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
Miami River (Florida) to improve the river's condition. Although it is widely believed that the name is derived from a Native American word that means "sweet water", the earliest mention of the name comes from Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a captive of Indians in southern Florida for 17 years, when he referred to what is now Lake Okeechobee as the "Lake of Mayaimi, which is called Mayaimi because it is very large". The Mayaimi Indians were named after the lake, beside which they lived. Spanish records include the cacique of "Maimi" in a group of 280 Florida Indians that arrived in Cuba in