PROJECT HOMESTEAD will use displays inside the Steffee House tell the story of 120 years of interaction between people and the Upper Everglades Watershed. 

The Steffee House will tell the story of a pioneer family who came to here to make a living on the Kissimmee River, and their decendants who fought for its protection.  

The Steffee House was home to Elizabeth ‘Sis’ Steffee (1917-1997). 

Sis was the granddaughter of two pioneer families, who arrived in the 
pre-Kissimmee settlement of Shingle Creek, in 1883. 

In those times, Kissimmee was the 'jumping off point' for the Florida Everglades.  All significant travel to the south was by boat.

Elizabeth's paternal grandfather (Capt. R.E. Rose) began one of the first sugar cane operations in the upper Everglades basin. 
Capt. Johnson introduced 'Everglades sugar' to the world when he traveled to the 1885 World's Centennial in New Orleans,  Rose's sugar was awarded first prize.  In the following years, sugarcane production spread into a vast agricultural region of the upper Everglades.

These canals made the settlement of interior Florida possible, but with unforseen consequences. In a single flood control project over 100,000 acres of wetlands were dried out along the Kissimmee River.  The River lost massive areas of productive wildlife habitat, flood protection, and water purification.

However in 1967,  a new  development company and a new drainage project began around Reedy Creek.  This new project, Walt Disney World, brought dramatic and rapid change to the area.

Upon returning to her childhood home of Kissimmee, Elizabeth Steffee began a long fight for environmental and historic preservation.  She was instrumental in the beginning of the Osceola County Historical Society, and, with her sister- in- law Nina Steffee, the Kissimmee Valley Audubon Society. Sis fought for passage of the first county tree ordinance, and the Shingle Creek Preservation Plan.
She was an early voice in calling for the restoration of the Kissimmee River and the Florida Everglades. 

Voices like Elizabeth's were heard and we are embarking on the largest ecological restoration in the world.  The kissimmee River is being routed back into it's old oxbows and meanders,  and the Everglades are being re-flooded.  We have come full circle with the watershed; from coexistence, to trying to tame it to the point of nearly destroying it,  and now through restoration, we are once again learning to coexist with our watershed.