As we celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, the America250 initiative invites us to honor the workers who helped prove that America’s wildest places deserved protection. At Everglades Florida Adventures, a proud member of the Adventures Unbound family, we are recognizing the Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees whose trail-blazing work in the 1930s helped build the case for creating Everglades National Park.

Company 262 at Royal Palm

In October 1933, just seven months after FDR’s inauguration, CCC Company 262 arrived in Homestead, Dade County. Known as the Niagara Frontier Company, the men had traveled from Buffalo, New York, to one of the most challenging landscapes in America. Their camp on South Krome Avenue became the base for work at Royal Palm State Park, the small preserve that would later become part of Everglades National Park.

From October 1933 to May 1934, Company 262 cleared trails and underbrush, built nature trails, constructed a fire tower, and strung telephone lines through the hammocks and sawgrass. They also performed reforestation work on sections burned by the fire of 1927. In late December 1933, Ernest F. Coe, executive chairman of the Everglades National Park Association, gave the CCC enrollees a 150-slide presentation about the park he was fighting to create. The trails they were cutting would become the very infrastructure used to demonstrate the Everglades’ value to lawmakers and the public.

Their work pushed along the effort that culminated in 1947, when Everglades National Park was officially established. Today’s Anhinga Trail and Gumbo Limbo Trail at Royal Palm follow the routes originally blazed by CCC workers. The fire tower they built helped protect the fragile ecosystem for decades.

Walking the Trails They Cut

Today, when you explore the Everglades by airboat, kayak, or on foot, you are traveling through a national park that exists in part because CCC workers proved it could be experienced. Company 262’s trails gave visitors their first real access to the River of Grass, and that access built the public support needed to protect it forever.

To learn more about how we are celebrating the diverse stories behind America’s national heritage, visit America250 at Adventures Unbound.