Great Dismal Swamp

[1] It is located in parts of the southern Virginia independent cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina counties of Gates, Pasquotank, and Camden.

The canal is 22 miles long, and was completed in 1805 to provide a pathway for trade between Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina.

A 45,611-acre (184.58 km2) remnant of the original swamp was declared a National Natural Landmark in 1973, in recognition of its unique combination of geological and ecological features.

The Powhatan empire extended to the northern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp around the time of the settling of Jamestown, displacing the Chesapeake tribe residing there before.

In 1665, William Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina, was the first European recorded as discovering the swamp's lake, which was subsequently named for him.

[12] Based on archeological findings, Native American communities fled to the Swamp for refuge from the colonial frontier.

These Great Dismal Swamp maroons consisted of thousands of escaped Black refugee slaves by the year 1860.

Smyth wrote of the maroons in his 1784 novel: A Tour in the United States, "Run-away(s) have resided in these places for twelve, twenty, or thirty years and upwards, subsisting themselves upon corn, hogs, and fowls that they raised on some of the spots not perpetually under water, nor subject to be flooded, as forty-nine parts out of fifty are; and on such spots they have erected habitations and cleared small fields around them.

[10] In the mid-20th century, conservation groups across the United States began demanding the preservation of the remaining Great Dismal Swamp and restoration of its wetlands, by then understood as critical habitat for a wide variety of birds, animals, plants, and other living things.

aim to restore and maintain the natural biodiversity that once existed in the swamp, including its water resources, native vegetation communities, and wildlife species.

[24] The swamp is home to many mammals, including black bears, bobcats, otters, and weasels, as well as over 70 reptile and amphibian species.

[25][21] Once home to American alligators, the swamp receives occasional vagrants from North Carolina to the south.