Ernest F. Coe

Ernest "Tom" Coe (March 21, 1866 – January 1, 1951) was an American landscape designer who envisioned a national park dedicated to the preservation of the Everglades, culminating in the establishment of Everglades National Park. Coe was born and spent most of his life in Connecticut as a professional gardener, moving to Miami at age 60. He was enormously impressed with the Everglades and became one of several South Florida-based naturalists who grew concerned for the wanton destruction of plants, animals, and natural water flow in the name of progress and prosperity. Coe worked for more than 20 years to get Everglades National Park established, but he viewed the effort as mostly a failure. However, Oscar L. Chapman, former Secretary of the Interior, stated "Ernest Coe's many years of effective and unselfish efforts to save the Everglades earned him a place among the immortals of the National Park movement."

Early life and move to Florida

Coe was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale College of Fine Arts from 1885 to 1887. Trained as a landscape architect, he spent his 40-year career designing New England gardens and estates. He and his wife Anna moved to Miami, Florida, in 1925 when he was 60 years old, and continued professional gardening in Florida, opening an office in Coral Gables. He became involved in the same intellectual and social circles as Charles Torrey Simpson and David Fairchild, who together formed the Florida Society of Natural History.