Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Wildlife Reserve · Suffolk, Virginia
More than a hundred thousand acres of forested wetland straddling the Virginia-North Carolina line, the surviving remnant of a swamp that once covered roughly a million. George Washington surveyed it in 1763 and formed a company to drain and log it, and the ditch his men dug is now the main trail. For a century before the Civil War, people who had escaped slavery lived in permanent maroon settlements deep inside it, and archaeologists have excavated their sites.
3100 Desert Road, Suffolk, Virginia, 23434, United States
Open daily, dawn to dusk, free. Access road gates are locked at dusk. Refuge headquarters on Desert Road generally weekdays, office hours. Parts of the refuge open to hunting in season.
Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos