A Tale of Two Women - Transcripts

Segment: Uniqueness and fragility of the Everglades

Source: Lecture by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Fort Lauderdale, May 6, 1983. Produced by Florida International University Learning Resources for FIU/FAU Joint Center

Link to Audio: SPC930_8

Length of Segment: 00:01:36

I came in 1915, and when I did, Miami was a town of fewer than 5000 people. Not an attractive town, I don’t think it is yet, because it is completely the American habit of coming in and building a town that looks like practically nothing at all, and it’s not only just Miami, it’s all the towns really. It’ll take, maybe in 100 years they’ll tear it down and build it over again. It will be constant and harmonious with the amazing background, the great, the marvelous bay. Even with the filling of the beach and all, the bay has been simply wonderful as a site, although it’s greatly endangered, and the whole background of the ridge country and the Everglades beyond; a unique and amazing country. Nothing like it in the whole United States; both subtropic and, I’m convinced, tropic, in its vegetation, in its warmth, in its rainfall; all of that. A country that nobody has understood correctly, least of all the Corps of Engineers and, may I say, the Water Management District. Because I’m, delighted to know that the Water Management District of recent years has been, especially recently, working with the Everglades National Park, has begun to see that a great many things were done wrong and they have begun to correct some of the things that are wrong, in the immediate area, the Everglades.