Florida: the long frontier

Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998) lived in Florida for eighty-three years. She was a journalist, fiction and nonfiction writer, editor, publisher, and crusader for women's rights, racial justice, and the environment. She became known for work in nature conservancy after the publication of Everglades: River of Grass in 1947, but it was many show more years later, in 1969, at age 79, when she founded the Friends of the Everglades. In 1993, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Michael Grunwald is a senior writer for POLITICO Magazine. Parts of this essay were adapted from his award-winning book, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise. show less