“There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them.” 

Called the “mother of the Everglades,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s outspoken defense of the tropical environment inspired the world to value this unique ecosystem.  Douglas moved to Florida in 1915, quickly developing a reputation as a perceptive writer and independent thinker while working at the Miami Herald.  First visiting the Everglades in the 1920s, Douglas was struck by the landscape and native wildlife.  South Florida was in a period of rapid growth and development, including flood control measures that threatened to destroy the ecosystem.  In 1930 she joined the Tropic Everglades Park Association, which was working to establish an Everglades National Park.  Her best known literary work, The Everglades: River of Grass, was published in 1947, just before the Everglades National Park opened.  The book transformed the public view of the Everglades from a useless swamp to a vibrant ecosystem essential to the region’s survival, and solidified Douglas as a leader of the south Florida conservation movement and the voice of the Everglades.  At age 79, she formed Friends of the Everglades, which successfully blocked construction of a major airport that would have transformed the “river of grass” into an urban landscape.  Douglas spent the rest of her long life supporting the organization’s mission “to preserve, protect, and restore the only Everglades in the world.”  She has been widely recognized for her conservation achievements, receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993. Douglas died in 1998 at the age of 108 and her ashes were scattered in her cherished Everglades National Park. 

Photo Credit: Jimm Roberts

This plaque was created by SUTL Cohort 27.