"Miami was a small town still. Miss Hattie Carpenter, who taught the few high school students in the single grammar school, bicycling home to Brickell hammock with a beefsteak in her basket, was chased by a panther."

Majory Stoneman Douglas
Everglades: River of Grass

Big Cypress federal Indian reservation established.

Second annual report of the Department of Game and Fish notes the abundance of big game such as panthers.

Florida human population reaches 968,470, again almost doubling in twenty years since 1900 census.

Tamiami Trail connects Tampa and Miami

State Road 29 connects Immokalee and Everglades City. Shown above are the first people to cross the trail, using a Ford Model T.

Nationally known environmentalist Marjorie Carr describes seeing a panther on the way to the beach as a child.

She is best known as founder of the Florida Defenders of the Environment and successfully leading the effort to stop the construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal and to restore the Ocklawaha River. Inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame 1966.

Department of Game and Fish reports indicate that licensed trappers killed 10 panthers: 3 in Collier County, 3 in Palm Beach County, and 1 each in Highlands, Levy, Sumter, and Jackson counties (Alvarez, 1993).

Watt Lawler and his wife shot a panther on their ranch 7 miles south and several miles east of Immokalee. View the letter he wrote telling of his panther sitings on and around his property during the early 1900's (page 1, page 2). Also, view the pictures he took of a panther he shot (pic 1, pic 2).

The Florida legislature passes a bill to eradicate the white-tailed deer because they were thought to harbor the Texas cattle fever tick. An estimated 10,000 deer were killed between 1939-41 (Harlow and Jones, 1965) by hunters paid by the state.

The Seminole Indians refused to allow killing of deer on their lands arguing that they needed deer for food, a decision supported by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes.