4 Best Sights in Everglades City, The Everglades

At Collier-Seminole State Park, opportunities to try biking, birding, hiking, camping, and canoeing in Everglades territory are plentiful. This makes the 7,000-plus-acre park a prime introduction to the elusive mangrove swampland. The campground sites come complete with electricity, water, a grill, and a picnic table. Leashed pets are allowed. Alternatively, there are "primitive" campsites accessible by foot or canoe. Of historical interest, a Seminole War blockhouse has been recreated to hold the interpretative center, and one of the "walking dredges"—a towering black machine invented to carve the Tamiami Trail out of the muck—stands silent on the grounds. Kayaks and canoes can be launched into the Blackwater River here. Bring your own, or rent a canoe from the park. The Friends of Collier-Seminole State Park organization offers guided canoe trips from December to March; reservations are recommended.

The 2,500-foot-long boardwalk at Big Cypress Bend takes visitors fairly quickly through this swamp forest, providing an opportunity to see rare plants, nesting eagles, and Florida's largest swath of coexisting native royal palms—unique to Fakahatchee Strand—with bald cypress under the forest canopy. Fakahatchee Strand is also considered the orchid and bromeliad capital of the continent, with 44 native orchids and 14 native bromeliads, many blooming most extravagantly in hotter months. It's particularly famed for ghost orchids that are visible on guided hikes. Keep an eye out for white-tailed deer, black bears, bobcats, and the Florida panther. For park nature on parade, take the 6-mile stretch of Janes Memorial Scenic Drive (between the visitor center and East Main) that's open to traffic; the rest of the drive is open only to hikers and bikers.

Though most of this 26,000-acre refuge is off-limits to the public to protect endangered Florida panthers, it has two short loop trails in a region lightly traveled by panthers, where visitors can get a feel for the wet prairies, tropical hammocks, and pine uplands where panthers roam and wild orchids thrive. The 1.3-mile trail is rugged and often thigh-high underwater during summer and fall; it's closed when completely flooded. The shorter trail meanders through a hardwood hammock, is wheelchair-accessible, and open year-round. For both, bring drinking water and insect repellent. Sightings are rare, but you may spot deer, black bears, and the occasional panther—or their tracks. In spring the refuge and its nonprofit host an Open House event, in which areas normally closed to public access are open for buggy tours, swamp hikes, birding tours, and plant ID walks.

At this Collier County museum, you can learn about early Native Americans, pioneers, entrepreneurs, and anglers who played pivotal roles in southwest Florida development. Exhibits of artifacts and photographs, as well as a short film, detail the tremendous feat of building the Tamiami Trail across mosquito-ridden, gator-infested Everglades wetlands. Permanent displays and monthly shows rotate works by local and regional artists in the Pauline Reeves Gallery. The small museum, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is housed in the 1927 Laundry Building, which was once used for washing linens from the Rod & Gun Club until it closed during World War II.