FIGURE 1–2 Schematic maps of water flow in the Everglades, representing (a) current flow and (b) the system as envisioned in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

SOURCE: South Florida Water Management District, 2002d.

the Silver Panic of 1893 put an end to his grand experiment (Blake, 1980). His techniques, however, would ultimately evolve beyond his wildest dreams (Snyder andDavidson, 1994).

In 1907, governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward created the Everglades Drainage District for “draining and otherwise improving the hidden resources of the wetlands of Florida” (Blake, 1980). By the early 1930s, 440 miles of canals dissecting the Everglades had been constructed (Lewis, 1948), spurring population growth along the lower east coast (Dietrich, 1978).

As drainage of the Everglades proceeded, naturalists chronicled the “senseless vandalism” of the watery wilderness (Simpson, 1920; Small, 1929). Arthur Morgan testified before Congress in 1912 that the “haphazard reclamation of the watershed would finally result in unpredictable confusion in the balance of life in the Everglades” (Blake, 1980). J.K.Small (1929) prophesied, “This reckless and even wanton devastation has now gained such headway, that the future of North America's most prolific paradise seems to spell DESERT.” These protests stirred Florida Congressman Mark Wilcox and Ernest Coe, a landscape architect, to pro-