Ochlockonee River Brings to the Lake

Sylvester Doerun • Doerun Pitcher Plant Bog Natural Area L Camilla o s t C L r i e t e t k l Joeseph W. Jones e O Ecological Research Center Center c h Br Moultrie l i at Ichauway o d g c e k C L o it n r t e e l e e e k C R r i e v e e Pelham • k r E a st B ra Sp nch en ce M i W ll est C Bra r n ee c k h Ochlocknee Big Creek • B a rn Old Confederate Bridge e t t s C r e e THOMASVILLE k T Bainbridge i r Lapham-Patterson House State Historic Site e Whigham • d Cairo C Greenwood Plantation T r ur e key C ek re Thomasville Rose Garden ek k e e r C s u o l Pebble Hill Plantation u p a t t A ER ek re IV Birdsong Nature Center S C p R L W L GEORGIA m I i a E l l w Tall Timbers H a S E c o D N Research Center o E c R h O ee FLORIDA K Q Cre u ek C in cy O Lake Iamonia C L re e H k C k e O Upper Ochlockonee Canoe Trail re C Quincy e n Carr Lake ca ri ur H r Lake Jackson e v i R e Lake Talquin l t t i State Forest Alfred B. McClay Gardens State Park B L ear Creek and Park Lake Jackson Mounds Archeological State Park Ocklowaha Creek TALLAHASSEE reek C ia Lake Talquin g o l Fort Braden Trail e T • Hosford Sopc hopp y R iv Wakulla Springs State Park The Florida Trail er Crawfordville St Marks • Lower Ochlockonee Canoe Trail St Marks National APALACHICOLA Wildlife Refuge NATIONAL FOREST Sopchoppy St Marks NWR • Panacea Mashes Island APALACHEE Ochlockonee Point BAY Ochlockonee Ochlockonee Bay r River State Park ve Ri Bald Point ed TATE’S HELL ok State Park ro C STATE FOREST Dog Island behind the dam that creates Lake Talquin, a sign says you have crossed the “Ochlocoknee.” In Georgia, you can turn right on GA 188 in the town of “Ochlocknee” and ride out a mile or so to view the Little “Ochlockonee” River. Oak. Not only is the Ochlockonee a river of many Oak. names, it is also a river of different qualities and lock. uses. Upstream in Georgia, it is an “impaired” stream that functions as sewer, carrying so much fecal coliform, agricultural runoff, and mercury that locals are warned not to swim, drink, or Lock. consume fi sh from its waters. Further south, lock. it is the last refuge—or maybe graveyard—on knee. earth of the federally endangered freshwater mussel Ochlockonee Moccasinshell (Medionidus simpsonianus), which has not been seen for six Knee.by Richard J. Lenz years. After crossing the state line, the river knee. provides recreation and adds to the underlying water supply for metropolitan Three hard nouns. Three door knocks. This is how Tallahassee. Downstream, near the bay of the same locals pronounce the name of the river that rises name, it is a tidally infl uenced river that hosts salt water inauspiciously in the red clay soils of southwest fi sh and serves as nursery Georgia and winds 206 miles to the Florida coast. grounds for marine life, which contribute to Florida’s $20 million seafood industry. chlockonee. Not a pretty O name—in sound or meaning. Spend time As for superlatives, well, if you polled Georgians with the river, and you will fi nd oaks on the to list their state’s rivers, the Ochlockonee might banks, locks at Jackson Bluff Dam in Florida, be the last one named, in contrast to its famous and of course plenty of cypress knees. But the cousin located sixty-fi ve miles to the east—the appellation comes from the Hitchiti Indian Suwannee River featured in Stephen Foster’s language, which is believed to be describing lyrics—which also is born in Georgia coastal a river that traditionally fl owed as lanee or plain swamps and lakni (yellow) oki (water), as it drained the fl oowsws to the yellow and red clay soils of the upland area. FFloridalorida coast. Locals ignore the vowel between lock and knee, but they are forgiven for this short cut, because the river’s name has had many spellings, a tradition that continues to this day. In Florida, when you cross the river into Leon County Tired Creek 2 Purple Bankclimber 3 But it’s time the Ochlockonee received its due in an aquiline course to fi nish dead east in man-made lakes—can serve as natural The Ochlockonee: A River of Names respect, regardless of its diffi cult name and the brackish waters of Ochlockonee Bay. water treatment plants, and Lake Talquin helps to remove a large percentage of our reckless treatment. The Ochlockonee has In 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto Between Thomasville and Tallahassee, Florida, unhealthy nutrients that the upper natural qualities which make it unlike any I was the fi rst European to discover the river, the Ochlockonee rolls through the beautiful Ochlockonee River brings to the lake. other river. And like all of our other rivers, which he named Guacuca. During the Spanish and distinctive timberlands and farm fi elds of the Red Hills, drawing along with it the South of the Jackson Bluff Dam, the it affects the quality of life inside its many Mission period of Georgia and Florida, the Spanish called the river Rio Agna, Rio de Lagna, waters of southwestern Mitchell County, river regains its integrity as it is fed by fi ngered grasp. And unfortunately like many and Rio Lana, which may have been Spanish western waters of Thomas County, and most cleaner tributaries and fl ows through of our rivers, it is threatened. renditions of the Muskogean word lanee for of Grady County before crossing into Florida. mostly undeveloped conservation lands “yellow.” When the English replaced the Spanish of the Apalachicola National Forest and Just across the state line and east of the river is in the region, they attempted to reproduce Tate’s Hell State Forest before reaching The Ochlockonee Lake Iamonia, 5,700 acres, one of three major phonetically the Indian names they heard, using a Ochlockonee Bay on the coast. Watershed lakes in Florida that lie within the drainage t 420 feet elevation—not far from Gordy, variety of spellings. Historic maps show the river basin of the river. Iamonia, along with Lake In Florida, the river forms legal boundary Worth County—cars race by, oblivious as Ogeelaguanu, Ochlocononee, Ockatockany, A Jackson, was once a tributary of the river, but as it winds southward, constituting the that nearby a major river is starting its journey O-clock-ney, Okloknee, Ochlochnee, over thousands of years formed connections county lines between Gadsen and Leon to the sea from a wet wooded thicket in a Ochlocknee, Ochlockonee, Ocklockny, and to the underlying Floridan Aquifer, which is counties, Liberty and Leon, Liberty and farmer’s fi eld. Here, the landscape tilts slightly Ocklockony. The Georgia town of Moultrie, pumped out for Tallahassee’s drinking water, Wakulla, and Franklin and Wakulla. to the southeast, which forces water to the established on the banks of the river, was fi rst among other uses. While not obvious, the elevated road bed where it is frustrated. There, named Ocklockney. Of Georgia’s fourteen major two lakes still have a hydrological relationship In total, the Ochlockonee watershed drains the river collects more volume and is forced rivers, twelve have names of Indian origin and with the river. During the normal cycle of 2,416 square miles, of which 1,336 square miles north a few hundred feet until it fi nds a drainage the other two are based on French and Spanish. fl oods, twice a year Iamonia is fed from pipe where it sneaks under GA 112. It continues the river through a connection of sloughs southeast through the cotton and peanut farms and—with 4,325-acre Lake Jackson— of Worth County into Colquitt County and through an underground connection. past more farms until it grazes the western edge of Moultrie, town of 14,387 people. Native Americans called Lake Jackson Okaheepee, or “disappearing lake,” in Early settlers liked to build towns on high reference to its irregular habit of retreating places next to rivers and Moultrie was no into underlying sinkholes during droughts, exception, established on a ridge that defi nes a quality Lake Iamonia shares. the eastern boundary of the watershed. Thirty miles south, Thomasville, population 18,162, Further south, on the western outskirts of the was founded on top of this same ridge. 150,624-resident Florida capital, the river is backed up by Jackson Bluff Dam to create For the fi rst time, because of the change Lake Talquin, an 8,850-acre reservoir which in topography at Moultrie, the river turns was built in 1929 to produce hydroelectric southwest toward Thomasville, instead power, recreation, and waterfront real estate. of keeping its southeastern trend toward Quitman or Valdosta. The Ochlockonee Lake Talquin, like all impoundment lakes, will keep fl owing southwest until it meets traps the river’s sediments, preventing natural Telogia Creek in Florida, where it changes elements from nourishing downstream its mind back and curve toward the southeast ecosystems. However, wetlands—even Hooded Pitcher Plant 4 5 theIn Georgia, aquifer is the thinly upper confi Ochlockonee ned, water inwaters the Floridareceives and most parts of of its Georgia, volume Alabama, from runoff, and the formmove ofacross springs the emergeshilly and from rolling the topography ground, of Carolinaswhich distinguisheslie on top of porousit from limestone some of its which creatingthe Tifton creeks Upland and District,rivers that a subdistrict sometimes of the holdsneighbors an irregular that bodyare born of water from belowsprings ground disappearEast Gulf backCoastal into Plain the ground Section.

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