One Man’s Journey To Cross The Everglades In a Canoe
A late era story of American exploration
The late 19th century and early 20th century saw a second golden age of exploration. Men worldwide began trekking into the unknown in search of knowledge and the thrill of discovery. As explorers dreamed of going to the South Pole or to the top of the world’s tallest mountain, another man was gazing at something far closer to home. Hugh L. Willoughby didn’t feel the need to march into the Dark Heart of Africa to find something new and exciting to catalog. Instead, he wanted to sail into the heart of the Everglades.
In the 1890s, Willoughby lived in Florida. 19th century Florida was nothing like the tropical tourist paradise that it is today. Old Florida, as we locals like to call it, was scrubby, buggy, swampy, underdeveloped, and hot. Willoughby lived in a marshy area around Stuart, Florida, and he had an idea. He wanted to cross the vast expanse of the Everglades in a canoe, as the local Native Americans did.
Willoughby wrote at the time:
It may seem strange, in our days of Arctic and African exploration, for the general public to learn that in our very midst . . . in one of our Atlantic coast states, we have a tract of land one hundred and thirty miles long and seventy miles wide that is as much unknown to the…
