The Everglades began forming 5,000 years ago when freshwater from Lake Okeechobee carved a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and only six inches deep across the Florida peninsula. By the early twentieth century, drainage canals and agricultural expansion had claimed half the original wetland. President Harry Truman designated 1.5 million acres as Everglades National Park in 1947, making it the first American reserve created to protect an ecosystem rather than scenic grandeur. Today it shelters 36 threatened species including the American crocodile, West Indian manatee, and Florida panther. Airboat tours evolved from necessity. Early Everglades settlers needed shallow-draft vessels capable of crossing sawgrass marshes where propellers would foul and hulls would ground. Aviation-engine airboats, first deployed commercially in the 1950s, draft only four inches and reach speeds of 40 miles per hour while remaining stable over submerged limestone and root mats. Modern tour operators concentrate on the park's northern buffer zones and adjacent Sawgrass Recreation Area, where permitted routes traverse marshes, hardwood hammocks, and mangrove estuaries. An everglades airboat tour from Fort Lauderdale with transportation eliminates the 40-mile drive west on Alligator Alley, replacing highway navigation with guided shuttle service that departs beachfront hotels at sunrise. The subtropical wetland supports 350 bird species, 60 reptile species, and the largest mangrove forest in the Western Hemisphere. Sawgrass—technically a sedge, not a grass—covers 11,000 square miles of the River of Grass ecosystem. Its serrated edges once slowed human exploration but now frame airboat corridors where anhinga dive for fish and great blue herons stalk the shallows. Alligators regulate body temperature by basking on exposed mud banks during cooler months. Tour captains throttle engines to near-silence when approaching nesting sites, allowing passengers to observe territorial bulls guarding their range. Native Seminole and Miccosukee communities maintain ancestral ties to these wetlands, operating cultural villages and craft centers accessible via several everglades airboat tour from Fort Lauderdale with transportation tours. The park's freshwater supply now depends on federally managed canal releases, a restoration project expected to run through 2030 and return natural sheet flow across the ecosystem.