Tangled Jungles of Palm and fern, strangling vines, great blotches of hanging gray moss, squirming snakes, steaming swamp water, gaping alligators, wild bird life, carnivorous buzzards, deer, quail, turkey and Indians? Saw grass seas, mosquito swarms, scorching sub-tropical sun, desolation and death?

Ask any northern winter visitor his or her conception of the Florida Everglades and the picture they have carried in their mind’s eye from the day they studied geographies of a quarter century or more ago and it will be much like the hideous dream briefly portrayed above, and they are not far from right.

For ten years since I first came to this haven of refuge for a million or more cold-sick visitors eager to escape the rigors of northern winters, I have wanted to penetrate the mysterious glades, with guides of course, and learn first hand, some of its mysteries kept sealed as a closed book from white man.

Open for Motorists

Twice I started "in" and twice I turned back before a full mile had been reached, the last time just two weeks prior to the trail blazing expeditions of the twenty- six hardy pioneers who crashed their way through with the first automobiles six years ago.

On April 5, the motorist will be able to cut across the very heart of the Everglades from Naples to Miami well within five hours’ time! Six weeks were required for the first motorcars, autos of light and cheap make, to cross the swamps, the jungles and the plains of the 135 miles less than a decade ago. Through the efforts of that courageous band of middle-aged men, a new wide and excellently built cross-state road permits the automobilist to whizz through the frontier country at fifty miles an hour!

I know—as I did just that in this month of March!

To the dreamer who visualized the Everglades as a vast impenetrable jungle, America’s last frontier is going to be a disappointment, but to the man who admires the courage of other men and the engineering exploits of born gamblers, every inch of this country’s southernmost cross-state highway will be of utmost interest.

There is little of the wild, tangled jungle of our geography dreams and miles of flat prairie land. There is one stretch of twenty miles where a tree cannot be seen in any direction!

The opening of the Tamiami Trail reaching from St. Petersburg across Gandy Bridge southwards through Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, Punta Gorda, Fort Myers, Estero, Naples and Marco and thence eastwards 124 miles to Miami will be a boon to the Florida west coast and particularly to our Sunshine City

Thousands of east coast winter visitors will visit St. Petersburg and other gulf coast cities for the first time next winter. The highway will be the most traveled in Florida.

Stories Printed

So that the north could be made better acquainted with the newest cross-state highway, I set out March 14 for Miami for the set purpose of crossing the Everglades from the east coast to the gulf and gathering data and pictures for articles playing up the Tamiami Trail and tying it in with St. Petersburg. Illustrated articles have already appeared in print while motor and travel magazines will carry others at a later date tying in our Sunshine City with the famous motor trail.

With me on our pilgrimage, if it can be called that, were Mrs. Lodwick, and Dr. and Mrs. John Weber, of Akron, Ohio. There was a motive in having the surgeon going along. One could not tell what might happen and we resorted to the "Ounce of Prevention is better than a Pound of Cure" principle of "Safety First." However the services of the professional gentleman were not needed, no more than one would expect such services in a drive from New York up the post road to Boston!

Permission was necessary for the drive over the road and we obtained that at the offices of the R.C. Huffman Construction Company in the El Commodore hotel at Miami.

Early Sunday morning, March 18, we set out driving through the back door of Miami, past the magnificent entrance gates of Coral Gables and out into the open country to the west.

Where the old road ends and the new begins, a swinging gate bars the way and is attended by a white-bearded watchman who  opened for us after reading the pass. The road is wide and level, devoid of even a little bump, its base built high above the swamp lands to the right and left, composed of coral rock taken from the drainage canals alongside to the north.

As we bowled along through this uninteresting sector, trees diminished in size and then disappeared altogether. Far as the eye could reach was the dried rusty brown saw grass of the swamps. Buzzards soared high overhead and roosted along the road far ahead, lumbering into the stiff southern breezes as our car came upon them.

Time and again we spied snakes upon the highway, some greasing away from the car in lightning-like streaks, others curled with head raised and still others laying like dead in the warm sunlight. Baby alligators and huge turtles basked upon the coral rocks of the drainage canal, the more timid flopping into the water with a ker-plopping and startling splash.

The road carried us through cypress swamps, the trees stark in gray death near to the road where the stagnant waters have been drained away by the deep canal. Buzzards roosted on the uppermost limbs and flapped away with a ghostly chatter with the approach of our machine.

"One hundred ten miles between gas stations

and not a pleasant place to be stranded."

Desolation and a sense of being all alone in the wilderness overwhelms one in the fastness of the glades. It is a creepy feeling. The only sign of human life for miles is that wonderful road made by man, your car is traveling over. There are no gasoline stations, no repair shops. The familiar hot dog and barbecue stands are missing. There are no billboards, no signs of any description. Flat prairie land overgrown with the rank sawgrass, far off an occasional cabbage palm raising its shaggy head high into the air, an occasional cypress cluster—and then more grass to the right and to the left, fore and aft.

Long legged cranes stand either side of the highway, still as marble statues. Others soar with an easy grace over the grass sea and the treetops. Fish crowd the waters of the canal and white-billed, black-ducks glide over its surface. In the tall grasses could be seen countless bevies of quail, an occasional frightened wild turkey.

We saw no deer or wild game other than one mighty scared wild hare and a skittering mole. Blackbirds with single circles of red on each wing were much in evidence as were meadow larks, blue jays and the cat calling sea gull.

We passed no motor cars but to the side of the road for considerable distance west of Miami we must have passed a million dollars of drag lines, dredges, scrapers, trucks and other equipment necessary to the building of such a highway, standing idle over the Sabbath, no sign of life nearby.

Nearly half way into the glades, three human objects passed far ahead of our car and as we neared, the brilliant hued dresses of the Seminole Indian were discerned. The figures crossed over the side of the road to the right. We stopped and standing on the edge of the canal stood a squaw woman, her neck wound around and again with many strings of blue and green beads. On her back was strapped a baby papoose who peered at the pale faces with frightened eyes. A six-year old boy clung to the squaw’s skirts. Her eyes were downcast. Not a move and not a sound came from her. We went on.

In the canal were the fragile dugout canoes of the male members of the tribe, but none were in the immediate vicinity. Further down the road several of the Indians could be spotted far off to the right in the drained Cypress swamps, slowly moving through the trees like huge birds of bright plumage.

His Indian Camp

Half way into the heart of the Everglades we ran smack into the main Seminole Indian camp. Children scampered through a large clearing. They paid little or no attention to us. On the far side of the canal, a young squaw mother whacked away at the family washing, laying garments upon a smooth flat surface with one hand as she whaled at them with a heavy stick with the other arm. A papoose sucked its thumb as it squatted in the hammock like an arrangement fastened over its mother’s back. A few feet away, a three-year old tot emulated the elderly Indians, washing and whacking away at a small American flag.

The only modern touch about the whole camp was the little hand-operated sewing machine one of the younger generation of flapper Indians employed in making a new dress. Her man laid on a blanket to her side, full length, peacefully puffing away at a long stemmed pipe. The only friendly gesture made by the camp came from a tail wagging yellow mongrel who slowly siddled to our car.

Far into the camp could be seen the red, yellow, greens and the blues of the Seminole dress. Smoke curled high above the treetops from campfires. On a road scraper by the side of the new wooden bridge, two Indian lads played, one dressed in the garb of his forefathers and the other in yellow khaki rompers. The latter had lost the sight in his left eye. When offered his choice of a quarter or a banana, he reached for the fruit and scampered off to the family tepee.

From this point into the west, the road cut through the trees for miles with no semblance of a turn or a bend. It is here where forests of palms grow and where the jungle is densest and wild bird life prettiest. 

The motorist who will drive through the Everglades at his customary 45 and 50 miles an hour is certain to miss everything, while he who will take an entire day to roll over the 124 mile stretch will see much of interest. The excellence of the highway and its perfect road bed as it was when I went over it is a sore temptation to the proud owner of a good car to weigh down on the accelerator and give the old engine all she can take.

The road is wide and roomy its entire length in proper keeping with the highway down the length of the Gulf coast with the exception of a bad piece of corrugation between Naples and Bonita Springs.