{"id":2873,"slug":"everglades-homestead-florida","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["For most of its history, the Everglades was called worthless — a swamp to be drained, diked, and sold. It took two people to change that. Ernest Coe, a Yale-educated landscape architect who moved to Miami in 1925, made the park his life's work, building the association that lobbied Congress for two decades. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a Miami Herald journalist, published 'The Everglades: River of Grass' in 1947 — the book that gave the swamp its real name and its soul.","On December 6, 1947 — the same year the book came out — President Truman dedicated Everglades National Park at Everglades City: a million and a half acres protected not for mountains or canyons, but for a slow river of grass fifty miles wide and inches deep. It was the first national park created to protect an ecosystem rather than a landscape — a new idea of what deserved saving."]},{"heading":"A park for what can't be seen","paragraphs":["Douglas lived to 108 and spent the rest of her life defending her river — from drainage schemes, sugar agriculture, and the growth of South Florida itself. The park she helped create is now the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, a World Heritage Site, and the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles share the same water.","The 'worthless swamp' turned out to be the headwaters of everything below Orlando. The Everglades file is the archive's proof that the places hardest to love are sometimes the ones that matter most."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Everglades is the archive's river-of-grass file — a park built on a book and a widow's stubbornness, protecting a landscape most people still drive past. The documented dedication is the record; the sawgrass sea is the lore of a wilderness that almost became farmland.","A swamp that became a World Heritage Site keeps its grass — the file's suggestion being that Douglas's river is still flowing, exactly as she wrote it."]}],"name":"Everglades","aliases":[],"type":"NATURAL","type_label":"Natural","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","NATURAL_WONDER","LEGEND_SITE"],"groups":["legends"],"desc":"The River of Grass—the sawgrass sea and the Skunk Ape’s country.","full_desc":"A natural site in Homestead, Florida, Everglades is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The River of Grass—the sawgrass sea and the Skunk Ape’s country. HauntHunt files it with natural wonders and local folklore. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Skunk Ape. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Homestead","county":null,"state":"Florida","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":25.465912,"lon":-80.445993,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"FL batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":2595,"type":"CRYPTID_SIGHTING","description":"Skunk Ape reports are documented folklore. Everglades' reports travel the way outdoor lore does — by campfire, trailhead, and local warning. 'Everglades' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. The sighting survives on details: the kind people don't usually invent together.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"Skunk Ape","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":2596,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures on the trails. Open country keeps its stories differently — Everglades in Homestead, Florida files its reports in weather and distance. Witness accounts, no evidence file: the claim is anecdotal and stays that way. The account appears in 'Everglades'. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The ecosystem and the 1947 park are documented. The site's documented natural and human history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'Everglades' carry the record. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1947","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Skunk Ape reports are documented folklore. Everglades' reports travel the way outdoor lore does — by campfire, trailhead, and local warning. 'Everglades' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. 'Everglades' carries the account. The retelling is the record now — the legend metabolized the facts long ago.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"Skunk Ape","claimed_identity":"Skunk Ape","verified":null,"summary":"Skunk Ape reports are documented folklore. Open country keeps its stories differently — Everglades in Homestead, Florida files its reports in weather and distance. The account appears in 'Everglades'. A named spirit outlasts an anonymous one; the file's name is Skunk Ape. The lore keeps its witness.","behavior":"Skunk Ape reports are documented folklore.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Natural site; conditions vary seasonally—check the managing agency for access.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Everglades","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades","desc":"Flooded grassland in Florida, United States","extract":"The Everglades is a natural region of flooded grasslands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles (97 km) wide and over 100 miles (160 km) long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The Everglades experiences a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Throughout the 20th century, the Evergla","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Everglades_Pa-Hay-Oke_Swamp.jpg/960px-Everglades_Pa-Hay-Oke_Swamp.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":89,"lat":26,"lon":-80.7},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}