Big Cypress National Preserve OHV
Big Cypress National Preserve encompasses 729,000 acres of south Florida wetlands, cypress swamp, and wet prairie in Collier and Miami-Dade counties, one of the most ecologically distinctive landscapes in North America and one of the very few National Park Service units where off-highway vehicle use is legally permitted as a grandfathered historical activity. OHV use in Big Cypress predates the preserve designation and was explicitly protected through the 1974 Big Cypress National Fresh Water Reserve Act that established the preserve, giving it a unique legal status among federal lands: Congress specifically guaranteed continued off-road vehicle access as a traditional use alongside hunting and fishing, making Big Cypress the anomaly in the NPS system where motorized recreation has legal standing alongside conservation management. The OHV experience in Big Cypress is categorically different from trail-system riding anywhere else in the Southeast, it is flat-water swamp and wet prairie travel that requires appropriate shallow-draft machinery. Swamp buggies (the south Florida cultural tradition of high-clearance swamp vehicles), ATVs, UTVs, and appropriately equipped 4x4 trucks navigate designated roads, trails, and open swamp prairies through the Big Cypress ecosystem: dwarf cypress prairies, wet prairies, pop-ash swamps, hardwood hammocks, and the extensive sawgrass transition zones that grade into the Everglades system to the south. Water crossings are constant during the wet season. The Oasis Visitor Center on US-41 at Ochopee (239-695-1201) is the primary NPS information point; the preserve issues ORV permits for designated areas and maintains seasonal closures to protect wading bird nesting habitat during sensitive periods. Big Cypress is the only NPS unit in Florida with legal OHV access.