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Location
Location
The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and the Dismal Swamp State Park are located on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. The refuge encompasses nearly 113,000 acres and is home to thousands of migratory birds and rare species. Human encroachment and logging have reduced the swamp to about 10% of its original size.
Map of refuge and state park
Map of refuge and state park
This map shows the extent of the 112,000 acre refuge and park.
1,000,000 acres!
1,000,000 acres!
This map shows an estimate of the original acreage of the swamp, pre-logging era! The outline in purple shows the current coverage of the Refuge and State Park (in yellow), the blue outline shows additional swamp area.
Map from 1991 pamplet
Map from 1991 pamplet
Over the past few decades the GDS has not changed much but there was a large amount of logging from the 1600's to the early 1970's that turned the over 1,000,000 acre swamp into the 112,000 acres that it is today.
Lake drummond
Lake drummond
The lakes is 3,100 acres and is one of the two natural lakes found in Virginia. The lake is on average 3ft deep all over but some years have recorded depths of up to 7ft.
The name for the Great Dismal Swamp was given by Colonel William Byrd II in a 1728 expedition to determine the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. At the time, “dismal” meant a swamp. Today, this would mean it’s the Great Swamp Swamp!
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