Highlands Hammock State Park, a 9,000-acre protected area west of Sebring, opened in 1931 before Florida created its state park system and later became one of its four original parks. Preserved through a local campaign that fought plans to turn the hammock into farmland, it became an early example of grassroots conservation in Florida. The park protects a large natural hammock, old-growth forest, and a bald cypress swamp, with some trees thought to be more than a thousand years old. Civilian Conservation Corps crews shaped much of the park during the Great Depression, and their work endures in its facilities, museum, and landscape.