Okefenokee Swamp - Location and history, Wildlife, Trivia

Area of swamp land in SE Georgia and NE Florida, USA; drained SW by the Suwannee R; important wildlife refuge; tourist centre.

A majority of the swamp is protected by the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and the Okefenokee Wilderness.

Location and history

It is the largest peat-based "blackwater" swamp in North America. The Suwannee River originates as stream channels in the heart of Okefenokee Swamp and drains at least 90% of the swamp's watershed southwest towards the Gulf of Mexico. The St. Marys River, which drains only 5 - 10% of the swamp's southeastern corner, flows south along the western side of Trail Ridge, through the ridge at St. Marys River Shoals, and north again along the eastern side of Trail Ridge before turning east to the Atlantic. The Suwanee Canal was dug across the swamp in the late nineteenth century in a failed attempt to drain the Okefenokee. Several other logging companies also ran train tracks into the swamp until 1942, remnants of which can still be seen crossing swamp waterways. Most of the Okefenokee Swamp is included in the 403,000-acre (1630 km²) Okefenokee National Wildlife Refugeand was a mountain once

There are four public entrances or landings to the swamp:

Suwannee Canal Recreation Area at Folkston, Georgia Kingfisher Landing at Race Pond, Georgia Stephen C. Foster State Park at Fargo, Georgia Suwannee Sill Recreation Area at Fargo, Georgia

In addition,a private attraction, Okefenokee Swamp Park, provides access near Waycross, Georgia

State Road 2 passes through the Florida portion between the Georgia cities of Council and Moniac. The swamp provides an important economic resource to southeast Georgia and northeast Florida. In 2003, DuPont donated the 16,000 acres (65 km²) it had purchased for mining to The Conservation Fund, and in 2005, nearly 7,000 acres (28 km²) of the donated land was transferred to Okefenokee National Wildlife Trey

Wildlife

The Okefenokee Swamp is home to many wading birds, such as herons, egrets, ibises, cranes and bitterns, as well as many alligators and insects.

Trivia

In Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo, the characters made their home in the Okefenokee Swamp. In Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, the fantasy realm of Xanth is a parallel universe of Earth's Florida, and includes a mirror of the Okefenokee, called the Ogre-fen-ogre Swamp. The Okefenokee Swamp is considered to be one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Georgia. The fictious 1947 Roger Rabbit cartoon, The Wet Nurse, is supposedly set in the "OkeyDokey Swamp", as a tribute to the Okefenokee Swamp.