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.
