IN BIG CYPRESS SWAMP, Fla. — Rain was blasting in horizontal sheets on a recent weekday afternoon as Ron Bergeron—road builder, rock miner, cattleman, rodeo rider and gator wrestler—surveyed his expansive outback getaway bordering the Big Cypress National Preserve and the Seminole Indian Reservation. But instead of retreating inside his comfortable cedar cabin, he donned a rain slicker and conducted a handful of guests on a wet tour of what he considers 6,000 acres of wild paradise.

“This is the farthest point of civilization that could be privately owned,” he said.

“Here we are one hour from six million people in three counties. It’s wonderful to be out here with your family and your friends.”

Bergeron, 68, a fourth-generation South Floridian with roots in Broward County, is one of only a few hundred landowners with holdings nestled in the wild lands outside urban South Florida. Called “camps” by their owners, these private enclaves range from one-room shacks with no air-conditioning on a few acres of dry land to opulent compounds with the best of modern amenities. Most of them are very difficult to reach—but, then, that’s the idea.

Each represents a tranquil haven to those who have built them.

Most of these private camps of the Everglades and Big Cypress occupy lands that mid-20th century South Florida residents purchased before the surrounding area became a national preserve or state conservation area. They have been handed down through generations or leased to outsiders who appreciate them.

Here is a peek into the camp lives of several of these Glades men and women—keepers of a culture in peril of disappearing as metropolitan South Florida expands and threatens to swallow its pioneer heritage.

’Heaven on earth’

Bergeron used to arrive at his 6,000-acre Hendry County camp by airboat—a trip that took five hours. But that was decades ago—before the construction of Alligator Alley and before the property even belonged to him. Bergeron’s grandfather was a game warden who patrolled the area, so he sometimes got to ride along.

Nowadays, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation commissioner can drive to his camp in about an hour by Humvee from his west Broward ranch.

“If there’s heaven on earth, it’s in the Everglades because God created it,” Bergeron said. “For me to own 6,000 acres with everything that lived on it before man came to Florida is a gift.”

Bergeron made his home away from home comfortable but far from built-out. There’s a plain cedar main house, seven guest cabins, a spacious cookhouse with an outdoor patio, and a large shed sheltering an assortment of large swamp buggies and smaller all-terrain vehicles.

The compound has underground power lines backed up by a generator—(“I didn’t cut one tree,” Bergeron said. “I went along an old timber trail.”)—and a freshwater well. The backyard of the main house is fenced for riding horses. There are 100 head of cattle, but you probably won’t see them because they range freely around the vast property.

A typical weekend for Bergeron and his large assemblage of family and friends consists of riding ATVs through cypress swamps, pine islands and prairies to look for wildlife, interspersed with homemade meals and watching football on television.

Bergeron and his recent weekday guests passed several herds of deer and wild hogs. Nobody brought a gun or a bow, but the entire group was armed with cameras.

“I hunt more with my camera,” Bergeron said. “I tell my children, one deer, one hog and one turkey. Don’t take more than you can eat.”

He said he frequently spots black bears and panthers, and one of his automatic infrared game cameras has captured images of the endangered cats 27 times since June.

Bergeron, a fourth-generation Gladesman whose typical garb consists of cowboy hat and boots, string tie and rodeo buckle, is not stingy with his oasis in the woods. He frequently invites politicians and regular people to visit for the day or a weekend.

Said Bergeron: “I’m letting other people fall in love with it so they want to protect it.”

Nature furnishes entertainment

The three-acre camp in the middle of the Big Cypress leased by Barbara Jean Powell and husband Donny is quite a bit more Spartan than Bergeron’s, and a lot harder to reach. After a two-hour swamp buggy ride carrying everything they will need for a weekend or longer, the Redlands couple arrives at a modest one-room cabin with no AC, a 1940s-era gas-powered refrigerator, and a new white kitchen sink filled by an old-fashioned pitcher pump instead of faucets.

The camp has a generator, but “we don’t like to listen to it, so most of the time we don’t use it,” Barbara Jean said. “During the summertime, you lay there and sweat all night, but it’s cheaper than going to the spa.”

The couple hunts deer and reads books. But most of the entertainment comes through the screened windows.

“We don’t have TV so our entertainment is watching frogs or lizards on the window screens catching bugs,” she said without a trace of irony. “Every day we have a different sunset show. It’s like a kaleidoscope: you turn it and sometimes it’s ho-hum, sometimes spectacular.”

Barbara Jean, 62, and Donny, 73, grew up spending time in their families’ Everglades camps. Sometimes the region is dusty-dry; sometimes the water is hip-deep. No matter. The Powells know no better escape from urban Miami-Dade County.

“It’s my culture,” Barbara Jean said. “It’s a way of getting away from society, getting back to the basics, surrounded by nature. There’s a lot of maintenance, but even that is part of the recreation. Daddy used to say, ’If you’re gonna have fun, you gotta suffer.’ “

But when the Powells bring their grandchildren out to the camp, they keep the “suffering” to a minimum, hoping to reel in the next generation of Glades men and women.

“The experience makes a kid more self-reliant and more able, especially in this age of computers,” Barbara Jean said. “To figure things out, knowing that water comes out of the ground, how to use an ax or fix something that’s broken. I think it makes for a very confident man or woman when they’re grown.”

Third-generation South Floridians Bill Losner and Jimmy Rhodes, both of Homestead, own neighboring camps south of the Loop Road surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve, accessible only by airboat. Losner—the 73-year-old chairman of the 1st National Bank of South Florida—and Rhodes, a 67-year-old retired farmer, have been plying this watery wilderness since the 1950s.

Losner’s camp is basic; the main cabin is made of plywood with a rustic kitchen/dining room, bathroom and bunks. It’s been re-built several times over the decades following fires and hurricanes. There are two smaller guest cabins—one with two bunks, the other with four bunks and two lawn mowers. Power comes from a gas generator and water from a well.

Rhodes’ camp, a few miles away, is spiffier. Nestled on a tree island bordered by a scenic slough, it has a two-story main house with stucco walls, a linoleum floor, a fully-equipped kitchen, an upstairs bunkroom, and a pool table. Two smaller, air-conditioned cabins share the small island, and several flat-bottomed pole boats are scattered about.

The two camp neighbors acknowledge a bit of hell-raising before the establishment of the Big Cypress National Preserve in the 1970s, with its subsequent rules designating airboat and buggy trails and restrictions on hunting.

Losner used to land single-engine planes on a now overgrown airstrip near his camp. Neighbors would visit each other by airboat at night to eat wild game and play cards.

“We’d come out here for two weeks and nobody ever knew we were out here,” Losner said. “We had rivalries—who could kill the most deer. When we couldn’t stand each other anymore, we’d take a bath in the slough.”

Now, Losner said, he needs a special permit to visit Rhodes’ camp in his airboat, and few deer browse the area. Both men say they don’t stay out here as much as they used to but keep up their camps mostly for their grandchildren.

“If the water stays up, we’ll frog,” Rhodes said. “The grandkids enjoy all this stuff.”

Added Losner: “We had a fine, fine quality out here for a long time. Now it’s different. When my generation dies off, the next one won’t know any different. They’ll come out here and look at the birds and enjoy the scenery. It’ll be a whole different experience for them. They won’t know what we had.”