Everglades National Park
Miami-Dade County. Congress authorized it in 1934 and it was established in 1947, and it was the first national park created to protect a fragile living system rather than a mountain or a canyon.
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How do you visit Everglades National Park?
By car, through one of three entrances in three different cities, which do not connect to each other inside the park: the Homestead entrance, which leads down the main park road to Flamingo on the coast; the Miami entrance at Shark Valley, with trails, an observation tower and tram tours; and the Everglades City entrance on the Gulf coast, for boat tours and the mangrove waterways.
Each entrance, and the Flamingo visitor center, is at least an hour's drive from the others. The park was established in 1947 and covers about 1.5 million acres in Miami-Dade, Monroe and Collier counties. Entry is $35 for a private vehicle, $30 for a motorcycle and $20 a person arriving without a vehicle, each good for seven days at every entrance; a park annual pass is $70. Visitors aged 16 and older who are not U.S. residents pay an additional $100 unless they hold an annual or America the Beautiful pass. There is no public transportation in the park, and on busy winter weekends the Homestead and Shark Valley gates can back up, so the park suggests weekdays and arriving before 10 a.m.
Where to go from here.
Everglades National Park Gulf Coast
Collier County. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center opened here in December 2025 at 815 Oyster Bar Lane, replacing a building Hurricane Irma destroyed eight years earlier. It cost forty-seven million dollars and was built to survive the next one: everything is on the second floor, standing on tall pilings ten feet above Irma's storm surge, behind impact windows and concrete walls built to withstand a category five.
Open the guide →Museum of the Everglades
Collier County. It was put up in 1928 as a community laundry, at a time when Everglades City was the company town Barron Collier built as the headquarters for driving the Tamiami Trail across the swamp.
Open the guide →Where can you ride an airboat in Florida?
Airboats run on the shallow marsh where a propeller cannot, which in Florida means the Everglades and the headwater lakes and prairies north of them.
Read the answer →Where can you see alligators and Florida wildlife?
Alligators are in fresh and brackish water in all 67 counties, so the question is where you can watch them safely from dry land.
Read the answer →How many national parks are in Florida?
Three: Everglades, Biscayne and Dry Tortugas. The National Park Service runs eleven sites in the state in all.
Read the answer →Where this comes from.
- National Park Service, Everglades: directions ↗ Read September 23, 2026
- National Park Service, Everglades: fees and passes ↗ Read September 23, 2026
- National Park Service, Florida ↗ Read September 23, 2026
More questions like this.
How do you get to Dry Tortugas National Park?
By ferry, seaplane, private boat or a permitted charter: the park is about 70 miles west of Key West and no road or bridge reaches it.
How many national parks are in Florida?
Three: Everglades, Biscayne and Dry Tortugas. The National Park Service runs eleven sites in the state in all.
Where is the hiking in Florida?
The long one is the Florida National Scenic Trail, about 1,500 miles from Big Cypress National Preserve in the south to Gulf Islands National Seashore at the western end of the Panhandle.
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