Restoration of the Everglades begins in the vicinity of Orlando. The Okeechobee River drains into Lake Okeechobee, a lake with an average depth of . During the wet season when the lake exceeds its capacity, the water leaves the lake in a very wide and shallow river, approximately long and wide. This wide and shallow flow is known as "sheetflow". The land gradually slopes toward Florida Bay, the historical destination of most of the water leaving the Everglades. Before drainage attempts, the Everglades comprised , taking up a third of the Florida peninsula. Since the early 19th century the Everglades have been a subject
South Central Florida Express, Inc. at Marcy and interchanges with the Florida East Coast Railway at Fort Pierce, with haulage rights to CSX and Norfolk Southern at Jacksonville, Florida. The of track on the west side of Lake Okeechobee between Sebring and Lake Harbor was previously a CSX line (Sebring Subdivision along the mainline to the sugar fields, and Okeelanta Subdivision on the spur to Lake Harbor). The northernmost 42 miles of the west side between Sebring and Harrisburg (just south of Palmdale) was built in 1916 by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad as part of an effort to extend their Haines City Branch south