Directions to Everglades National Park

cat — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:15:17 +0000

The Entrances

Everglades National Park has three entrances from land and one main entrance area with facilities from the water. These are:

Gulf Coast Visitor Center, on the northwest tip of the Park
Shark Valley Visitor Center, on the northern central edge of the Park
Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center, on the eastern edge of the Park
Royal Palm Visitor Center, just a few miles inside the Homestead entrance to the Park, after Ernest Coe Visitor Center
Big Cypress National Preserve Visitor Center, in Big Cypress National Preserve, next to Everglades National Park
Flamingo Visitor Center, on the southern coast, accessible by water and via Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center

Each of these entrances and visitor centers offers a different angle on the Everglades, and depending on where you’re driving from, and what you plan to do, each one offers different activities as well.

Big Cypress National Preserve

cat — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:40:55 +0000

lies adjacent to Everglades National Park, and is part of the same ecosystem. The Preserve itself is mostly northwest of Everglades National Park, but ecologically speaking, lay adjacent to the Park, covering the western half of the middle of the Florida peninsula south of Lake Oceechobee. In other words, what has been preserved doesn’t cover what used to be. In fact, the cypress swamps used to extend all the way up to Lake Okeechobee, with a section called Devil’s Garden that was more pineland, in the days before white settlers drained the area and began raising cattle in the northern region of the Okeechobee drainage area. The current 729,000 acres of Cypress swampland, although a fraction of the cypress swamps that existed 150 years ago, are still a vital component of today’s Everglades.

Everglades National Park » Big Cypress National Preserve

Directions to Everglades National Park

The Entrances

Big Cypress National Preserve