole lot
to it.

And rather than let
a book contract slip away,

she began to mull
over the possibility

of using the Everglades
for a book.

"They have been called
the mysterious Everglades

so long," Douglas argued,

"that the phrase
is a meaningless platitude."

The publisher agreed,

and Douglas set off
to learn all she could.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas
is doing exhaustive research

on this book in the archives,

in personal papers
and conversations with people.

Among the many experts
Douglas consulted for the book

was Garald Parker,

a scientist with the
United States Geological Survey.

Parker had been sent
to south Florida

to examine
the salt contamination

of Miami's well water.

Parker was very methodical

and was focused

on getting as many measurements
as he could.

So he was one of the first

to actually start
stream gauging.

How much water
is leaving the Everglades?

How much water
is coming in the Everglades?

So he was using observation
and measurements

to try to make a hypothesis
about how the Everglades worked.

Parker's study reflected
a growing concern with ecology...

A developing science
dedicated to the relation

between organisms
and their environment.

What he found was alarming:

Without constant replenishment
of the Everglades,

the wells that supplied drinking
water for the coastal cities

would be contaminated by salt.

The water levels sank so low

because the fresh water
coming in off the Everglades

was cut off.

And he mapped all that.

He made these predictions
about the salt water intrusion

coming in from the ocean.

Douglas consulted with Parker,

who was generous in taking her
out to the Everglades

on research trips with him

to talk about
what the Everglades really was

biologically and hydrologically.

Parker's discovering
the ecology of the Everglades,

but he's a scientist,

and so he's writing up
his findings

in this arcane language
of the scientist.

Douglas, however,
was a journalist,

she was a poet,
she was a short story writer.

And it dawns on her:
This is not a stagnant swamp.

This is a living, breathing
place, and the water flows.

And she asked him one day,

"Can I get away with calling
the Everglades

a 'river of grass? ""

He said, "Yes!"

In November 1947,

Douglas published
The Everglades: River of Grass,

and forever redefined the region

as essential not only
to wildlife, but to people.

There are no other Everglades
in the world.

The miracle of light pours

over the green and brown expanse
of saw grass and of water,

shining and slow-moving below.

The grass and water
that is the meaning,

and the central fact,

of the Everglades of Florida.

It is a river of grass.

To describe the Everglades
as a river

is lyrical and memorable,

something that people
could latch on to

and actually develop
an image around.

We know what a river looks like.

We know what grass looks like.

They're putting the two together

and getting this image
of the Everglades,

which is wholly different
from a swamp.

Marjory was a wonderful writer

who was able to listen
to hydrologists,

listen to biologists,

listen to people
who understood the system

and to translate that

into the magic of the sunrises
and the sunsets.

It changed
the whole country's attitude

about what the Everglades were.

When her book came out,
it sold out almost immediately

and went
into immediate reprinting.

The book breaks new ground

because she's showing
the readers

she's examining
the human relationship

with the natural world.

She's showing readers they have
this intimate connection

with the natural world.

Douglas, in writing her book,
I think to some degree

sees the future:

that we can no longer
talk about beauty,

we can no longer talk about
the benefits to wildlife,

we gotta talk about the ecology,
the ecosystem,

and its benefits to the human
population, as well.

The Everglades were one thing,

one vast, unified,
harmonious whole,

in which the old subtle balance,
which had been destroyed,

must somehow be replaced

if the nature
of this whole region

and the life
of the coastal cities

were to be saved.

In Florida, at Everglades City,

President Truman dedicates
a famous wilderness

as a national park.

Today, we mark the achievement

of another great
conservation victory.

On December 6, 1947,

a month after the publication
of Douglas's book,

more than 5,000 people
turned out

for the formal dedication
of Everglades National Park.

Douglas was there,

along with the park's
most devoted champion,

Ernest Coe.

So too were many
of the women's club members

whose conservation efforts
stretched all the way back

to the creation
of Royal Palm State Park,

which had been donated

as the nucleus
of the national park

and was commemorated that day
as "a gift to the nation."

It had taken 13 years
of negotiations

for the State of Florida

to acquire the land
for the park,

and resistance had come
from all sides...

From hunters,
commercial fisherman, farmers,

and oil producers
who'd only recently

begun to drill into the muck.

In the end,
the two million-acre park

that Coe had proposed
and Congress approved

had been whittled down
nearly by half.

Coe was so bitter
about the final boundaries,

he had to be convinced
by friends

to attend
the dedication ceremony.

But when he was introduced
as the "daddy" of the park,

the crowd burst into applause.

It's a tribute to these people
who were way ahead of their time

when they realized
that this was something

that ought to be preserved
for the centuries to come.

We have permanently safeguarded
an irreplaceable primitive area,

the Everglades National Park.

Also present at the dedication

were representatives
of the Seminole,

who eyed the celebration warily.

A lot of that area
was designated

for the indigenous people.

That designation was removed

to be replaced by the creation
of Everglades National Park,

so almost a taking
from the people.

The Seminole people
living in the park

didn't meet the ideals

of what the park
was created for.

It conflicted.

Without treaty,
without agreement,

the Seminoles try to fight

to keep sovereignty
over their land

and try to maintain
some semblance of control

over what seems to be
a rapidly changing environment,

both politically
and ecologically.

The Seminole were not
the park's only critics.

Not everybody was happy

with the Everglades
National Park.

The fact that Florida's
developing so quickly,

there are a lot of capitalists

that'll say, "The National Park
was a mistake,

"that there was money to be had
if we would've drained it.

"We could've had subdevelopment
after subdevelopment

after subdevelopment."

I think skepticism
about that park

exists for decades to come.

For conservationists,

Everglades National Park
was a triumph,

and a bulwark against
the often reckless development

that had marked south Florida
for the past half-century.

But the message put forward
in Douglas's River of Grass

suggested that the Everglades

could not be preserved
piece by piece.

Drawing the line around
the portion of the Everglades

that gets protected
as a national park,

while a very powerful thing
to do...

A way of keeping out
those forces of commerce

and economic transformation...

Is also an act that just simply
can't accommodate

for the dynamism of the system
hydrologically and ecologically.

And so the health of the park
is the health of that system,

and protecting a park

without assuring
the health of that system

is, in the end,
really only a half-measure.

For the Everglades,

the second half
of the 20th century

would play out
much like the first,

with water remaining

the region's primary obstacle
to growth

and engineering
the remedy of choice.

In the years
following World War II,

the Arm y Corps of Engineers
would undertake an epic project

to subdue... once again,
and once and for all...

The region's natural cycle
of flood and drought,

resulting in the most elaborate
water control system

the world had ever seen.

And once again,
the promise of control

would fuel
an unprecedented boom...

Intensifying agriculture,
boosting tourism,

increasing Florida's population

by roughly a million
every five years,

and ratcheting up

the already-fierce conflict
over water.

So you have
all these competing interests

in the Everglades

and each wants the Everglades
to work for them.

It was absolutely catastrophic
for the natural system.

The regulations for water supply
had nothing to do

with the rhythms
of the plants and animals

who lived in the Everglades.

Already by the early 1970s,
half of the natural Everglades

had been lost to agriculture
and development.

Much of the rest,
including the national park,

was soon on the brink

of full-scale
ecological collapse.

But for the first time

in America's long relationship
with the Everglades,

there was a dawning awareness

of what that collapse
would mean...

Not simply to the alligators
and the wading birds,

but to the millions of residents
of south Florida.

As Marjory Stoneman Douglas
put it to a reporter,

"We're fighting like mad
to save what's left."

We have a hard time believing
that nature is in a good state

without our manipulation,

and we believe
that we can make changes

without affecting ourselves.

This is the great lesson
of the Everglades...

What we were doing
was really upsetting

a beautifully evolved system,

and now we're gonna pay
the consequences.

Nature has been very good
at screaming its head off

whenever we did the wrong thing,

and we need to get better

about not waiting
till it screams...

To find a subtler way
to solve the problem

of living together with it.

We would lose south Florida
if we lost the Everglades.

Everybody's looking
to the Everglades

to see if we can get it right.

It really is
the most amazing test,

not just of our science

and of our planning

and of our environmental
knowledge,

but it really is a moral test

of whether we're going
to be able

to preserve a place for people

alongside a unique creation
of wilderness.