This is not an indictment against the Everglades as a national park, because "breath sucking" is still not the thing we are striving for in preserving wilderness areas" (NPS: Quotes).
Soon, key players emerged in the grass roots conservation movement including a writer, a landscaper, and ultimately President Harry Truman. Through the 1920's, the idea of a national park began to take shape. Stephen T. Mather, the first Director of the National Park Service, reported to the Secretary of the Interior, "There should be an untouched example of the Everglades of Florida established as a national park" (NPS: Park Establishment). The year was 1923. In south Florida, local efforts to campaign for a national park in the Everglades were also underway.
Ernest F. Coe, a Yale-educated landscape architect, made the Everglades park project his life work shortly after moving to Miami in 1925. In 1928, he and others organized the Tropical Everglades Park Association (later known as the Tropical Everglades National Park Association), devoted solely to the creation of a national park in south Florida. As an official of the new association, Coe persistently and almost single-handedly pushed for the establishment of the park (NPS/Coe). .
The following year, the Florida legislature authorized the Tropical Everglades National Park Commission to take over the responsibilities of the association with the power to acquire land. Ernest Coe was the commission's executive chairman (NPS/Park Establishment). A subsequent meeting took place leading to legislation to create Everglades National Park as introduced by Senator Duncan B. Fletcher of Florida, in December of 1928. In 1929, the U.S. Congress authorized an investigation into the feasibility of the project. An inspection party came to Miami in 1930 to decide on areas for inclusion. A special committee of the National Parks Association toured the area by auto, boat, and Goodyear blimp, with local park advocates.
