Big Cypress Swamp

Big Cypress Swamp covers more than a million acres of South Florida between Naples and the Everglades, and most of its cypress trees are not big at all. The name refers to the size of the swamp. Much of it is open prairie, pine island and stands of short, gnarled dwarf pond cypress growing in thin soil over limestone, with taller cypress strands and domes where water collects. Its rainfall drains slowly south and west into the Ten Thousand Islands and the Everglades. Big Cypress National Preserve, created in 1974, was one of the first two national preserves in the country, a category invented so that the land could be protected while existing uses continued. Hunting, off-road vehicles, cattle grazing and even oil drilling were allowed to go on under the preserve's rules. It was set up in part because of a fight over a jetport: in the late 1960s construction began on a huge airport in the swamp, and the opposition that stopped it helped launch the modern Everglades conservation movement. The swamp is prime habitat for the endangered Florida panther, and signs along the Tamiami Trail mark crossing zones where panthers are frequently killed by cars. The Miccosukee and Seminole tribes have villages and lands in and around the preserve, and the Tamiami Trail, completed in 1928, cuts straight across it.