1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition : Three Digital Texts

The Year 1892 in Context

This information is included in an effort to put the Expedition in context and to give some perspective about what was happening regionally, statewide, nationally and internationally in and around the year 1892.

• The state of Florida, along with other states and nations, is planning an exhibition for the Chicago Columbian Exposition (the World's Fair) in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.
• The population of Florida is about 400,000. With a population over 18,000, Key West is the most populous city in the state.
• The city of St. Petersburg, Florida, is incorporated.
• Ellis Island opens as a federal immigration center.
• The popular song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)" is composed by Harry Dacre.
• Grover Cleveland is elected for a second non-consecutive term as president of the United States. In 1888, during his first term in office (1885-1889), Cleveland had visited Florida in a much publicized trip.
• José Julián Martí Pérez, more commonly known as José Martí, forms El Partido Revolucionario Cubano (the Cuban Revolutionary Party) and begins publishing revolutionary papers and speaking around the U.S. and Caribbean about Cuban exiles and the need for Cuban independence from Spain. The Spanish-American War began six years later in 1898.
• John Muir establishes the Sierra Club in San Francisco to advocate for environmental conservation.
• Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which includes several Holmes stories that had been published in serial form in 1891 in Strand Magazine.
• Homer Plessy is arrested for purposefully violating racial segregation laws in Louisiana after sitting in a whites-only train car. The subsequent Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case, decided in 1896, establishes "separate but equal" segregation.
• The first public basketball game is held in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Nutcracker (commonly known as The Nutcracker Suite) premieres in Russia.
• General Electric is incorporated.
• Andrew Carnegie establishes a monopoly in the steel industry after forming the Carnegie Steel Company.
• Francis Bellamy composes the "Pledge of Allegiance".
• The country is in the last years of the Gilded Age (1869–1890s), which is best demonstrated in Florida by Henry Flagler's resort hotels in St. Augustine.

A Map of the Expedition is provided to show the routes, towns and other locations visited by Ingraham and party. This map is adapted from an 1891 map and portrays the extent of exploration and settlement in South Florida around the time of the Expedition and prior to the massive environmental changes caused by drainage and water control measures of the 1890s and 20th Century.

1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition : Three Digital Texts, 2015