Glades culture
The Glades culture refers to a prehistoric and historic tradition of human settlement and subsistence in the wetlands, beaches, and interior wilderness of South Florida, with roots extending as far back as 15,000 years and continuing through the early period of European contact. Centered on the expansive Everglades ecosystem and its surrounding coastal environments, the Glades culture encompassed Indigenous peoples who developed sophisticated strategies for living in one of North America's most challenging and ecologically unique landscapes. In the West Palm Beach region and throughout Palm Beach County, evidence of Glades culture occupation is found across archaeological sites near the Atlantic coast and inland waterways. The legacy of this tradition is complicated: while the original Indigenous peoples who defined the Glades culture largely disappeared following European colonization, aspects of a broader Glades-derived way of life persisted for centuries, eventually giving rise to a distinct community of settlers and survivalists whose own traditions are now themselves under pressure from federal land-use regulations and changing environmental policy.
Origins and Prehistoric Background
The Glades culture represents one of the longest continuous human traditions documented in the Florida archaeological record. According to researchers and local historians, the culture traces back as far as 15,000 years, when early peoples first occupied the peninsula and adapted to its subtropical wetland environments.[1] The more formally defined Glades culture period, however, is generally associated with settlements dating from approximately 500 BC onward, extending through the era of early European contact in Florida.[2]
The native peoples associated with the Glades culture occupied Florida's beaches and wetlands across a broad geographic range, taking advantage of the rich marine, freshwater, and terrestrial resources the region offered. Their settlements were concentrated near the ocean and along inland waterways, where food sources were abundant and transportation through an otherwise difficult terrain was possible by canoe and on foot. The Boca Raton Historical Society documents that the earliest known inhabitants of the Boca Raton area were peoples of the Glades culture, who established communities near the ocean as early as one thousand years ago, though the broader tradition itself is considerably older.[3]
These communities were not isolated or static. Archaeological evidence indicates that Glades culture peoples maintained networks of habitation and resource use across a wide territory that included the coastal margins, interior wetlands, and elevated landforms known as tree islands. These tree islands — small forested hammocks rising above the surrounding sawgrass prairies — served as essential habitation and refuge sites throughout the region's history.
Settlement Patterns and the Role of Tree Islands
A defining feature of Glades culture settlement was the strategic use of tree islands scattered across the vast sawgrass plains of the Everglades. These elevated landforms, sometimes described as islands of dense vegetation rising from a sea of grass, provided dry ground in an otherwise inundated landscape. For the Indigenous peoples of the Glades culture, tree islands offered locations for habitation, food storage, ceremony, and — critically — concealment and defense.
Historical accounts and journalistic investigations of the Everglades region have noted that tree islands deep in the sea of grass once helped Native Americans elude capture by United States troops during the conflicts of the nineteenth century, particularly during the Seminole Wars.[4] This use of the landscape as a refuge reflects the deep geographic knowledge that Indigenous peoples and their successors developed over millennia of inhabiting the Everglades. The ability to navigate the wetlands, identify safe ground, and move through a seemingly impenetrable wilderness was itself a form of cultural knowledge transmitted across generations.
The landscape of the Glades culture thus served not only as a source of physical sustenance but also as a cultural and strategic resource. Communities located within this terrain were largely self-sufficient, relying on hunting, fishing, gathering, and — in later periods — limited cultivation. The archaeological record from Palm Beach County and the surrounding region reflects this pattern of settlement, with site distributions corresponding closely to the locations of tree islands, coastal ridges, and freshwater sources.
Indigenous Peoples and European Contact
The Glades culture as practiced by its original Indigenous inhabitants did not survive European colonization intact. Native peoples associated with the Glades tradition occupied Florida's beaches and wetlands from approximately 500 BC until shortly after the arrival of European settlers, at which point population decline, displacement, and cultural disruption rapidly eroded the communities that had sustained the tradition for centuries.[5]
The specific tribal identities connected to the broader Glades culture in the Palm Beach and Boca Raton areas have been a subject of historical inquiry. Groups including the Jeaga, Calusa, and Tequesta are among those considered in connection with the cultural traditions documented along Florida's southeast coast.[6] The Calusa in particular exercised considerable political influence across South Florida for much of the pre-contact and early contact period. Their sophisticated social organization and mastery of the wetland environment represent some of the clearest expressions of Glades culture complexity.
After the collapse of the original Glades culture populations, new Indigenous groups — including the ancestors of the modern Miccosukee and Seminole peoples — moved into Florida, occupying some of the same ecological niches and developing their own traditions in relationship to the Everglades landscape. Their descendants remain present in the region today, with the Miccosukee Reservation located within the Everglades corridor.
The Gladesmen Tradition
Following the decline of the original Glades culture peoples, a distinct successor tradition emerged among the non-Indigenous settlers who came to occupy the South Florida wilderness. These individuals, often referred to as Gladesmen, developed a way of life closely tied to the Everglades environment, drawing on many of the same subsistence practices — hunting, fishing, trapping, and navigating the wetlands — that had sustained earlier populations. Some Everglades Gladesmen trace their lineage back to the early settlers who carved out an existence in the wilderness and survived off the land, representing a continuity of ecological adaptation across cultural lines.[7]
The Gladesmen tradition developed its own distinct material culture, social customs, and relationship to the land. Airboat travel became central to the Gladesmen way of life, allowing access to remote areas of the Everglades that would otherwise be unreachable. Hunting and frogging expeditions, seasonal camps, and an intimate knowledge of the wetland ecosystem formed the core of this cultural identity. The tradition was not merely recreational; for many families, it constituted a primary mode of subsistence and a defining aspect of community identity across multiple generations.
Regulatory Pressures and Cultural Decline
The Gladesmen tradition, like the Glades culture that preceded it, has come under significant pressure in the modern era. Regulations passed by the United States Congress in 1989 aimed at protecting Everglades National Park lands have had the effect of pushing out the local culture that had long maintained its connection to the Everglades wilderness.[8] These regulations restricted the use of airboats and other vehicles within park boundaries, limited hunting and trapping activities, and effectively curtailed the practices that had defined Gladesmen life for generations.
The impact of these restrictions has been documented extensively by journalists covering the region. As national park authorities expanded their enforcement of the 1989 regulations, Gladesmen camps and access points within the protected areas were progressively closed or rendered inaccessible. Families that had lived and worked in the Everglades for generations found themselves displaced from landscapes their ancestors had inhabited, sometimes for over a century. The cultural continuity linking modern Gladesmen to the broader Glades culture tradition was thus interrupted by policy decisions made at the federal level, with lasting consequences for the communities involved.[9]
Archaeological Significance in the West Palm Beach Region
The West Palm Beach area and broader Palm Beach County sit within the northern extent of the territory associated with the Glades culture. Archaeological sites throughout the county provide evidence of sustained Indigenous occupation extending back thousands of years. The proximity of the region to both the Atlantic coast and the Everglades interior meant that Glades culture peoples had access to an unusually diverse range of environments and food sources, contributing to the stability and longevity of their settlements.
The Boca Raton area, immediately to the south of West Palm Beach, has yielded some of the best-documented evidence of Glades culture presence in the region. Archaeological investigations have confirmed human occupation at coastal sites dating back at least one thousand years, consistent with the broader pattern of Glades culture settlement along Florida's southeast coast.[10] Shell middens, tool assemblages, and other material remains recovered from these sites offer insight into the diet, technology, and social organization of the Glades culture peoples who once inhabited the landscape that would eventually become the modern urban corridor stretching from West Palm Beach to Miami.
Legacy and Contemporary Relevance
The Glades culture occupies a foundational place in the history of South Florida and the West Palm Beach region. Its original practitioners shaped the landscape through millennia of occupation and resource management, and the ecological knowledge they developed informed the practices of later settler communities. Today, both the archaeological heritage of the Glades culture and the living traditions of the Gladesmen are subjects of historical preservation efforts, academic study, and public education.
The tree islands that once sheltered Glades culture peoples from U.S. military pursuit and provided habitation across the Everglades landscape are now recognized as ecologically significant features in their own right, forming part of the complex mosaic of habitats that defines the Everglades ecosystem. The history embedded in these landforms connects modern South Floridians to a cultural tradition of extraordinary depth and duration, stretching from the earliest human inhabitants of the Florida peninsula to the displaced Gladesmen of the twenty-first century.