Georgia Natural Wonder #8 - Okefenokee Swamp. 807

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #8 - Okefenokee Swamp

The Okefenokee Swamp is considered to be one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Georgia. It is the largest "blackwater" swamp in North America. The swamp was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1974. The Okefenokee Swamp covers roughly 700 square miles and is located in the southeastern corner of Georgia, encompassing most of Charlton and Ware counties and parts of Brantley and Clinch counties. The swamp has a distinctive and fascinating natural history. Cypress swamps, winding waterways, and floating peat mats are a major part of the Okefenokee's habitat mosaic. Wet and dry prairies, swamps dominated by shrubs, and forests of black gum and bay trees intersperse the array of other habitats. A high ridge of sand known as Trail Ridge forms the eastern edge of the swamp. Wildlife abounds as there are more than 400 species of vertebrates, including more than 200 varieties of birds and more than 60 kinds of reptiles, are known to inhabit the swamp.



A mix of geological events, environmental variables, and human impact has shaped the character of the Okefenokee Swamp. More than sixty-five million years ago, during the Cretaceous geological period, the region was beneath the sea. Marine sediments produced a deep layer of sandy, nutrient-poor soils. In more recent geologic times the depression forming the basin of the present-day Okefenokee Swamp was presumably created by wave action associated with an offshore sandbar. Today the depression is filled with fresh water and peat to create what Seminoles called the "land of trembling earth."



The earliest known inhabitants of the Okefenokee Swamp were the Timucua-speaking Oconi, who dwelt on the eastern side of the swamp. The Spanish friars built the mission of Santiago de Oconi nearby in order to convert them to Christianity. The Oconi's boating skills, developed in the hazardous swamps, likely contributed to their later employment by the Spanish as ferrymen across the St. Johns River, near the riverside terminus of North Florida's camino real.



From the early nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, the swamp was home to an independent, self-sufficient community of "crackers," most of whom came to Georgia from North Carolina and were of Scottish and Scots-Irish origin. They scratched out a living through livestock herding, subsistence agriculture, and naval stores. Modern-day longtime residents of the Okefenokee Swamp, referred to as "Swampers", are of overwhelmingly English ancestry. Due to relative isolation, the inhabitants of the Okefenokee used Elizabethan phrases and syntax, preserved since the early colonial period when such speech was common in England, well into the 20th century.



The Atlantic and Gulf Railroad from Savannah was built a few miles north of the Okefenokee by the start of the Civil War (1861-65). Another railroad, from Brunswick to Albany, passed north of the swamp in 1870. With the railroads came sawmills and turpentine stills, store-bought goods, circuses, and new people. A line connected Waycross and Jacksonville, Florida, in 1881, passing within less than a mile of the eastern edge of the swamp. A railroad from Valdosta to Jacksonville was completed in 1898, closing the ring of railroad tracks around the swamp. Industrialization brought jobs at sawmills, turpentine stills, and on the railroads. Steam transformed both the Okefenokee culture and the landscape after 1880. By 1900 the old-growth longleaf pine forest that encircled the swamp was a forest of stumps.



The Suwannee Canal was dug across the swamp in the late 19th century in a failed attempt to drain the Okefenokee. After the Suwannee Canal Company's bankruptcy, most of the swamp was purchased by the Hebard family of Philadelphia, who conducted extensive cypress logging operations from 1909 to 1927. Beginning in 1910 and lasting for a quarter of a century, thousands of cypress, pine, and red bay trees were removed from the swamp. Some were among the largest and oldest individuals of their kind left in the country. Several other logging companies ran railroad lines into the swamp until 1942; some remnants remain visible crossing swamp waterways. On the west side of the swamp, at Billy's Island, logging equipment and other artifacts remain of a 1920s logging town of 600 residents. In 1937 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt provided official protection from logging and development by establishing the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, which constitutes about 80 percent of the swamp.



An all-black unit of the Civilian Conservation Corps was transferred to the refuge, and between 1937 and 1941 they developed facilities there, which are still in use today. Designating the Okefenokee a wildlife refuge preserved the swamp but drove out its residents. Swamp dwellers were told they could no longer kill bears and wildcats in order to protect their livestock. The residents found it impossible to support themselves, and over time they moved away. All residents were likely gone by 1958. The absence of roads helps to maintain the integrity of the swamp ecosystem; canoe trails are the primary travel routes through the swamp.



In the subtropical climate, rainfall is approximately fifty inches a year and is the source of most of the water entering the swamp from the more than 1,400 square miles of upland watershed. The clear, tannin-stained, highly acidic waters of the Okefenokee generally are shallow, normally ranging up to depths of less than ten feet and averaging only two feet. Most (about 85 percent) of the water leaving the Okefenokee is carried by the Suwannee River to the Gulf Coast of Florida. The St. Marys River, which flows into the Atlantic, drains the remainder of the swamp.



Because of its immensity and its physical and chemical attributes, the Okefenokee Swamp has a blend of habitats that result in a high diversity of environments and mixture of plant species. Grasses, sedges, ferns, and rushes thrive in the drier areas; water lilies, pickerel weed, yellow-eyed grass, and golden club are found in wetter sites. Many kinds of shrubs and trees grow on approximately seventy floating mats of peat known as tree islands. Evergreen shrubs such as fetterbush and dahoon holly are common in some areas.



The combination of physical and chemical features also has molded the swamp's natural history. The low-nutrient and acidic conditions have created ideal habitats for carnivorous plants, which attract, capture, and digest animals to compensate. Several species of large pitcher plants as well as smaller sundews and butterworts, which capture insects with a glue-like surface film on their leaves, are scattered throughout the swamp. Also present are bladderworts, aquatic carnivorous plants with tiny air-filled traps, called bladders, which snap shut when mosquito larvae or zooplankton trip the hair trigger.



Virtually all species of wading birds and waterfowl native to the Southeast can be found in the Okefenokee in some season. Wood storks, blue herons, and white ibises are common sightings. Buffleheads, blue-winged teals, and other ducks are winter visitors. Purple gallinules and least bitterns are more common during the summer. During spring and autumn, many species of migratory birds pass through the swamp en route to or from warmer southern regions. Many species, such as wood ducks and sandhill cranes, inhabit the swamp year round.
 


Collectively, the bird life brings the swamp alive throughout the year with a wide array of sounds and visual displays.



The terrestrial and aquatic portions of the swamp support about thirty species of native mammals. Large terrestrial mammals include black bears, white-tailed deer, and bobcats. Smaller terrestrial carnivores are gray foxes, opossums, and raccoons. Aquatic species include otters, minks, and beavers. Two species of rabbits are associated with the Okefenokee Swamp, the cottontail, inhabiting higher ground, and the marsh rabbit, found in wetter habitats.



After birds, reptiles make up the most diverse group of vertebrates. American alligators and five species of venomous snakes are indigenous to the swamp, the most obvious and ecologically dominant being the alligator. The vocal communications of alligators during both day and night, coupled with protective maternal behavior, give these large reptiles a reputation and aura of omnipresence unmatched by any other species of wildlife in the swamp. Among the snakes, the federally protected indigo snake is the largest and also among the least likely to be encountered. The rare, brilliantly colored rainbow snake rivals the color scheme of any bird. Harmless water snakes are the most likely to be spotted in the Okefenokee. Cottonmouths, diamondback rattlesnakes, and canebrake rattlesnakes are the largest venomous species in the swamp. Blue-tailed skinks and green anoles are the most common lizards. Some of the turtles, such as basking cooters, can be obvious in areas where mud turtles, snappers, and softshells may be equally abundant but are hiding in sediments and vegetation beneath the water's surface.



The Okefenokee, with its continual array of wetland habitats, provides ideal situations for egg laying and larval development for three dozen kinds of amphibians. After nightfall, when most birds fall silent, swamp sounds begin anew from the more than twenty species of indigenous frogs and toads. As with birds, the call of each frog species is distinctive. Pig frogs and river frogs are similar in appearance to bullfrogs, which are absent from the swamp. Pig frogs, grunting both day and night, are the dominant vocalizers in most areas. The less common river frogs make a sound like deep snoring. The chuckles of leopard frogs are commonly heard in some areas. Warm rains bring forth southern toads with their trills and narrow-mouthed toads with their sheeplike bleating. Wailing choruses of eastern spadefoot toads can be heard over long distances after heavy rainfalls. A wide variety of tree frogs and their relatives inhabit the Okefenokee Swamp, including green tree frogs and barking tree frogs during the warm months and several species of chorus frogs that give their melodic calls during the winter months. Less obvious amphibians include the salamanders—two are giant salamanders, permanently aquatic creatures that reach lengths of more than three feet.
 


A diverse assemblage of freshwater fishes, representing fourteen different families, is also known to inhabit the swamp. Among the species are Florida gars, American eels, and Okefenokee pygmy sunfish. Bowfins, pickerel, and several varieties of catfishes are found throughout the swamp's waterways and standing wetlands.



Although every species of plant or animal in the Okefenokee Swamp also can be found in other regions of the Southeast, the collective biodiversity creates a wildlife array of natural history that is unparalleled. All life forms in the swamp and its surrounding areas have adaptations that permit the existence of high biodiversity living under the singular environmental conditions of the Okefenokee Swamp.



A 50-year titanium mining operation by DuPont was set to begin in 1997, but protests and public–government opposition over possibly disastrous environmental effects from 1996 to 2000 forced the company to abandon the project in 2000 and retire their mineral rights forever. In 2003, DuPont donated the 16,000 acres it had purchased for mining to The Conservation Fund, and in 2005, nearly 7,000 acres of the donated land was transferred to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.



Many visitors enter the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge each year. The swamp provides an important economic resource to southeast Georgia and northeast Florida. About 400,000 people visit the swamp annually, with many from distant locations such as Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, China and Mexico. Service providers at the refuge entrances and several local outfitters offer guided tours by motorboat, canoe, and kayak. The east and Waycross side is more a prairie swamp. The west side is the twisting cypress filled tight corners I love.


TRD years ago on way to Georgia Florida game with one daughter.

Found another one from January 2009. Swamp Top Row Dawg and other daughter. They turn you loose for $20 four hours and you are on your own.



From the Fargo west side and the Stephen C. Foster State Park, let the swamp disconnect you from the modern world on a journey to encounter primordial wildlife, touch history and see the universe unfold. This remote park is a primary entrance to the legendary Okefenokee Swamp. Same-day reservations are recommended for guided pontoon boat tours of the swamp. Sunset tours may be available. More adventurous visitors may wish to rent canoes, kayaks or john boats for further exploration of the swamp, including a trip to historic Billy’s Island. Fishing in the lake is excellent, particularly for warmouth, bluegill, catfish, chain pickerel and bowfin. Boating is dependent upon water levels.


Hey mister, there is a Gator right behind you.

Perhaps the most famous inhabitant of the Okefenokee Swamp is the American Alligator. Officials estimate that 12,000 of the country’s largest reptile live within the refuge. To safely view these creatures, visitors should admire them from a distance and keep hands and feet inside boats.



Pets are not allowed in boats, even privately owned vessels.



From the Waycross east side, you need to visit the Okefenokee Swamp Park. They give boat tours but don’t turn you loose in your own boat like the State Park. They have wildlife shows, a railroad, and Pioneer Island with a homestead. There is a big ole tower to climb too.



A wildfire begun by a lightning strike near the center of the refuge on May 5, 2007, eventually merged with another wildfire that began near Waycross, Georgia, on April 16 when a tree fell on a power line. By May 31, more than 600,000 acres, or more than 935 square miles, had burned in the region. In 2011, the Honey Prairie Fire consumed 309,200 acres of land in the Swamp.



This Wonder seems a little short so let's add some pictures here.



Next time you head to Jacksonville, leave early and visit the Stephen Foster State Park. rent a boat for a few hours and ride up to Minnie's Pond.



Today's GNW Gal? Wedding engagement photo shoot gone wrong. )