The Everglades: What’s Left of a River That Once Covered Half of Florida

The Everglades is not a swamp. It is a river, roughly 60 miles wide and just a few inches deep, moving at about 100 feet per day across the Florida peninsula toward the sea. The distinction matters because most of it is gone. In 1947, the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project built 1,400 miles of canals, levees, and water-control structures that redirected water away from the historic flow, and more than half of the original 11,000-square-mile system was drained or altered. Everglades National Park, established the same year, protects only about 1.5 million acres of what remains. It is, in that sense, less a preserved wilderness than a partial fragment of something much larger and mostly lost.

That context does not diminish what is there. The park contains the largest subtropical wilderness in North America, and it is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles coexist. It has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, and an International Biosphere Reserve simultaneously, which is a combination almost no other place on earth holds. It also routinely features near the top of lists of threatened World Heritage Sites, which is worth knowing before you go.

When to Visit

The dry season (December through April) is when the Everglades is at its most accessible and most rewarding for wildlife viewing. As water levels drop, animals concentrate around remaining pools and sloughs. Alligators pile up in visible numbers at “gator holes,” wading birds like roseate spoonbills and wood storks gather at the Flamingo area, and the mosquito pressure is low enough that hiking trails are actually enjoyable.

The wet season (May through November) brings thunderstorms, heat above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and mosquito populations severe enough to make short walks outside genuinely miserable without strong repellent. The park is much less crowded, though, and the birds and wildlife disperse widely through the flooded marsh rather than concentrating where you can easily see them. Peak season for visitors runs January through March; book accommodation in Homestead or Florida City well in advance for those months.

A word on hurricanes: the park has been hit by several severe storms in recent decades, and the mangrove forests at 10,000 Islands are still recovering from Hurricane Irma in 2017, which killed around 60 percent of mangroves in that area. The $10 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan has been funding infrastructure work for two decades, and one recently completed project in the Picayune Strand returned natural water flow to 55,000 previously drained acres. This ongoing work occasionally closes sections of the park; check the NPS website before visiting.

Entry Fees and Hours

The park is open year-round, 24 hours a day at the main Homestead entrance on Route 9336. No timed-entry reservation is required as of 2026. Entry fees are USD 35 per private vehicle, USD 30 per motorcycle, and USD 20 per pedestrian or cyclist over 16. Children 15 and under are free.

From January 1, 2026, non-US residents aged 16 and over pay an additional USD 100 nonresident fee on top of the standard entrance fee. This is a federal policy change affecting multiple national parks, not specific to the Everglades, but it significantly raises the cost for international visitors. The America the Beautiful annual pass (USD 80) covers the standard fee for US residents but not the nonresident surcharge. Ten designated fee-free days exist in 2026 (including July 3-5 and August 25), but again, these exemptions do not apply to nonresidents.

The Shark Valley entrance on US-41 (Tamiami Trail) has restricted hours, opening at 8:30 AM and closing at 6:00 PM nightly. The Everglades City entrance on the northwest side follows similar daytime-only hours.

Getting There

Miami International Airport (MIA) is the closest major hub, about 40 miles from the Homestead entrance. With no public transit serving the park, a rental car is effectively required unless you book a guided tour from Miami. The drive from MIA to the Homestead entrance takes around 45 minutes in light traffic. Florida City, just outside the park, has gas stations and a few grocery stores; stock up there because there are no real services inside the park except at Flamingo (which has a marina store with limited supplies).

Where to Stay

Inside the park, Flamingo Lodge offers cottages and a campground on Florida Bay, roughly 38 miles from the park entrance. The location is spectacular for kayaking and birding at sunrise, and the isolation means you are well clear of the Homestead motel strip. Cottages run roughly USD 130-200 per night. The Long Pine Key Campground offers 108 sites among slash pine trees at USD 20-25 per night, with no hookups; reservations through recreation.gov are advisable from December through March.

In Homestead and Florida City, the chain motels along US-1 provide practical bases without much character. If you want something with more personality, the Redland Hotel in Homestead (around USD 100-130) is a 1904 building with a restaurant and local history dating back to early agricultural settlement of the Miami-Dade interior. For a more comfortable mid-range option, the Everglades International Hostel in Florida City, despite the name, has private rooms alongside dorms and is run by people who actually know the park well.

Where to Eat

Robert Is Here in Homestead is one of the genuinely good things about visiting this corner of Florida. The fruit stand has operated since 1959 and sells a rotating selection of tropical produce including mamey sapote, carambola, canistel, and lychee, alongside milkshakes made with whatever is ripe that week. It is open from November through August only, closes September and October for the off-season, and draws a long line on weekends. Get there before 10 AM or after 3 PM.

Inside the park, the Flamingo Restaurant and Bar at the Flamingo Visitor Center serves basic American food; think burgers, sandwiches, and park-standard fare. It is fine after a long kayak. Everglades City, on the northwest side, has a small restaurant row oriented around stone crab claws (in season October through May). The Oyster House restaurant is the most reliable option there, with fresh Gulf seafood at reasonable prices for the area.

What to Do

Anhinga Trail (0.8 miles, boardwalk) near the Royal Palm area is the single best short activity in the park. Anhinga birds perch within a few feet of the trail year-round, spreading their wings to dry because they lack waterproofing oils in their feathers. In dry season, the adjacent Taylor Slough holds dense concentrations of alligators, turtles, and herons that are visible from the boardwalk rail. This is a better wildlife-per-hour value than any airboat tour.

Shark Valley has a 15-mile loop road that is only accessible by tram tour, bicycle, or on foot. The tram (operated by a NPS concessionaire, around USD 32 for adults) runs multiple times daily and includes narrated commentary. Cycling the loop is a popular alternative; bike rentals are available at the Shark Valley entrance. The observation tower at the midpoint provides the only elevated view across the sawgrass plain in the park, and it is worth the climb for the sense of scale.

Kayaking and canoeing in the Wilderness Waterway, a 99-mile marked route through the mangrove backcountry from Everglades City to Flamingo, is the most immersive experience the park offers. Multi-day trips require backcountry permits (USD 3 per person per night plus a USD 15 reservation fee) and careful tide planning. Shorter day paddles from the Flamingo area into Florida Bay are accessible to most paddlers; rentals are available at the Flamingo marina.

Airboat tours outside the park boundaries in the Everglades wetlands north of Tamiami Trail are popular with visitors and provide a fast, loud view of sawgrass marsh. They are not allowed within national park boundaries. The experience is commercially curated but effective for seeing alligators at close range if you are not doing the Anhinga Trail.

History Most Guides Skip

The Calusa people were the dominant power in southwest Florida for roughly 2,000 years before European contact. They were not a nomadic people scratching out subsistence; the Calusa controlled at least 50 settlements from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Keys, used seagoing dugout canoes to trade with Cuba, and built shell mounds some of which rise 20 feet above sea level on the Gulf Coast. Their engineering of the coastal landscape, centuries of accumulated shell middens shaped into functional platforms and waterways, was visible to early Spanish explorers who documented it in the 16th century. The Calusa were effectively wiped out by the mid-1700s, a combination of Spanish slave raids, European disease, and warfare with Seminole peoples moving south. The Everglades landscape that Americans later tried to drain and develop had already been a managed human habitat for millennia.

A Practical Alternative

Big Cypress National Preserve shares a boundary with the Everglades to the north, covers 720,000 acres, and has no entrance fee. It allows off-road vehicle use in designated areas, swamp-buggy tours, and backcountry camping without the infrastructure of the national park. Wildlife viewing is less predictable but the landscape during dry season, with cypress trees standing in shallow clear water, is genuinely striking. It draws a fraction of the Everglades visitor numbers and rewards exploration with patience.

If visiting in January or February specifically for birding, the Wakodahatchee Wetlands in Delray Beach (about two hours north) is a 3-acre constructed wetland that reliably hosts breeding colonies of anhingas, herons, cormorants, and ibis at close range from a boardwalk loop. It is not the Everglades, but the density of active nesting activity within arm’s length makes it one of the best single birding hours available anywhere in Florida.

Bring insect repellent regardless of season, carry more water than you think you need, and allow extra time between the park and Miami for traffic on US-1 on weekend afternoons.