Everglades Wilderness Waterway

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Everglades Wilderness Waterway
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Wilderness Waterway, Mile Marker 99
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Location Florida, United States
Coordinates 25°44′47″N81°13′41″W / 25.746366°N 81.228167°W / 25.746366; -81.228167
Elevation0 ft (0 m)

The Everglades Wilderness Waterway is a 99-mile navigable recreational waterway route within Everglades National Park, also known as Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness. It includes many interconnecting creeks, rivers, lakes and inner bays that are navigable by shallow draft powerboat, kayak or canoe. The official Wilderness Waterway route is 99 miles long, but a traveler can use various additional route options to greatly extend or slightly shorten the trip.

Contents

The 99-mile Wilderness Waterway connects Flamingo and Everglades City. Most paddlers allow at least eight days to complete the trip. This route is recommended for experienced paddlers only. There are many areas of very shallow water that may be encountered along the Wilderness Waterway. Powerboats over 18' long may have to detour around Alligator Creek and Plate Creek. The “Nightmare” pass is passable only to paddlers at high tide. To prevent prop dredging, which results in increased turbidity and the destruction of submerged natural features, boats with drafts of two feet or more, including the propeller, should not use the waterway.

The NOAA charts that cover the wilderness waterway are 11430, 11432 and 11433.

Camping along the Wilderness Waterway

Map of Everglades Wilderness Waterway and camping sites Water-way-scheme.jpg
Map of Everglades Wilderness Waterway and camping sites

There are around 40 camping designated sites along the waterway which include beach, ground and chickee campsites.

Plate Creek Chickee 12.25.2016 Plate Creek Chickee.jpg
Plate Creek Chickee 12.25.2016
East Cape Sable Beach camping East-Cape-Sable.jpg
East Cape Sable Beach camping

Outside Route

The additional 75-mile Outside Route extends along Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico from Flamingo back to Everglades City. This route can be used to avoid shuttle service and usually adds 5 more days of paddle. Travelers will have to portage their paddle boats over a small freshwater/saltwater dam that separates the 99-mile "inside route" from the open water of Florida Bay. [2]

The campsites along the Outside Route are:

Permits

Campers can obtain permits through www.recreation.gov. Campers must pick up their permits in person. Permits are currently 23.00 dollars and reservations can be made up to 90 days out. [3]

Notable features and landmarks

Publications

Related Research Articles

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Flamingo is the southernmost headquarters of Everglades National Park, in Monroe County, Florida, United States. Flamingo is one of the two end points of the 99-mile (159-km) Wilderness Waterway, and the southern end of the only road through the park from Florida City. It began as a small coastal settlement on the eastern end of Cape Sable on the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, facing Florida Bay. The actual town of Flamingo was located approximately 4+12 miles west of the current Flamingo campground area. All that remains of the former town are a few remnants of building foundations, and it is considered a ghost town.

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Everglades National Park is an American national park that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River. An average of one million people visit the park each year. Everglades is the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States after Death Valley and Yellowstone. UNESCO declared the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and listed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, and the Ramsar Convention included the park on its list of Wetlands of International Importance in 1987. Everglades is one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chickee</span> Open sided, thatched roof, native shelter, Everglades, FL, US

Chikee or Chickee is a shelter supported by posts, with a raised floor, a thatched roof and open sides. Chickees are also known as chickee huts, stilt houses, or platform dwellings. The chickee style of architecture—palmetto thatch over a bald cypress log frame—was adopted by Seminoles during the Second (1835–42) and Third (1855-58) Seminole Wars as U.S. troops pushed them deeper into the Everglades and surrounding territory. Before the Second Seminole War, the Seminoles had lived in log cabins. Similar structures were used by the tribes in south Florida when the Spanish first arrived in the 16th century. Each chickee had its own purpose and together they were organized within a camp-type community. Chickees were used for cooking, sleeping, and eating.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mud Lake Canal</span> United States historic place

The Mud Lake Canal is a prehistoric long-distance canoe canal near Flamingo, Florida, U.S. It is located at Cape Sable, in the Everglades National Park. At 3.9 miles (6.3 km), it is the longest of Florida's known prehistoric canals, believed to form a part of a sheltered travel route between the Florida Keys and the Ten Thousand Islands. On September 20, 2006, it was designated a National Historic Landmark and added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Dismal Key is a small island, part of the Ten Thousand Islands archipelago in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. The island is artificial, constructed by people of the Glades culture. Construction of the island proceeded in stages over some 1,500 years following the end of the Archaic period in Florida. Occupation probably ended a couple of centuries before the arrival of Europeans in Florida. Dismal Key was occupied by several hermits in the 20th century.

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The indigenous people of the Everglades region arrived in the Florida peninsula of what is now the United States approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, probably following large game. The Paleo-Indians found an arid landscape that supported plants and animals adapted to prairie and xeric scrub conditions. Large animals became extinct in Florida around 11,000 years ago. Climate changes 6,500 years ago brought a wetter landscape. The Paleo-Indians slowly adapted to the new conditions. Archaeologists call the cultures that resulted from the adaptations Archaic peoples. They were better suited for environmental changes than their ancestors, and created many tools with the resources they had. Approximately 5,000 years ago, the climate shifted again to cause the regular flooding from Lake Okeechobee that gave rise to the Everglades ecosystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deptford culture</span> Archaeological culture in the United States of America

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References

  1. 1 2 in Wilderness Trip Planner
  2. in Paddle Across Florida Trip Report
  3. in Everglades Backcountry Camping
  4. "Haunted Waters: The Legend of Ed Watson".
  5. "Florida Everglades Hermits, 1940's to 1980 - Articles - House of Hermits - Hermitary". www.hermitary.com.

Wilderness Waterway Planner Everglades National Park Backcountry Camping