The elevated boardwalk and observation tower catch you mid-step at the Alligator Alley Mile Marker 35 rest area. I’ve been making the drive to Fort Lauderdale monthly, sometimes twice a month, since my nephew was born on the east coast two years ago, and I often make this stop.
Now, across the lot, there’s a stretch of wood rising and turning out over the water, set back beyond a paved walkway and newly planted palms, a bronze alligator stationed near the entrance. Had that always been there?
It hadn’t. Newly opened in August, the Everglades Elevated Boardwalk is a $12.3 million project by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), the first undertaking by the department outside roadway construction. To create the ecological stop, they repurposed a truck parking area, avoiding further impact on the surrounding ecosystem. Construction began in 2021 and unfolded mostly unnoticed by drivers crossing the state.
The project originated with a letter from a frequent traveler along Alligator Alley, noting the lack of spaces to stop, learn and engage with the landscape. FDOT took the prompt and created a multi-habitat loop, threading through five distinct Everglades environments—from open water and aquatic plantings to cypress and upland forest. Hundreds of native trees and tens of thousands of shrubs and aquatics are arranged to mirror the slow, lateral ‘sheet flow’ that defines the ecosystem. “These transitions allow visitors to visually understand how the Everglades functions as a connected system,” FDOT environmental specialist Ali Westbrook says.
Transforming the site required cutting into the ground below. Crews excavated ponds, set structural foundations and reshaped the terrain, working through porous limestone that lets water seep in as quickly as it’s cleared—all while contending with the ongoing work of managing invasive species.
Less than a year in, the Alley’s interpretive transect has begun to settle into itself. “It flourishes with native vegetation and wildlife, including young alligators, turtles and fish already inhabiting the wetland pond,” Ali says. Paths rise and fold over themselves, gradually climbing to the 50-foot-tall lookout tower. On the lower level, the landscape feels contained, with the water sitting close, dotted with grasses and lily pads, and signs detailing native species, migratory songbirds and wins in the decades-long effort to restore the Florida Everglades. At the top, the structure falls away, leaving only a broad view of a serrated prairie, stretching between a sun-baked River of Grass and the pale blue sky.
It was just before sunset on Christmas Day when I first encountered this unlikely sanctuary. The boardwalk was busy but not crowded, allowing space for families, couples and solo walkers to move at their own pace, stopping to read signage on native plants and wetland systems before continuing out over the water. One little girl pointed out a baby alligator in the water. A few steps later, a kid explained tree islands to his parents, connecting what he’d learned in school to what was now in front of him—an invitation to connect with the land, on the way to somewhere else.
Photography by Brian Tietz