Inside America’s Last Wilderness

“The light danced in the black swamp water. Darkness loomed behind the spreading circle of light. Suddenly two new fires appeared, small, fierce fires — a pair of alligator eyes.”

This is how Vereen Bell, a writer from the small town of Cairo, Georgia, described the Okefenokee Swamp in his novel Swamp Water, first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in November 1940. The bestseller became a movie and brought attention and early tourism to the region.

Set over 400,000 acres, the series of interconnected lakes and islands of America’s largest blackwater swamp have been home to Confederate deserters, Indigenous hunters, moonshiners, and pioneers. And that doesn’t include the (likely underestimated) 12,000 American alligators found in the waters where the Suwanee and St. Marys rivers converge.

The Indigenous people that explored the swamp as far back as 2000 BCE called it the “land of the trembling earth.” Burial mounds and pottery shards have been found as reminders of their presence, which mostly ended with the Seminole Wars as tribes scattered into Florida. But not before legends like “Billy Bowlegs,” called the “last chief of the Okefenokee,” left his mark, giving his name to one of the islands.

Families like the Chessers, Lees, and Barbers then settled the swamp in the mid-1800s and were so self-sufficient they were able to live off the land for generations. The last family didn’t leave the swamp until the 1950s. The Chesser homestead is still standing in the swamp and accessible to visitors.

The swamp was mined for its resources, including the abundant cypress lumber, and railroad tracks were laid through it to have easier access for businesses. There was even an 1889 attempt to drain the swamp, now called “Jackson’s Folly,” in order to use it for farming.

A few years before Bell’s book debuted, in 1937, the swamp became part of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, the first protection set in place for the countless species of animal found inside its boundaries, including 223 types of bird like the endangered – and possibly extinct – ivory-billed woodpecker. It would further be set aside as a wilderness area in 1974.

The Okefenokee was also part of the Civilian Conservations Corps era that put Americans back to work during the Great Depression. The all-Black members of Company 1433 were responsible for much of the tourism infrastructure that exists today in the wake of the release of Swamp Water.

My introduction to the swamp came at age seven from Okefenokee Joe, a former country singer and educator who toured Georgia schools with a box full of snakes to teach young’uns about the important ecosystem. Wide eyed, I sat in my school’s cafeteria as I heard his tales about the place he’d called home for decades.

It wasn’t until this year that I finally went to see for myself the landscape that had captivated him, driving from my home in Atlanta to the southeastern corner of the state. I booked a site at a campground near Folkston, one of three main access points to the swamp, and headed to Stephen C. Foster State Park, one of the management areas, for a guided boat tour.

No one else had signed up, so I had a private tour with my guide Chris, whose family has lived in the area around the swamp for over a century, his wide brown hat reminding me of something Okefenokee Joe would have worn. He navigated the boat through the well-marked water trails, pointing out herons in flight and alligators soaking up the sun in near-camouflage. He pointed out the trees used as landmarks, named for the five Lee sisters.

Back on land, I nearly jumped out of my skin as a wild hog raced across the road and into the thicket of palms. As nightfall fell on my campsite, I took my camera out into the open field for stargazing in the unparalleled darkness, recognized as an official dark sky park.

Okefenokee Joe, real name Dick Flood, has since passed, but the fight to protect the blackwater swamp is still ongoing. Dry conditions have caused wildfires in the past decade, and now mining threatens the pristine refuge. As of late 2024, the federal government has proposed a boundary expansion for the wilderness area that would halt mining plans. Another group is working to make it a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has itself seen local backlash.

The Okefenokee Swamp is one of America’s great wonders, well worth protecting – and visiting. If you go, entry into the park is $5 on both the Stephen C. Foster State Park and U.S. Fish and Wildlife-managed sides. Rent a kayak to paddle to the islands named after early inhabitants and pretend, if just for a night, to be one of them.