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
Lake Okeechobee the 1951 Gary Cooper film, "Distant Drums". Lake Okeechobee is the setting of a climactic scene in Carl Hiaasen's 2002 novel "Basket Case" (Ch. 28). Used in the John Anderson song "Seminole Wind" Lyric: "And blow, blow from the Okeechobee, All the way up to Micanopy". Lake Okeechobee is the setting of a significant part of Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God", and the movie of the same name. Janie and Tea Cake go there to work "on the muck." Hurston refers to the lake as "Big Lake Okechobee, big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything".