Ernest Francis Coe, also "Tom Coe" (March 21, 1866 – January 1, 1951) was an American landscape designer who envisioned a national park dedicated to the preservation of the Everglades, culminating in the establishment of Everglades National Park. Coe was born and spent most of his life in Connecticut as a professional gardener, moving to Miami at age 60. He was enormously impressed with the Everglades and became one of several South Florida-based naturalists who grew concerned for the wanton destruction of plants, animals, and natural water flow in the name of progress and prosperity. Coe worked for more than 20 years to get Everglades National Park established, but he viewed the effort as mostly a failure. However, Oscar L. Chapman, former Secretary of the Interior, stated "Ernest Coe's many years of effective and unselfish efforts to save the Everglades earned him a place among the immortals of the National Park movement."
Early life and move to Florida
Coe was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale College of Fine Arts from 1885 to 1887. Trained as a landscape architect, he spent his 40-year career designing New England gardens and estates. He and his wife Anna moved to Miami, Florida, in 1925 when he was 60 years old, and continued professional gardening in Florida, opening an office in Coral Gables, Florida. He became involved in the same intellectual and social circles as Charles Torrey Simpson and David Fairchild, who together formed the Florida Society of Natural History.
Experience with the Everglades
South Florida in the 1920s was experiencing an unprecedented population surge that was answered by real estate development and speculation. Coe was one of the victims of such speculation as he lost a significant investment. As a result of the land boom, portions of the Everglades began to be drained and turned into residential and business zones. Wading birds were slaughtered by the millions for their colorful feathers that were used in women's hats. Rare orchids were plucked from their habitats, and hunting of animals was unchecked. Meetings of the Florida Society of Natural History began to focus on this destruction and how to prevent it and many ideas were floated about how to preserve a portion of the Everglades. Florida's first state park, Royal Palm State Park was dedicated in 1916 to protect Paradise Key.
Coe began to venture into the Everglades to see the flora and fauna for himself, driving deep into the wilderness and hiking on his own, often sleeping on the ground with his head covered with a pillowcase to save himself from the mosquitoes. When a neighbor suggested a trek to Cape Sable to gather as many orchids as possible, Coe was appalled and began to work for the idea of a protected area.
Everglades Tropical National Park Association
The Everglades Tropical National Park Association was established by Coe in 1928 with Fairchild, University of Miami president Bowman Foster Ashe, and journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas on the committee. It followed two very destructive hurricanes that caused widespread flooding in Miami and from Lake Okeechobee. One of the association's primary selling points was to portray the proposed area that would receive protection as worthless for human habitation and commercial enterprise; so far controlling the natural floods in the region had met with no success and a tourist attraction such as the park would be favorable. Coe insisted that "tropical" be used in the park name, to allude to the salubrious nature of tropical weather. It invoked a foreign place to most Americans and reminded them that it was, at the time, the only tropical location within U.S. borders.
Coe drafted the proposal for the park and Senator Duncan Fletcher and Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen introduced the legislation to create Everglades National Park. This followed a delegation visit to tour the area in 1930 that took one day by car, another by boat, and another by Goodyear Blimp. Although Coe spent the blimp trip airsick and vomiting into a bucket sitting next to a sympathetic Douglas while they both rode below the blimp in the observer's coop, the visiting delegation was duly impressed and immediately supported the idea after shifting their concepts of the Everglades from a miasmatic swamp to a beautiful paradise.