 Despite the sale of 4 @,@ 000 @,@ 000 acres ( 16 @,@ 000 km2 ) to Disston and the <unk> price of land , by the turn of the 20th century the IIF was bankrupt due to <unk> . Legal battles ensued between the State of Florida and the railroad owners about who owned the rights to sell reclaimed land in the Everglades . In 1904 gubernatorial campaigning , the strongest candidate , Napoleon Bonaparte Broward , made draining the Everglades a major plank . He called the future of south Florida the " Empire of the Everglades " and compared its potential to that of Holland and Egypt : " It would indeed be a commentary on the intelligence and energy of the State of Florida to confess that so simple an engineering feat as the drainage of a body of land above the sea was above their power " , he wrote to voters . Soon after his election , he fulfilled his promise to " drain that <unk> pestilence @-@ ridden swamp " and pushed the Florida legislature to form a group of commissioners to oversee <unk> of flooded lands . They began by taxing counties that would be affected by the drainage attempts , at 5 cents an acre , and formed the Everglades Drainage District in 1907 . 
