The origin of early Everglades landowners.

Census takers in 1890 found less than 2,400 people on the Florida mainland south of Lake Okeechobee, and most of these were scattered in tiny hamlets along the coast (Figure 1; U.S. Department of the Interior 1895). Indeed, South Florida-dominated by the Everglades-remained a wetland wilderness until the Florida East Coast Railroad reached Miami in 1896. With the exception of a few hundred Seminole and Miccosukee Indians, very few people wandered into (let alone lived in) the Everglades.