While airboats are banned in Everglades National Park, they are permitted to run through the preserve, providing employment for the Miccosukee and Seminole natives who live near the edges of the preserve and offer swamp tours to visitors. The swamp area has, like the Everglades, been a target for development since the proclamation of statehood. Most of this activity has gone on in the western portion of the swamp, close to the Gulf Coast and the Tamiami Trail highway. Land developers have made several attempts to plan subdivisions in the western swamplands, but to little avail. The same crumbly limestone bedrock which underlies the glades, also provides a base for the cypress and hardwood hammocks of the swamp.
Hammocks are a Florida phenomenon.
These are areas of land ever so slightly raised above the water level, providing a base for trees that cannot put their roots directly in standing water, encouraging forest understory vegetation, and making a home for dryland species of animals and birds. Most of the swamp's hammocks are raised only a few feet above the stagnant water. Between the hammocks are vast reaches of sawgrass and dwarf pond cypress, with the higher land holding groves of royal palms, orchids, and air plants. The swamp gets its name not from the size of the trees, but for its enormous area. These are now seen in isolated groves, including the Bear Island area in the northwestern portion of the preserve.