Big Cypress National Preserve

Plaster cast of paw print/track from the Big Cypress National Preserve museum collection

NPS Photo

Interested in learning more about the Florida panther or life in the Big Cypress swamp? Start exploring here. This page introduces online sources for the natural and cultural histories of Big Cypress National Preserve.

Historical and scientific information can be found in many places online. Some of the links below are to other National Park Service (NPS) web sites. More link to other libraries and archives.

National Park Service information sites:

• A wealth of articles, reports, and other data mostly about the science of and land use in Big Cypress National Preserve is available through the NPS Data Store. More than 1100 entries date back as far as 1942, well before Congress created the preserve.
• NPS reports, studies, maps, and management plans may be found on the NPS Electronic Technical Information Center web site.
• Harpers Ferry Center, part of the National Park Service, houses the NPS history collection, commissioned art collection, AV and film, and other material, parts of which are available online in the NPGallery through the Harpers Ferry web page. We recommend searching using the words big cypress and choosing list view when the results appear.

Information about Big Cypress National Preserve held by other institutions:

• The Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives houses over 35,000 hours of video tape and 23 million feet of film documenting Florida history, including Miami TV station news stories about Big Cypress.

• The collections of the Library of Congress document the history of the creation of Big Cypress National Preserve in 1974 and subsequent legislation to expand and manage the preserve. For legislation relating to Big Cypress National Preserve, search the web site of the U.S. Congress. We recommend searches using "big cypress national preserve" in quotation marks.
• The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida have several collections related to the Everglades ecosystem, including Big Cypress National Preserve. From the Collections and Partners page, filter using everglades. Within the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project is an interview with Nathaniel Reed about the founding of the preserve. There is also a podcast with Reed discussing the Miami Jetport controversy.
• Big Cypress National Preserve Collection is hosted by the State University Libraries of Florida and displays photographs of plants and animals found in the preserve, including deer, panther, pines, hardwoods, prairies, mangrove forests, cypress stands, and domes.
• Looking for natural specimens? The web site for Integrated Digitized Biocollections contains many specimens from Big Cypress National Preserve curated by institutions across the U.S., including our principal partner, the Florida Museum of Natural History.

For more information about the museum and archive collections from Big Cypress National Preserve held at the South Florida Collections Management Center--the NPS museum facility in Everglades National Park--visit the Using the Collections page or contact the staff through the Contact Us page.