☰ Menu
On December 6th, 1947, President Harry Truman arrived at the Everglades City airport and addressed an audience assembled on bleachers borrowed from the Ringling Brothers Circus in Sarasota. The occasion was the dedication of Everglades National Park.
While the enabling legislation to create the Park had been enacted in 1924 under Franklin Roosevelt, it had taken more than a decade for the seemingly endless list of tasks from land acquisition to the writing of policies to be completed for what would be just the sixth National Park. It was an auspicious event — but not one without controversy, both internal and external.
The dignitaries who joined the President on the dais — adorned with palm fronds and decorated with open crates of oranges — came from all walks of life: politics, journalism, military, horticulture, conservation, religion, and more. Leaders of the Seminole Tribe rubbed elbows with author Marjory Stoneman Douglas and orchid collector turner “Daddy of the Park” Ernest F. Coe.
Museum Manager Thomas Lockyear will share the stories of the VIPs in attendance, some of whom addressed the audience, others who we singled out for their contributions to the project and still more who might have gone unnoticed but were nonetheless crucial components in the thirteen-year effort to preserve the country’s largest wetland — the only Everglades in the world.
