your table , and where better to get that water than one of the wettest places on the planet , an area covered with turquoise tinted spring-fed lakes and creeks ?
When most people think of cattle ranching , they think of the rugged western landscape ( think Disney • Pixar ’ s Cars or its short , Boundin ’), but Florida , not Montana or Texas , has the longest history of cattle ranching in the United States , with the first cattle arriving at Charlotte Harbor , 2 hours southwest of the Magic Kingdom , 500 years ago . Both Spanish conquistadors and Seminole Native Americans started ranching within 40 years , and today , Florida cattle ranchers raise cattle in every corner of the state . This means Floridians — and diners at many Walt Disney World restaurants — can feast on sustainably raised beef from Florida ranches .
Some of the ranching practices , unfortunately , take place in the Everglades . If you ’ re thinking , “ Hey , wait , the Everglades are in south Florida ,” surprise : Everglades National Park is in south Florida , and the 1.5 million acres it protects represent but a fraction of the original
‘ glades , a magical web of interconnected , interdependent ecosystems . The Everglades start northeast of Walt Disney World , slightly more than 20 miles due north of a piece of land once called Walker Ranch . And even though it ’ s closer to Animal Kingdom than it is to Everglades National Park , Walker Ranch is indeed part of the Everglades : the Upper Kissimmee River Basin , the brain of the Everglades .
The water and land in the Everglades isn ’ t simply interconnected — it ’ s interdependent , with changes at the headwaters ultimately impacting the coral reefs in the Florida Keys . For more than 5,000 years , water has trickled from the northern edge of the Everglades , at a place called Shingle Creek , flowing ever so slowly south through cypress forests and palm thickets , down the Kissimmee into Lake Okeechobee , then spilling over its southern shores and spreading out into wide , shallow sheets over sawgrass , rocky pine forests , and subtropical savannas . It slips off the edge of land through a tangle of mangrove trees into Florida Bay , where it nourishes seagrass and coral reefs .
BELOW : Field of blooming blue toadflax at Disney Wilderness Preserve . © RALPH PACE - THE NATURE CONSERVANCY