“There will be no park in the world so unique, so different, so rarely and queerly beautiful.” – Marjory Stoneman Douglas

The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, was a work relief program. The CCC tidied up the American wilderness. May Mann Jennings: Royal Palm State Park “Our main thought was to conserve and guard the natural beauty of the tropical jungle and make it accessible to the public.” –May Jennings CCC went from restoring nature to recrafting it. Sand dunes and animals were at risk. Wilderness advocates initially minimized the value of an Everglades park. Marjory Stoneman Douglas questioned people who narrowed their sights to the point of thinking that a “national park must have mountains sticking up rockily in it, or canyons gashing dizzily through it, or geysers sizzling or any other sight that assaults the astonishment.

Robert Yard: the Wilderness Society. Primitive places should stay primitive. A national park would bring in additional tourist dollars. What went on outside a park affected the inside. No other park lay in the same southern latitudes or had plume birds, mangrove forests, sawgrass savannahs, bromeliads, orchids, palm trees, bodies of fresh and saltwater, alligators, and crocodiles in the same location.

Congress authorized the park on May 30, Everglades defied tradition. Everglades “completely reverses the usual conception of a park.”

Indians living in the Everglades. 3 million acres of protected land The National Park Service considered Indians too wild. One Seminole group refused to give up their land or their rights. New Reservations