Park of State of John Pennekamp Coral Reef
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PRESENTATION OF THE PARK
John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park* is a Park of State of Florida, located at Key Largo. He has a surface of approximately 130 km². He was the first marine park of the United States and was registered with the national Register of the historical places in 1972. Principal attractions of this park are the coral reef and the aquatic life which is attached to it.
In 2004, the park received more than one million visitors, which makes of it the most popular park of the whole of the parks of State of Florida.
HISTORY
Keys of Florida have the only alive coral reef on the coasts of the United States.
Programs to include the reefs with broad of Key Largo in a park were born in the years 1930, when a commission of the national park of Everglades proposed a Everglades National Park which would have included most of Key Largo and the reefs located at the east. Owners, people external and members of the county of Monroe opposed the project and obtained the stop from it. When the Everglades National Park was created in 1947, its perimeter included Key Largo nor none reefs.
At the end of the years 1950, the public had become conscious of the enormous damage caused with the reefs along Florida Keys. The shells, the corals, the sponges, the hippocampi and other representatives of the marine animal-life had been extracted from the reefs, even by explosives, to be worked, engraved, carved in order to provide memories to the tourists. Doctor Gilbert Voss of the Institute of the Sea of Miami and John D. Pennekamp, a writer in Miami Herald, made team to conduct campaign in order to avoid additional damage. Pennekamp had solid references to carry out this combat. It had been very active during the creation of the Everglades National Park, he had been main teacher in Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials and also consulting at United States Fish and Wildlife Service*.
The efforts carried out by Voss and Pennekamp made it possible Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials to classify in permanent reserve the reefs with broad of Key Largo which were in the water controlled by the State. In spring 1960 president Dwight D. Eisenhower* proclaimed reserve of Key Largo Coral Reef, the whole of the reefs which were at side, under federal control. The governor of Florida Leroy Collins then changed the name of the park into a John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in tribute to efforts of John Pennekamp to save maritime environment. The acquisition of a ground and the access to the U.S. 1 (the Overseas Highway) allowed the opening of the park in 1963.
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