Documenting Historic Landscape Change in the Great Dismal Swamp Using Maps, Images and Written Accounts

by Bartlett A. Bickel

B. A. in Africana Studies, Vassar College, May 1989

M. A. in Landscape Architecture, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, December 2002

A Thesis submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

May 17, 2015

Thesis directed by

David Rain Associate Professor of Geography & International Affairs

The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable support of:

Carrie Susie Kuhn

Roger Bruce Bickel

John Vlach

iii

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank members of the Department of Geography at The

George Washington University community past and present. Marie Price, Elizabeth

Chacko, Lisa Benton-Short deserve special mention for smoothing the way with the

University at every stage and making this "mid-career Masters" student feel welcome and productive.

Special thanks are due to David Rain, who served as chair of my thesis committee and Melissa Keeley, who served as reader. Many thanks to you both.

Abstract of Thesis

Documenting Historic Landscape Change in the Great Dismal Swamp Using Maps, Images and Written Accounts

The Great Dismal Swamp (GDS) is one of the largest remaining wild landscapes in the

Eastern United States. Viewed from ground level, on maps of the region or from an aerial perspective its boundary is clearly visible. As a unique ecosystem, it’s currently protected by the US National Wildlife Service (NWS). This thesis argues that the GDS is also a cultural landscape, the product of long-term interactions between humans and the physical environment.

This thesis documents the evolution of the GDS as a cultural landscape using maps, images and written accounts. The GDS has been represented on maps of the Tidewater of North Carolina and Virginia in some form since the 17th century. The meaning, value and understanding of the GDS landscape has changed considerably over this time period. As a result cartographic representations of the landscape have varied as well.

The assembled history of the GDS as a cultural landscape has been broken down into five successive chapters. These chapters articulate time periods of significant landscape change and relate them to larger historical patterns. As the GDS has recovered from centuries of intensive land uses ecological patterns have become more apparent in the landscape. The historic record documented in this thesis offers material for re- imagining and ultimately managing the GDS as a cultural landscape as well as a valued ecosystem.

Table of Contents

Dedication...... iii

Acknowledgments...... iv

Abstract of Thesis...... v

List of Figures...... vii

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION...... 1

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW...... 12

Chapter 3: METHOD & APPROACH...... 22

Chapter 4: EXPLORATION...... 25

Chapter 5: CULTIVATION...... 49

Chapter 6: WAR...... 73

Chapter 7: EXTRACTION...... 107

Chapter 8: CONSERVATION...... 138

Chapter 9: FINDINGS & AFTERWORDS...... 163

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 177

Appendices...... 186

List of Figures

Figure I - 1 - Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (2006)……………………………………………………………………9

Figure I – 2 - Albemarle Sound, North Carolina-Virginia, USA– (Earth Snapshot)………………………………………….10

Figure I – 3 - Southeast Virginia (NASA)…………………………………………………..….11

Figure IV - 1 – ‘The South Part of Virginia – Now the North Part of Carolina’ (1657)…………………………………………………………41

Figure IV - 2 – ‘LA VIRGINEA PARS’ (1585)…………………………………………………42

Figure IV - 3 ‘A Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, The Commodoties, People, Government and Religion...’ (1612)………………………………………………………………43

Figure IV - 4 – ‘Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670’……………………………………………………………44

Figure IV- 5 ‘A Map of Virginia And Maryland’, (1676)…………………………………..46

Figure IV - 6 – Eastern portion of the survey establishing the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia (1729)……………………….……47

Figure IV - 7 – ‘Virginiae Pars – Carolinae Pars’…………………….…………………...48

Figure V - 1 - ‘Plan of Westover Plantation…’…………………………………………….…..63

Figure V – 2 - “New and correct map of the Province of North Carolina………..…64

Figure V – 3 - [1755] “A Map of the most Inhabited part of Virginia……………..…65

Figure V – 4 – ‘Plan des Ouvrages de Portsmouth en Virginie’…………………….….67

Figure V – 5 – ‘PLAN des Environs…” (1781)………………………………….………….…68

Figure V – 6 – ‘Marchee de l’armee’……………………………………………………………..69

Figure V - 7 – ‘A Compleat Map of North Carolina’………………………………………..70

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Figure V – 8 - ‘George Washington – Survey of the Dismal Swamp’……………..…71

Figure V – 9 – “The Lake of the Dismal”………………….…………………………………...72

Figure VI – 1 - Undated map of the region between the James River and the Albemarle Sound…………………………………………………...92

Figure VI – 2 – Tidewater Sheet (1 sheet only of 8 sheets), ‘A Map of Virginia Formed from Actual Surveys (1807)…………………………………93

Figure VI – 3 - “North Carolina." (1814)……………………………………………………….94

Figure VI – 4 - Halfway House (Hotel) – Robert Salmon……………………..……….95

Figure VI – 5 – ‘North Carolina’ 1842-1845…………………………………………………96

Figure VI – 6 – “Jim Pierce Dismal Swamp 1856”, Strother, David Hunter ………………………………………………………………………………97

Figure VI – 7 - ‘Horse Camp Road. Dismal Swamp, Va.’ March 20th 1856, Strother, David Hunter…………………………………………………….98

Figure VI – 8 - ‘Mill pond near Suffolk - April 3rd 1856’, Strother, David Hunter……………………………………………………………………………….98

Figure VI – 9 - June 25, 1859, Drummond The Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Strother, David Hunter………………………………………………99

Figure VI – 10 ‘Dismal Swamp Canal’ from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, May 1860……………………………………………….100

Figure VI - 11 – US Army Hampton Roads Map, (1863)………………………………..101

Figure VI – 12 – ‘Plan of Battle of South Mills. Dismal Swamp Canal, N.C.’ (19th April 1862)……………………………………………..102

Figure VI – 13 - Thomas Moran ‘Slaves Escaping through a Swamp’ or 'Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia' (1862)……………………………103

Figure VI –14 - ‘Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp, Virginia’ by David Edward Cronin, (1888)………………………………………………………………..104

Figure VI – 15 – Untitled map of the Hampton Roads vicinity United States Topographical Engineers (ca. 1862)……………………………………….105

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Figure VI – 16 - JANUARY 3, 1863, HARPER'S WEEKLY. MAP OF NORTH CAROLINA.……………………………………………………………………106

Figure VII – 1 – D.S. Walton, Civil Engineer, Dismal Swamp Canal……………….123

Figure VII - 2 - "SKETCHES IN THE DISMAL SWAMP" …………….…..…………..124

Figure VII – 3 - ‘A Peep into the Great Dismal Swamp’ from Edward King’s The Great South…(1875)……………………………….…….……….125

Figure VII – 4 – Bird’s Eye view of late 19th century Norfolk & Portsmouth, Virginia (1873)………………………………………….……………126

Figure VII – 5– Bird’s Eye View of Norfolk, Virginia (1873)……………….…………126

Figure VII – 7 - ‘Photograph of Wallaceton (Virginia) late 1800s”…………………128

Figure VII – 8 – Hand-drawn map from John Boyle O’Reilly’s Sketches… (1890)………………………………………………………129

Figure VII – 9 – “Map No. 2 – Norfolk Peninsula Showing Fresh and Salt Water Marshes, Sand Dunes and Uplands” 1901……………………………..130

Figure VII – 10 –‘A SKETCH MAP of the Dismal Swamp District of Virginia and North Carolina’ (1901)…………………………………………………………131

Figure VII – 11 – “View on the Headwaters of Northwest River, Dismal Swamp” (1901)……………………………………………………………………………...132

Figure VII – 12 – “Black Gum Swamp showing Knees of the Cypress (Taxodium) and arched roots of the Black Gum (Nyssa Biflora)…...….132

Figure VII – 13 - “The Dismal Swamp Canal Near South Mills, N.C.” from Kearney (1901)………………………………………………………………………………….133

Figure VII – 14 – “Hotel at Lake Drummond – Suffolk, Va.”…………………………133

Figure VII – 15 – ‘Making up a Tow at South Mills, North Carolina, postcard (1906)………………………………………………………………………………………..134

Figure VII – 16 - Undated photo from early 20th century of railroad line leading out of Dismal Swamp……………………………………………….…134

Figure VII – 17 – Delineation of the Peat Soil of the Great Dismal Swamp, from C.C. Osban’s survey for the USGS, 1919…………………………..….……………….135

Figure VII - 18 “TOPOGRAPHY – SUFFOLK [, VA. – N.C.] QUADRANGLE, Department of the Interior, War Department and State of Virginia Geological Survey (1919)……………………………………………..136

Figure VIII – 1 - Beckford Quadrangle (NC), 1940 –War Dept……………………...152

Figure VIII – 2 - South Mills (NC) Quadrangle, 1940 – USGS………………….……153

Figure VIII – 3 - Lake Drummond (VA – N.C.) Quadrangle, 1940...... 154

Figure VIII – 4 - Suffolk (VA) Quadrangle, 1954 – USGS...... 155

Figure VIII – 5 - Deep Creek (VA), Quad, 1954...... 156

Figure VIII – 6 – Refuge and Resource Descriptions (USFWS, 2006)…………...157

Figure VIII – 7 – Public Use Map (USFWS, 2006)………………………………....…...158

Figure VIII - 8 - Deer Hunt Map (USFWS, 2006)………………………………….……..159

Figure VIII - 9 - Bear Hunt Map (USFWS, 2006)………………………………….……..160

Figure VIII – 10 - “Dismal Swamp Storyboard, USACE………………………….……..161

Figure IX - 1 - Aerial photo – The Great Dismal Swamp from Satellite image………………………………………………………………………………..…167

Figure IX – 2 – detail of “Submerged Areas and Bogs”…………………………………168

Figure IX – 3 - Lake Drummond (2012)……………………………..……………………….169

Figure IX – 4 - Aerial view of Lake Drummond…………………………….……………..169

Figure IX – 5 - Low angle aerial photograph of the Lateral West fire advances through the area west of Lake Drummond (2011)…………………………………………………………..170

Figure IX – 6 – ‘PUBLIC INFORMATION MAP – LATERAL WEST FIRE – GREAT DISMAL SWAMP (USFWS,2011)…………………………………………………………………………………………..171

Figure IX – 7 – View northwest of area burned by Later West fire………………...172

Figure IX – 8 – Aerial view of USACE Lock on Feeder Ditch…………………………173

Figure IX – 9 – Aerial view looking north along the Dismal Swamp Canal……..174

Figure IX – 10 – LandSat image focused on a portion of the Dismal Swamp…..175

Figure IX – 11 – Map of the Americas, The Audubon Society (2013)………………176

CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION

The Great Dismal Swamp (GDS) is one of the largest remaining wild areas on the east coast of the United States (USFWS, 2006, 4, Weil, 2013, Tidwell, 2001, 1). Along with Florida’s Everglades and Florida-Georgia’s Okeefenokee, it is considered a “major

American swamp” (Badger, 2007, 2). Its current boundaries correspond with those of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (GDS) and Dismal Swamp State Park

(DSSP). On most current maps it is depicted as a single, homogenous land use pattern, an area feature (such as wooded marsh or swamp) (Figure I - 1). Aerial views of the GDS portray a landscape that contrasts dramatically with the mosaic of adjacent land cover types such as agriculture, industrial sites, commercial development, suburban residential communities and various forms of transportation infrastructure. From the air, the ecological continuity of the swamp is broken only by the road and ditch network (Figure

I - 2) (USFWS, 2006, 49-50).

Today the GDS measures approximately 173.75 square miles (111,203 acres). The

United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) considers it an intact remnant of the original swamp. It was part of a vast ecosystem that once covered more than a million acres (USFWS, 2006, 33, 35, P.L. 93-402). The GDS is located approximately 30 miles from the Atlantic Ocean in the Embayed Section of the Coastal Plain region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. It’s within the US Forest

Service's Middle Atlantic coastal forest ecosystem. The GDS takes in parts of the Virginia cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk and the North Carolina counties of Gates, Pasquotank and Camden. According to the USFWS, the GDS is currently delineated on the north by

U.S. Highway 58, on the east by the Dismal Swamp Canal, on the south by U.S. Highway

158 and on the west by the Suffolk Scarp (USFWS, 2006, 35).

1 The Refuge was created in 1973 when a local forest products company, the

Union-Camp Corporation, donated 49,097 acres to The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

TNC along with the Conservation Fund then transferred the former Union-Camp properties to the Department of the Interior. These land holdings were then protected with conservation easements and later combined with additional purchased land to establish the GDS as a part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. The Dismal Swamp

Act of 1974 focused conservation efforts on protecting and preserving the Dismal Swamp as an ecosystem. The Act prioritized conservation of the Swamp’s animal and plant life and when possible, its wild character. The USFWS is tasked with the secondary purpose of promoting a public use program … “when not in conflict with the primary objectives of the refuge.” The GDS has special designation as an Audubon Society’s Virginia and

Globally Important Bird Area designations, and the National Parks Service’s National

Natural Landmark and Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site designations

(USFWS, 2006, 35). Public use has meant providing access for hunting and fishing on a limited basis, access for eco-tourism and on providing interpretive materials on the

Dismal Swamp’s history.

The Dismal Swamp is sourced by Lake Drummond, which was named for William

Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina. According to local history he accidentally discovered it while lost in the Dismal Swamp in 1655. Lake Drummond is the largest natural lake in Virginia (3,108 acres). It is the source of five rivers and countless smaller tributaries that define the eastern portion of the region between the

James River and the Albemarle Sound. The Lake has been a consistent feature included by map-makers when placing and depicting the Dismal Swamp. It has served as a valuable reference feature within the changing landscape of the Dismal Swamp.

2 The Lake and the Dismal Swamp were formed by closely related geological processes. Ongoing soil formation and changes in vegetation patterns are visible in the landscape. The Swamp’s origins date from the end of the last Ice Age. It expanded along streams 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. A previous ice advance left the area with characteristic boreal vegetation of jack pines (Pinus banksiana) and spruces (genus

Picea). Over a period of 3,000 to 4,000 years the this boreal vegetation was replaced by northern hardwood species that were in turn replaced by oaks (Quercus), hickories

(Carya), and other endemic southeastern species. Over time the swamp gradually expanded from the Lake (the high point) along watercourses. By 3,500 years ago, accumulated peat had covered the present-day Dismal Swamp, the water regime was saturated, and the oak-hickory forest was replaced by a cypress-gum swamp” (USFWS,

2006, 36-38).

The occurrence (and on-going formation) of peat is an important component of the processes sustaining the Dismal Swamp. The Lake and the Dismal Swamp were formed on top of permeable, coarse sand. An organic layer of peat has accumulated at the surface, and is up to five feet thick in some areas (USFWS, 2006, 38-39).

Underneath the peat layer is the Sandbridge Formation, which consists of an upper layer of silty clay and a lower layer of sand. Beneath this layer is the London Bridge Formation, mostly clay silt, and then layers of sand and silt called the Norfolk Formation. The

Norfolk Formation is exposed to the west of the Dismal Swamp at the Suffolk Scarp, which has long been noted on maps as the western boundary of the Dismal Swamp. The

Suffolk Scarp is considered the break between the Outer Coastal Plain (including Lake

Drummond) and the Middle Coastal Plain to the west of the Scarp. A thirty foot change in elevation separates terraces of flat sediments to the east and west. To the east, the

Norfolk Formation was deposited on top of the clay-rich Yorktown Formation. This area of sandy sediments provides the groundwater recharge area for the aquifer that sustains

3 the Dismal Swamp and other areas in its vicinity that were historically covered in swamplands. Groundwater input from the Norfolk Formation, much of which is currently in agriculture, accounts for the majority of water that upwells in the Dismal

Swamp (USFWS, 2006, 36-40).

Lake Drummond is a high point at the middle of the Swamp. Its origins are somewhat of a mystery. There's no obvious reason for a single big lake to exist in the middle of the Dismal Swamp. There is no network of streams draining a watershed upstream and emptying into the lake. At normal water levels, the lake is 6-7 feet deep and the surface is 18 feet above sea level. There is little topographic relief in the area; elevation drops at one foot per mile near the lake (USFWS, 2006, 44-45).

The western boundary of the Dismal Swamp has long been identified on maps and in descriptions of the landscape as the Suffolk Scarp (sometimes referred to as the Nansemond Scarp), which rises approximately 30 feet above the Swamp. The Scarp marks the location of an ancient shoreline of the Atlantic

Ocean and set of barrier islands that dates from roughly 125,000 years ago, when ocean levels were higher. Groundwater also continues to shape the Dismal

Swamp’s formation, especially in response to the built environment. The network of transport and irrigation ditches constructed in and around the Dismal

Swamp during the last 300 years is naturally supplied with water that drains by gravity out of the Lake. When lake level drops to 15.75 feet, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stops releasing water from Lake Drummond to supply the Dismal

Swamp Canal (USACE).

As a landscape, the Dismal Swamp is a relatively recent development.

Given how it was formed it may not actually be a Swamp, but rather a pocosin.

The Great Dismal Swamp is less than 9,000 years old; it was formed on a hillside instead of a basin and without the benefit of rivers flowing into or beside it. (USFWS, 2006, US Cong Hrgs, 1974).

Seasonal fluctuations in the water table when accompanied by extended high temperatures often produce conditions conducive to fires. Periodic wildfires started by lightning strikes or human activities have shaped the Swamp’s landscape, especially the composition of its soils, forests and vegetative communities. The varied flora and fauna of the Great Dismal have co-evolved with these conditions. The processes that have led to the formation of the Dismal Swamp are still active and visible throughout the region.

The language used in describing the landscape is a significant pattern in the regional history of the Tidewater. As a place name the Dismal Swamp has been in use since English colonization. Map makers have used the name Dismal Swamp since the early 18th century. Swamplands in the Tidewater were explored, surveyed, evaluated and ultimately represented on maps as part of English exploration and settlement of this region. Early settlers struggled to understand the structure and function of the landscape as they transformed it for cultivation and settlement. Two important landscape terms: pocosin and swamp. The Oxford English Dictionary places the first consistent uses of the word swamp among efforts to describe the landscape of North

America, specifically coastal Virginia and Carolina.

“A tract of low-lying ground in which water collects; a piece of wet spongy ground; a marsh or bog. Originally and in early use only in the North American colonies, where it denoted a tract of rich soil having a growth of trees and other vegetation, but too moist for cultivation” (OED def. 1.a)

“The word swamp is peculiar to America; it there signifies a tract of land that is sound and good, but by lying low is covered by water. All the forest trees (pine excepted) thrive best in the swamps, where the soil is always rich.” (OED, 1766 - W. Stork Acct. E. Florida 26 (note)

The Algonquin word pocosin described a landscape that is closely related swamps in the

Tidewater. It’s generally translated as “swamp on a hill” to indicate a wetland landscape

5 sourced from groundwater located on a slope as opposed to in a low-lying, poorly drained area (thus sump or swamp). Historian Jack Temple Kirby has suggested that an appreciation of the word pocosin as well as the landscape that it describes are essential to understanding the history of the Albemarle-James River sub-region including the

Dismal Swamp (Kirby, 2000, vii - ix). Pocosin remains in use as a generic landscape type in the Tidewater (Lopez & Gwantney, 2006, 436 – 437).

Archeologists have found evidence of human settlement in the GDS dating from as far back as 13,000 years, before the Swamp was formed. Evidence for such Pre- historic settlements has been found in both upland and lowland settings (USFWS, 2006,

Sayers, 2010). Lake Drummond is the northernmost of a series of lakes that were controlled by the Carolina Algonquians prior to European settlement of the Albemarle region. These included the present-day Lakes Mattamusket, Phelps, Alligator and

Pungo. The southern Algonquians including the Powhatan valued the territory in this region as hunting grounds (Sawyer, 2010, 15, 57).

Archaeological research focused on the period between the 17th and the mid-19th centuries has also shown that the Dismal Swamp was the site of permanent and semi- permanent populations. These communities included Native Americans, escaped

African American slaves and other resistant populations. More recent investigations have focused on the resident communities that supported the construction, maintenance and operation of infrastructure within the GDS during the same time period and after.

The GDS has been designated as a site on the National Park Service’s “Underground

Railroad Network to Freedom” for its role in the Underground Railroad during the early

19th century. Although never densely populated, the Dismal Swamp does have a history of human habitation. Archaeological evidence from the period of Pre-European contact and from the colonial period onward supports the idea of the Dismal Swamp as a cultural

6 landscape. The Dismal Swamp has been a place of long-standing human habitation and the scene of ongoing cultural production (USFWS, 2006, 68 – 69, Sayers, 2012).

Elements of the built environment in and around the GDS also represent the cultural landscape. The most apparent cultural pattern in the landscape is the system of canals, ditches, irrigation works, causeways, watergates, locks, spoil-bank roads and earthworks designed and maintained to shape the hydrology of the Dismal Swamp.

Many remaining ditches form a network that channels much of the current surface flow into Lake Drummond, which then flows into the Dismal Swamp Canal via the Feeder

Ditch. Several ditches drain directly into the Canal or south to the Pasquotank River basin. The historic Jericho Ditch drains both to the northwest and south to Lake

Drummond. The Dismal Swamp Canal is the most visible of these constructed earth and water works. While the Canal’s significance as a historical structure has been linked to a specific time period in American history (1790-1820), the Canal’s effects on the Swamp’s hydrology, soils and vegetative patterns (its ecosystem) have been profound and long- lived (USFWS, 2006, 43). Clearing forested lands and the manipulation of hydrology through the expansion of infrastructure are both significant themes in the Dismal

Swamp’s environmental history.

Land-holding patterns associated with agriculture and forest product processing have also formed a visible pattern in the landscape. These long term land uses have shaped the Dismal Swamp's current boundary. Establishing a boundary to the Dismal

Swamp is a longstanding cartographic problem. This is reflected in the environmental history of the Tidewater region. There has been a significant variety in how the Dismal

Swamp has been represented. This variety is reflected in written descriptions of the landscape. Maps are the most articulate record of the changes in how the Dismal Swamp has been delineated over time. The boundaries or extent of the Dismal Swamp as

7 depicted on maps have varied considerably over time. What explains the variation in how the Dismal Swamp has been mapped over time? What is the best way to track these changes over time? What do these changes reveal about how the Dismal Swamp has been valued over time?

To answer these questions this thesis draws from a chronology of maps assembled to trace changes in the landscape as well as to follow the variation in how the

GDS has been represented historically. Maps, images of the GDS and written accounts describing the GDS’ landscape were gathered and broken into five successive time periods. The time periods describe significant events in the history of the GDS’ landscape. This history has been broken into five chapters, each discussing significant approaches to understanding, valuing, measuring, manipulating and being influenced by the Dismal Swamp.

The final chapter gives an overview of current conditions in the Dismal Swamp and how the findings in this project can influence ongoing restoration efforts. This chapter also discusses the current state of Swamp scholarship and suggests possible directions for further research across disciplines. The narrative presented in this thesis is provided is intended to encourage a re-imagining of the Great Dismal Swamp as a cultural landscape. It’s a landscape with a very clear demarcated boundary. This boundary has shifted over time, especially as represented on maps.

Figure I - 1 Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge showing access routes and the current boundary delineation (2006) – United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS).

Figure I - 2 Albemarle Sound, North Carolina-Virginia, USA - June 10th, 2009 – (Earth Snapshot) The Great Dismal Swamp is visible within regional its physical context. The mouth of Chesapeake Bay and the James River (Hampton Roads) is visible at the top center. The Outer Banks and Albemarle Sound are at the lower center. Lake Drummond is visible near the center of the image. The Dismal Swamp is green area near left center. (Earth Snapshot)

Figure I – 3 Southeast Virginia, showing Lake Drummond and Union Camp holding ponds to west (at City of Franklin, near Blackwater River) Source: NASA - Stennis Space Center. Current mapping techniques such as remote sensing show the Great Dismal Swamp as a distinctive, homogenous landscape amidst a mosaic of land use patterns. This image is especially effective at showing the scale of the Dismal Swamp in comparison to the Hampton Roads region. The proximity of the Atlantic Ocean (at right) and of the Chesapeake Bay-James River is also apparent from this perspective. (Virginia Places)

CHAPTER 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

This thesis has drawn from readings in three streams of geographic thought in documenting historic landscape change in the Dismal Swamp: cultural landscape studies, critical cartography and historical geography. The five chapters that trace landscape change in the Dismal Swamp are based on maps assembled for this thesis.

Several important written sources also explain the landscape’s evolution, especially during periods when maps of the Dismal Swamp were not available. The record of written sources delineating the Dismal Swamp is intended to contribute to this overall history. This section begins with an overview of theoretical groundings and then moves to an overview of significant written accounts that help to explain the Dismal Swamp’s evolution as a cultural landscape.

Cultural landscapes

Within the field of geography, the term cultural landscape is often associated with

Carl Sauer. His article “Morphology of Landscape” (1925) is often cited as the definitive statement on the term. He argues that human interaction with the ongoing processes of the physical world over time results in the production of cultural landscapes. Landscape in this view has patterns related to both history and ongoing physical processes. The term cultural landscape is currently used by many organizations focused on conservation as well as historic preservation. International agencies such as United Nations

Environmental, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO-website), International

Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN-website) and National

Park Service recognize cultural landscapes as resources and as an approach to research.

For Sauer, landscape was a central focus of the study of geography.

Another geographer central to cultural landscape studies was John Brinkerhoff

“J.B.” Jackson. Jackson encouraged his readers to experience landscapes as a vernacular

12 so as to honor craft and reveal process. Jackson approached landscape with a deceptively simple mode of enquiry. His writings emphasize characterizing landscapes based on visual survey (1997), as material culture reflecting the work required to create them, (1984), and as living embodiments of the connections between the history and geography of a place (1994). Jackson’s writings prioritized a visual approach to landscape. According to one editor, Ervin Zube, Jackson taught that seeing the landscape is only the first step in learning to read it (1970). Both Sauer and Jackson stressed the need to root the study of generic landscape types (like swamps) in specific places. The importance of visual assessment to landscape studies is explored in D. W.

Meinig’s brief essay The Beholding Eye – Ten Versions of the Same Scene (1979). This poetic piece illustrates landscape’s enduring appeal, both “in common speech and [as] a technical term in special professions.”

Guidance in conducting initial visual surveys of the Great Dismal Swamp

National Wildlife Refuge (GDS) came from Copps (1995) and Stokes, et al. (1997). These works also provided background for understanding conservation easements, land trusts and their relationship to current trends in historic preservation. Both handbooks are based on approaches to preservation developed by the National Park Service (NPS) for to identifying, documenting and ultimately managing a cultural landscape. Additional works addressing approaches to cultural landscape preservation include standard NPS published works by Melnick, et. al. and (1984) and Slaiby and Mitchell, (2003). While the GDS has many visual qualities of a wilderness area, the built environment that provides access to it also has a history. The Dismal Swamp may well be a cultural landscape in addition to being a significant ecosystem.

Critical cartography

Writings in critical cartography provided guidance on working with historic maps. Harley’s (1989) offered an introduction to critical theory through the historic study of maps. The European exploration and discovery of the Americas that resulted in the Columbian Exchange was an important time period for the development of many cartographic techniques. Harley (1992) and Short, (2009) revisited maps and mapping in search of Native American inputs. These were useful in placing the GDS on maps made before it was “named” by William Byrd in 1728. Cosgrove (1999) links historic developments in the science of mapping, developments in ways of seeing, including constructed perspectives and the development of landscape (Cosgrove, 1999). Buisseret

(2003) is also interested in the development of ways of seeing and map production as part of history. He also discussed the role of maps in directing warfare. Harley, et al.

(1978) was helpful in understanding the sets of maps prepared for battle planning by

European-style warfare during the 18th century the American Revolutionary War.

Buisseret has documented the Estate Map, a little-known cartographic product that he found unique to the English speaking world during the 18th century ( (Buisseret 2011), and (Buisseret, 1996). Cosgrove’s (2008) emphasized the continuing importance of a visual approach to geographic research as well as in the presentation of geographic knowledge (through maps and landscape descriptions). Cosgrove and Petts, 1990), edited a collection of articles on the role of canals and water as expressions of power in the landscape.

Mapping the natural world is the subject of Denis Wood and John Fels (2008) was helpful in understanding the now standardized ways that maps represent the natural world, including graphic representations and apparently decorative cartographic features. The history of maps and of map-making is an interdisciplinary activity.

Karrow and Ackerman (2007), suggest that critical scholarship in cartography shaped

14 the history of the field by encouraging the following developments: a cross-cultural viewpoint, broad chronological perspective, a more generous definition of the map and mapping behavior, more interdisciplinary, less concern with the beauty of old maps, less concern with great men, less emphasis on progress and more concern with how maps are used.

Historical approach to geography

“[A]s Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion; so History without Geography, wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation.” ― John Smith (Wooldrige, 2012, iii)

Historical geography is an established sub-field of the discipline that addresses many topics and time periods. I was most interested in the works of historical geographers who have focused on the long term evolution of the American landscape.

Several works of historical geography were useful in placing the Dismal Swamp’s history within the larger evolution of the American landscape. Meinig (1995), Short (2001), and

Conzen (1994) served as a reference on how the United States was surveyed, mapped and settled. Conzen’s text also contains chapters useful for reading historic pattern related to specific time periods. These include Meyer’s (1994) discussion of the patterns of industrial order and Zelinsky’s (1994) discussion of the legacy of central authority dating from the New Deal (1930s). Conzen’s book also includes chapters that take a more thematic approach such as Butzter, (1994) on the Native American legacy in the

American landscape, Hilliard, (1994), on Plantations and the Southern landscape, and

Conzen’s own chapter on,(1994) on ethnicity in the land (which includes discussion of

Quakers in North Carolina). John Stilgoe (1982) served as a guide to historic process that gave form to the built environment during the European colonization settlement and construction of the United States. His discussions of the long-term landscape patterns associated with agricultural practices in the South were especially helpful in envisioning how and why the Dismal Swamp stood out from surrounding land uses.

Another type of long-view history is provided by two works focused on how

Virginia has been represented on maps since the earliest English colonial activity. Maps of Virginia are some of the earliest to record English exploration, cultivation and settlement in the New World. The Library of Virginia’s history of the Commonwealth has been documented through its maps collection (LoV, 2000). This was a valuable source of maps documenting the Commonwealth’s growth from colonial time to the present. Wooldridge (2012) also documents Virginia’s history through maps. It was also a source for maps of Virginia from various time periods as well as providing information on authorship, provenance and historical context.

Regional history written in the landscape

Two environmental histories of the Tidewater region Jack Temple Kirby (1999)

Roy B. Sawyer (2010) provided context for the landscape-scale history of the Dismal

Swamp. They include the Dismal Swamp within the natural and cultural history of the larger region. A long-standing interplay between humans and natural cycles and patterns has resulted in the formation of a distinctive landscape. For Kirby, the key to understanding landscape formation in the sub-region between the James River and the

Albemarle Sound is an appreciation for the interaction between land and water. He states early on that in the Tidewater, Kirby also traces a cultural theme in describing the cultural landscape of the James-Albemarle Low Country, contrasting the population as cosmopolitan or hinterland (xi). He prefers the term pocosin in characterizing the region since ”[i]t encompasses so many variations of wetlands higher [in elevation] than swamps that scientists ritually apologize for the usage” (xi-xiii).

Sawyer (2010) focuses on the same region and adds territory to the south when discussing the ebb and flow in the importance of “America’s Tidewater”, which he argues constitutes a “Unique World Ecology.” "Most importantly, the region's deep pocosin

16 muck created unworkeable pockets that allowed disjoint swamp refugia to survive"

(Sawyer, 2010, 183). Although neither are geographers, both Kirby and Sawyer explore the relationship between region and landscape in tracking the history of the Tidewater.

Environmental historian John McNeill identified disease and weather patterns as typical topics of interest associated with the greater Chesapeake Bay region that takes in the GDS (2003). His approach shares some similarities with scholars from other disciplines interested in examining environmental changes over time, not all of whom are environmental historians. An important area of overlap is a tendency to explore questions over the Longue Duree (lit. the long duration) an approach that has roots in the Annales school or tradition of historical research. This approach also expanded the types of sources historians used, such as maps, quantitative studies, pictorial representations and other forms of documenting environmental change. Studies like

Rutman and Rutman (1976) and Rutman, et. al., (1980) examine the relationship between land use and disease (especially malaria) in the colonial Chesapeake. Both studies offer an explanation for long-standing the association of low swampy lands with sickness. (Hudgins, 2000), tracked the long term weather pattern of Hurricanes or

Tropical cyclones that is an essential component in landscape formation of the Tidewater beginning in 1586.

Written accounts focused on the Dismal Swamp

While the English were late to the “Age of Exploration”, according to Moran

(2007), Mansell, (2007) and Horn (2010) they became a key player in the political economy of the Atlantic World that developed during and after the 17th century. Horn

(2010) provided background on the earliest English colonial activity in the Tidewater, Sir

Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke (The Lost Colony). Despite the failure of Roanoke, it did result in significant mappings of the region by Thomas Hariot and John White. Lorant

(1946) provides color reproductions of John White’s early illustrations of the cultural landscape of the late 16th century Tidewater. According to Short (2009), such map- making and the cartographic exchanges with Native Americans were essential to English exploration, settlement and cultivation of the New World. Moran’s (2007) work includes discussion of the importance of maps establishing the English colony of Virginia, first as an idea and then as political reality that appeared on maps. Mansell (2007) traces how maps and the geographic information they represented became commodities in themselves in the early stages of the global economy, which was focused on the Atlantic trade networks during the 17th century. Although not focused on landscape per se,

Arthur Middleton’s(1997) definitive work traces how the economic centrality of Tobacco reorganized the society of the colonial Chesapeake Bay region (which takes in the GDS) beginning in the 17th century.

During the early 18th century, William Byrd’s Westover Papers (1837) were circulated among his friends. They included the most detailed delineation of the Dismal

Swamp to date (Byrd, 1967) as well as plans to drain it (Byrd, 1922). The survey that clarifies the boundary between Byrd’s Virginia and North Carolina was necessitated in part by the availability of lands in the Piedmont following the end of the Tuscarora War

(La Vere, 2013). Negre (2012) found strong symbolic geometry in the 1728 boundary survey which resulted in the landscape of Virginia-North Carolina being re-valued dramatically. By the end of the 18th century, the Dismal Swamp was one of the few sizable pieces of undeveloped land in Virginia. The speculation in Dismal Swamp lands during the 1770s was a significant social and economic phenomenon in Virginia just prior to the American Revolution. Many of the same players returned to the Dismal

Swamp land market following the War for Independence. Although the Dismal Swamp was not converted to agriculture as had been envisioned, land companies and newly formed state governments combined to begin construction on the Dismal Swamp Canal.

Royster (1999) chronicles this period of intensive land speculation that included many members of the Tidewater elite.

During the first half of the 19th century swamps in general and the Dismal Swamp in particular became an important subject for writers from a variety of perspectives.

Once upgrades to the Dismal Swamp Canal were completed in 1828-29, writing descriptions of the Dismal Swamp far outnumbered efforts at surveying or mapping the landscape. Many of the descriptions offered by travelers were directly or indirectly shaped by a Romantic view of the natural world, which gained popularity across society during the 19th century (Rogers, 2013). Swamps in the South were represented in a variety of ways, often as political or social symbols (Wilson, 2006, Miller, 1989).

Following Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion in nearby Southampton County, Virginia, the

Dismal Swamp was considered a source of social disorder. Abolitionists like Thomas

Wentworth Higginson (2011) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (2006) used the Dismal Swamp as the setting for anti-Slavery narratives that featured a resistant Population of runaway slaves (maroons) living in the Dismal Swamp. Popular writers like Frederick Law

Olmsted (1904) and David Hunter Strother (1959) wrote accounts of their first-hand experiences in the Dismal Swamp, making sure to include descriptions of the people they met along the way. In the decades prior to the Civil War, the agronomist Edmund Ruffin conducted surveys of the geology and agricultural practices throughout the Tidewater.

He was especially interested in understanding the peat soils of the Dismal Swamp and similar regional landscapes (Ruffin, 1861). While advocating for a number of agricultural reforms, he was unable to enact any type of effective conservation measures.

Ruffin’s understanding of soil science, geology, manures, water conservation and other progressive practices were overshadowed by his extreme political views (Kirby, 2000).

By the late 19th century, the GDS and Tidewater region were shaped by the economic realities of Reconstruction, expanded industrialism and the growth of urban areas and that housed the manufacturing sector. Edward King (1875) drew from

Antebellum landscape imagery in promoting swamplands of the South to Northern tourists (1875). Norfolk and Portsmouth were centers of manufacturing an industrial growth following the Civil war. Lamb’s account of the urban Tidewater of the 1870s and

80s includes the Dismal Swamp as exotica (1887-8). The Dismal Swamp Canal’s decline into obsolesce didn’t seem to interfere with the Bostonian John Boyle O’Reilly’s adventures in field sports (1890). By the Early 20th century scientific surveys were focused on the Dismal Swamp, Kearney (1901) was interested in mapping plant life as a means of identifying biotic zones. Osbon (1919) was focused on delineating the economically valuable peat soils of the Dismal Swamp. Soon after World War I, Willis

Lee (1920) of the USGS was able to view the Dismal Swamp landscape in its full extent from an airplane.

During the 20th century practices in both mapping and the representation of landscape have been altered dramatically. This has been a result of changes in technology as well theoretical developments in how landscapes are understood and valued. A change in the way of seeing (a change in perspective) has resulted from the adoption of the “Aerial View”, especially among disciplines engaged in land planning.

The technological breakthrough is the widespread use of aerial images in map making

(Cosgrove and Fox, 2010). This change in perspective has also influenced how landscapes are represented, and as a result, how they are constructed. Corner and

McLean (1996) have documented evolving American landscapes via aerial photography, aware that many were not planned and certainly not from an aerial perspective.

Duempelmann (2014) also provided a discussion the “Aerial View” as it developed during the post-World War II era. Starting in the mid-20th century, the adoption of

20 surveillance techniques developed for warfare by land planners. Mumford and McHarg

(1969) and linked the newly available cartographic techniques with changes in the science of ecology when attempting to address the pressures of rapid urban growth. For

Forman and Godron (1986) the perspective available on the landscape was also was informed by developments in the field of ecology, which provided an integrative theoretical framework for understanding what was made visible in images of the earth via aerial photography. Vileisis (1997) tracked how popular understanding of ecology came to shape public attitudes towards wetlands in the United States. Landscapes like the Dismal Swamp gained constituencies as a result of changes in understanding and appreciation for their roles in the lives of animals, plants and people.

CHAPTER 3 – METHOD & APPROACH

This thesis takes a historical approach to documenting landscape change in the

Dismal Swamp. Historic maps, images and written descriptions of the landscape were assembled and divided into time periods to document the evolution of the cultural landscape in and around the present-day Great Dismal Swamp (GDS). The selected maps provide a record of landscape change covering the time period between the late 16th century, when European maps first began to depict elements of the Dismal Swamp landscape, and the early 21st century, when images of the Lateral West fire near Lake

Drummond taken from helicopters appeared in the international news media.

Landscape change is also documented through contemporary images and written accounts and descriptions.

The five chapters have been organized around maps that depict the Great Dismal

Swamp, especially those that reveal the economic and scientific value assigned to the landscape. The time periods were derived from comparing representations of the Dismal

Swamp on maps with contemporary descriptions of the landscape. The landscape’s history, as represented through maps, breaks down into five successive time periods.

First-hand descriptions, maps, landscape representations and accounts of the Dismal

Swamp serve as the sources for the history. The history in turn, informs the map- reading.The assembled chronology of maps shows van evolution in how the Dismal

Swamp has been represented cartographically over time.

Two archival sources proved especially useful in explaining the Dismal Swamp’s ongoing significance as a cultural landscape: historic maps and written descriptions or first-hand accounts by visitors to the Swamp. A preliminary overview of these sources suggested it is a place that was historically known, experienced and even populated, but is now considered empty and wild. The written descriptions of the landscape sometimes

22 contrasted with the landscape as it was mapped. I chose to emphasize maps as source material mostly because the Dismal Swamp has been represented on maps for nearly as long as it has been explored and described as a landscape.

The discussion also includes first-hand descriptions of the landscape where available. Corroborating these map readings are first-hand accounts and descriptions of the Swamp landscape from contemporary sources. By the mid-19th century the Dismal

Swamp was often represented in graphic arts such as lithographs, paintings, engravings and photographs. It was also the subject of popular travel writing and several political tracts. For much of the 19th century, swamps were more likely to be described in aesthetic terms than as subjects for scientific study.

Using maps as sources present some challenges. They are both factual, measured recordings of given conditions and graphic communications of a perspective. In some cases, as in maps included in long-term plans or proposals, maps are also intended to communicate conditions as they might be rather than as they are.

Maps are also technical products. In the broadest sense they represent the application of expertise to the complex problem of describing the earth’s surface.

Technical skills and production methods have developed over time. The skills and assumptions applied producing a map often reveal as much about its purpose and value as the map itself. Querying maps for the production techniques or the craft that produced them can be as valuable in determining underlying scientific, religious or political purpose.

Finally, maps are works of art in that they convey aesthetic value. This can take the form of projected or wished-for uses or developments as in the fanciful representation of landscape elements in Encounter-era mountains. Among the most

23 useful maps of the Great Dismal Swamp was an anonymous map that articulated Colonel

William Byrd II’s vision for Southside Virginia. At the center of the map is the Dismal

Swamp

Approaching the Great Dismal Swamp a cultural landscape provides a valuable entrée into more critical readings of its history. Landscapes such as swamps suggest empty, uninhabited places that are recently being re-valued for the human stories that they contain. In gathering descriptions of the Dismal Swamp landscape I’ve tried to focus on the details of the physical environment and as a record of settlement patterns associated with people living in, working in or visiting the Dismal Swamp.

The most visible record in the landscape of human habitation or manipulation is the vast hydraulic infrastructure constructed and maintained over nearly 300 years.

Without the causeways, earthworks, canals, ditches and other infrastructure, the Dismal

Swamp would be largely inaccessible. Several of these structures such as the Dismal

Swamp Canal, the Washington Ditch and the Jericho Ditch have been designated as historic structures and are currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Given this theoretical context I have tried to focus on a few central questions:

How has the Dismal Swamp been represented on maps and why has there been such a variety in how it has been portrayed? At the landscape scale, what was known and understood during a given time period about the underlying physical and cultural processes that have formed the Dismal Swamp. How did this appear on maps? Finally, how does the landscape formation of the Dismal Swamp fit into the larger environmental history of the Tidewater region? Ultimately the intent is to suggest ways that the Dismal

Swamp’s history can be further integrated into the land planning and management process.

CHAPTER 4 - Mapping for exploration, settlement & description 1584 – 1728

The Dismal Swamp was mapped as part of the earliest English exploration of the

Tidewater region of North Carolina and Virginia. It’s located in a region characterized by freshwater wetlands that were historically valued Native Americans as a hunting ground for overwintering waterfowl. Through the 17th century the Dismal Swamp was demarcated by natural features and written descriptions as part of a larger regional landscape. The language placed on maps to describe the American landscapes often reflected direct interactions with Native Americans. The first English maps of Virginia

(as much of the Atlantic coast of North America was known), referenced earlier

Continental maps in many the graphic conventions when representing landscapes.

During the 17th century English mapmakers also began to incorporate geographic information gathered by survey and observation. As surveying became professionalized, descriptions of landscapes such as the swamplands of the Tidewater became more detailed. By the early 18th century landscape descriptions of the Dismal Swamp were as likely to draw from botany, agricultural improvement or classical language as from local or Native American sources. The 1728 survey that formalized the boundary between the colonies of Virginia and North Carolina also formalized the Dismal Swamp as a place name.

Nicholas Comberford’s 1657 (Fig. IV – 1) map “The South Part of Virginia – Now the North Part of Carolina” is the first mapping of the Dismal Swamp landscape. The phrase “This is a Swampy Wilderness” was placed amidst an area defined by the rivers and streams that bound the Dismal Swamp. This map followed current cartographic practices in representing landscape with both graphic symbol and text. The characteristic swamplands of the Albemarle Sound region were represented with outsized trees, indicating a forested area (Sayers, 2012, Sayers, et al., 2007). Additional graphic

25 elements that would have made this map legible to a broad audience in the 17th century world include a compass rose (showing cardinal points), the use of both graphic and written scales, thematic representations of natural resources and text written directly onto the landscape that it describes (Buisseret, 2003, 107). The representation of swamp lands with text may also indicate geographic information translated from Native

American sources (Short, 2013, 35- 36). An area to the south of the Dismal Swamp between Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds is also identified as “Swampy Wilderness” on the Comberford map. This landscape, the present-day Alligator National Wildlife

Refuge, has a similar landscape to the Dismal Swamp (Sayers, 2012, Sawyer 2010 4 – 7,

11, USFWS 2006, 8 - 9, Ruffin, 1861, 204 – 206). Both of these swamps are part of a pocosin lakes region that includes Mattamusket, Phelps, Alligator (Nen hah) and Pungo that functioned as a boundary zone between the Carolina and Virginia Algonquians (the

Powhatan) prior to European colonization in the region (Sawyer, 2010, 10 – 11).

Comberford’s map drew from earlier maps of Virginia for much of its baseline geographic information. These maps were produced as part of English exploration of

North America when the Albemarle region, was the “center of the non-Spanish New

World” (Sawyer, 2010, 1). The map that accompanied Thomas Hariot and John White’s

“A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: of the Commodities and of the Nature and Manners of the Naturall Inhabitants”, (Fig, IV - 2) was centered on the Roanoke River. Hariot and White were members of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke colony. Hariot-White’s map features detailed representations of shoals, inlets and coastlines as well as the description of landform along the coast of present-day North

Carolina (Wooldridge, 2012, 9, Sawyer, 2010, 57).

Thomas Hariot, a trained surveyor, located the mouths of rivers and provided shoreline descriptions including several rivers and streams sourced in the Dismal

Swamp. The Hariot-White map recorded the locations of the North, North West, Little,

Pasquotank and Chowan Rivers, as well as the Currituck, Albemarle and Pamlico

Sounds, natural features occurring along the Dismal Swamp’s southern and eastern boundary. Native American place names were featured on early maps, especially the names of rivers such as the Nansemond, the Pasquotank, and the Parquimans that are sourced in the Dismal Swamp (Kirby, 1995, USFWS, 2006).

The “True report…” included written accounts that described the landscape as well as ethnographic and linguistic information about Native Americans. John White brought the skills of painter, illustrator and cartographer to the compilation of the “True

Report…” Like many of his contemporaries White considered map-making “a casually acquired skill.” White’s illustrations of animals, plants, landscapes and Native American culture in the “True Report…” represent some of the earliest recorded images by English explorers in North America (Buisseret, 2003, 44-46). The natural history, maps, and narrative contained in the “True Report…” drew from the Roanoke party’s interactions with the Carolina Algonquians (Sawyer, 2010, 57). English cartographers like Hariot-

White responded to a demand for accurate, easy to read maps for use by the military, by navigators and from land developers as England transformed from a feudal, landed society into an economic and political player in the Atlantic World (Moran, 2007, 181-

183).

Hariot-White’s map was the first to name Chesapeake Bay (Chesapiooc Sinus)

(LoV, 2000, 26). It established the convention of orienting maps of the region westward, with the viewer looking from somewhere above the Atlantic (or Virginian Sea) towards the new continent (Sawyer, 2010, 57, Wooldridge, 2012, 7). Although located less than

30 miles inland, the Dismal Swamp was beyond the limits of exploration.

The Chesapeake Bay was at the center of John Smith’s 1612 “A Map of Virginia:

With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and

Religion” Bay (Fig. IV - 3). Like Hariot-White, this map was oriented to the west. It graphically aligned Virginia with Powhatan’s Kingdom, a sovereign nation with whom

Smith conducted relations. The geopolitics represented on Smith’s 1612 map are significant. Virginia was a densely populated region with complex political relations only hinted at on Smith’s map. The Dismal Swamp was part of a boundary region or zone between interrelated Native American tribes (Short, 2009, 47-50). Smith depicts the area south of the James River as an outer limit of Virginia, although not with a clear boundary.

The body of Smith’s Virginia (Powhatan’s Kingdom) is a collection of place names, landscape features and kinship networks bounded by surveyed geographic features such as shorelines and interspersed among stylized woodlands (Wooldridge,

2010, 34). From a graphic perspective, Smith’s map is striking in how it places language in the landscape. According to the account or “Histories” that accompanied publication of the map, Smith and his crew explored and mapped lands and waterways south of the

James River that border the Dismal Swamp. They visited and charted the Nansemond

River below present-day Suffolk and explored the coastline near present day Portsmouth and Norfolk. They also charted the location and configuration of the cross-shaped

Elizabeth River (Kirby, 1999, 4, LoV, 2000, 10). The 1612 map portrays the area south of the James River with forest (outsized trees) and named Native American settlements.

Landscape representations range from the conjectural to the downright fanciful, although Smith does not resort to the use of monsters in describing unknown places.

For example mountains are not shown to scale or located by survey. They are intended to suggest the presence of valuable minerals and are shown with out-of-scale graphics as are individual trees and fauna (Wooldridge, 2012, 9 - 15, Moran, 2007, 201).

Smith’s map is considered a ‘Mother Map’ by historians of the colonial

Chesapeake region (Wooldridge, 2012, 50). It established significant baseline information for subsequent maps as well as setting conventions for graphic representation, orientation and place names. The sources for geographic information represented on the 1612 map were a combination of first-hand observations by the survey party and information obtained through direct conversation with Native

Americans. Smith’s 1612 map set the standard for maps of the Chesapeake region for at least 60 years (LoV, 2000, 10 - 11). Subsequent 17th century maps of Virginia retained orientation, scope (Virginia defined as Powhatan’s kingdom) while adding subtracting or altering information about the landscape.

English cartographers like Hariot-White, Smith and Comberford drew from continental models of map making to create documents intended to legible to a broad audience. Maps produced as part of the Age of European Exploration often shared production techniques as well as a common language of graphic representation. Some

European mappings were especially “painterly” in how they represented natural resources. (Buisseret, 2003, 44). Maps of the Americas sometimes included imaginary or envisioned landscape features such as mountains (indicating gold or mineral wealth), trees (indicating available building materials), animals (food source or fur), or Native

Americans and their settlements (possible trade partners). Rivers or stream courses that emptied into the sea were meant to suggest possible routes for exploration into the interior (Wooldridge, 2012,23, 28, LoV, 2000, 9, 17). Illustrative maps like Smith’s were intended to serve as records of discovery as well invitations to further exploration.

Blank space (tabula rasa) was a key compositional element on early maps of

Virginia. An uninhabited landscape might read as “existing without belonging to a

Christian Prince”, making it available for English colonization (Moran, 2007, 197-201).

Portraying Virginia’s landscape as a blank slate inviting composition provided a type of legitimacy to English territorial claims (Buisseret, 2003, 111, Short, 2009, 19). Hariot-

White and Smith both represented Native Americans by draping the names of tribes across the landscape rather than depicting them in settlements with fixed points or symbols. The Tidewater was populated by people identified by areas labeled with names like Nansemonds, Chesapeakes, Weapemeocs, Chowanocs, Tuscaroras and Powhatans

(Horn, 2010, 44-51). Descriptions of landscapes like the Dismal Swamp shared this space on maps through much of the 17th century (Short, 2009, 37).

Nicholas Comberford compiled his 1657 map without ever having visited

Virginia. Like many earlier (Renaissance) cartographers, narrative descriptions were among his most significant sources. By contrast, Colonial map makers like Augustine

Herrmann added direct observation to their set of sources when mapping the American landscape (LoV, 2000, 47, Olsen, 1962, 1). Herrman’s ‘Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670 / surveyed and exactly drawne by the only labour & endeavour of Augustin Herrman bohemiensis ; W. Faithorne Sculpt’ (Fig.

IV – 4) includes a description of the Dismal Swamp that is partly observed and experienced and partly imagined:

‘The Land between James River and Roanoke River is for the most parts Low Suncken Swampy Land not well passable but with great dif(f)iculty, And harbours Tygers Bears and other Devouring Creatures” (Fig. IV – 4a).

Herrmann spent 10 years surveying the colony of Maryland for his patron, Cecilius

Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore. The Chesapeake Bay and its multiple tributaries are the most outstanding feature of this map. Herrmann and his survey team used trigonometric measurement to describe shorelines and other geographic features, which he further detailed in a written account. This representation of Calvert’s colony was intended to function as a kind of road map of the lands and waterways of the 17th century

Tidewater. In four sheets, it “describe(ed) the Countries and the situations of

Plantations” as well as historic events in the region. It delineated rivers and streams branching off of the Bay that provided access to lands suitable for cultivation (LoV,

2000, 16-18), and provided the location of river channels, water depths, sandbars, shoals and marshes (LoV, 2000, 34).

One significant natural feature that appeared on Herrman’s map was Lake

Drummond, although it was not named. The Lake was placed among the characteristic pocosins of the Albemarle-James sub-region. The accidental discovery of a source lake at the heart of the Dismal Swamp by William Drummond in 1665 added a key element to the landscape. The language used on maps and written accounts to describe the regional landscape reflected local knowledge, folk memory and direct experience with the landscape (Kirby, 1999, xii, 4, Sawyer, 2010, 11 - 15, Vileisis, 1997, 15). While not identified as a resource, pocosins were recognized as unique landscapes. It’s significant that the Algonquian word pocosin from was adopted and included in descriptions by

English explorers. Translated as “swamp on a hill”, the use of the word survives as a regional term for a definitive landscape feature (Kirby, 1995, xx Sawyer, 2010, xx).

Swamp, dismal and pocosin were used somewhat interchangeably by English settlers in the 17th century Chesapeake region (Lopez & Gwantney, 2006, 344, 436 –

437, Vileisis, 2000, 33). Pocosins were identified as resources by Algonquin peoples who lived and hunted in the region (Vileisis, 1997, 15). Although the British Isles and northern Europe included marches, bogs, fens and other vegetated wetlands, these landscapes had been deforested during centuries of agricultural expansion that resulted in the timber drought of the 17th century in England. American landscapes such as swamps were perceptively different from their European counterparts (Vileisis, 2000, 30

- 31). On Herrmann’s map, the Dismal Swamp was beyond the frontier of settlement.

In additions to providing information about the physical geography of the

Tidewater, Herrmann’s map contains a detailed record of settlement based on titled landholdings. A landowner’s name was placed directly on to the map to indicate the location of a holding. The resulting map shows the tributaries of Chesapeake Bay lined with the names of landowners. In addition to individual properties, Herrman’s map recorded the names of newly formed counties and larger settlements. As mapped by

Herrmann, the 17th century Tidewater had a settlement pattern arranged around the cultivation of tobacco and direct trade with England from individual plantation wharves.

On Herrmann’s map, the Dismal Swamp was part of an area characterized by blank space (LoV, 2000, 16 - 17).

Written accounts rather than maps recorded English settlers moving into the northeastern section of North Carolina from Virginia. The earliest English settlement was limited to the north side of Albemarle Sound, along rivers sourced in the Dismal

Swamp making the colony of Carolina and the Albemarle synonymous terms. Native

Americans living in the region accommodated the influx of English settlers at first.

Edenton, North Carolina developed as an early political and commercial center. Its location at the confluence of the Chowan and the Roanoke Rivers on the Albemarle

Sound made it a valuable location for a port. Its location at the southern end of the

Suffolk Scarp meant connections to the Dismal Swamp as well as lands to the west

(Sawyer, 2010, 57 - 59).

Territory south of the James River, which became swamp only a few miles inland, was considered frontier through much of the 17th century (LoV, 2000, 23). Overland access to the North Carolina colony followed established Native American trails and paths south beyond the Nansemond River, connecting to the Chowan River via

Somerton. A sense of what the landscape was like along the western boundary of the

Dismal Swamp during the 17th century can be gleaned from a 1672 traveler’s account.

“Our way to Carolina grew worse, being much of it plashy, and pretty much full of great bogs and swamps, so we were commonly wet to the knees…And it was perilous traveling, for Indians were not yet subdued, but did mischief and murdered several. They haunted much in the wilderness between Virginia and Carolina, so scarce any durst travel that way unarmed” (Sawyer, 2010, 57-58).”

The party included George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, or

Quakers. By the 1670s the Quakers were established in the Albemarle. They found the colony more tolerant of religious differences than Anglican Virginia. The Quakers established a number of settlements in present-day Perquimons and Pasquatank

Counties during the late 17th century. Quaker settlements extended along the Little River and ‘Piquimon’s Creek’ (Perquimans River) to the south of the Dismal Swamp into North

Carolina. Place names such as Narrows, Newbegun Creek, Symons Creek, Little River,

Old Neck, Beech Springs, Poquoson, Phelps Point, Piney Woods, Vases Creek, Up River,

Suttons Creek and Wells were associated with Meetings for Worship, the spiritual and social focus of the Quaker community (Kirby, 2010, 10-11).

Quaker settlement patterns in the landscape differed from those of other English- speaking settlers of the Albemarle. They were extensions of kinship networks into the landscape. The general settlement pattern of the Tidewater was of very scattered small farms, with little approaching a civic, public or communal focus to settlement (Byrd,

1922). The Albemarle was sufficiently removed from Virginia (Conzen, 1994, 222-226).

The Quakers secured land tenure in the Albemarle through a combination of direct negotiations with Native Americans such as the Tuscarora and legally recognized titles.

The Quakers’ hold on the land was secured through both legal title and kinship ties

(Sawyer, 2010, 57, Kirby, 1995, 10 - 11).

The western boundary of the Dismal Swamp was marked in the landscape by an existing Native American transportation corridor connecting the James River with the

Albemarle Sound. Established paths paralleled the edge of the Swamp along the uplands of the Suffolk Scarp. English settlers from the Virginia Tidewater skirted the western edge of the Swamp, crossing overland by an established network of paths. Although mostly unrecorded on maps, the migration of settlers overland from Virginia into the

Albemarle followed an established transportation corridor connecting the Carolina and

Virginia Algonquians (Sawyer, 2010, 58).

John Speed’s ‘A Map of Maryland and Virginia’ published in 1676, shows the

Dismal Swamp vicinity. It represents Virginia and “Part of Carolina” (North Carolina) as separate political entities (Fig. IV - 5). This map includes an unnamed lake that feeds a small river flowing south into Albemarle Sound. The lake (possibly Lake Drummond) is located within a region generalized with a collection of small lakes labeled as black waters. This is a break from previous maps and descriptions that tended to use the term pocosin to characterize the landscape rather than emphasizing individual components.

A meandering line marks the boundary between colonies. Speed’s map was produced for a global consumer market. As part of an atlas, its artistic appearance may indicate a decorative purpose and secondarily for engaging the landscape depicted. Maps like this were produced by collaboration between cartographers and commercial printers

(Wooldridge, 2010, 56). The maps in Speed’s atlas of places like Virginia and Carolina were removed from the survey process and could become commodities in themselves, with value independent of what they portrayed (Buisseret, 2003, 111). Although based on Smith’s earlier mappings, especially in representing the Chesapeake Bay, Speed’s

Virginia contains almost no evidence of Native Americans. Native American place names in the Chesapeake region were gradually phased out in favor of English terminology. Negation of the Native American definition of the landscape on maps of

34 the region was soon followed by physical removal by English colonists (Moran, 2007,

201, Sayers, 2006, 11).

Agricultural practices introduced into the Chesapeake region by European settlers significantly changed the Tidewater landscape. Prior to the mid-17th century, the

Dismal Swamp and vicinity supported the cultivation of maize (Zea mays) by Native

Americans. The archaeological record includes pollen traces and evidence of constructed wooden platforms for monitoring crops planted in or near the Dismal Swamp (Sawyer,

2010, 58, 60). English settlers altered the agricultural landscape in other ways when they introduced rice, wheat, tobacco, horses, cattle and other livestock, especially hogs

(Wooldridge, 2010, 46 – 47, Sawyer, 2010, 77). During the early 18th century, the settled region west of the Dismal Swamp along the road from Virginia to Carolina was a noted as place where “Hogs swarm[ed] like Vermine upon the Earth, and are often accounted such” (Kirby, 1995, 98).

The end of the Tuscarora War in 1715 resulted in the large scale departure from the region by the Tuscarora and many of their allies. The end of this war changed the geopolitics of the Tidewater region in both Virginia and North Carolina (Sawyer, 2010,

122, Sayers, 2006, 11 - 13). The Tuscarora had been the most powerful tribe to the south of the Powhatan (Virginia Algonquians). They were linguistically and politically related to the Iroquois, most of whom were located in upstate New York. They controlled lands to the immediate west of the Dismal Swamp in the Virginia and Carolina Piedmont.

They also retained access to the winter waterfowl of the Albemarle region as a food source (Sawyer, 2010, 15). During the conflict, the Dismal Swamp and other swamps served a valuable strategic role for the Tuscarora and their allies. It provided a food source as well as camouflage for movements and a place for retreat (Sawyer, 2010, 138).

Following the war, a majority of the Tuscarora left the region, migrating north to become

35 the sixth tribe of the Iroquois Nation or Haudenosaunee in upstate New York. For many

Native Americans who remained in the region (re-classified by colonial authorities as

Free People of Color), the Dismal Swamp served as a refuge from advancing European settlement (Sawyer, 2010, 122).

In 1728 a survey was conducted to settle the boundary dispute between the colonies of Virginia and North Carolina. As narrated by William Byrd, the “Celebrated

Dividing line…” (Byrd, 1922) was run directly through a landscape still considered a

“Swampy Wilderness” or a boundary zone. The immediate goal of the Boundary Survey of was to clarify the legal division between the two colonies. Running the line followed the practices of a typical metes and bounds survey (Fig. VI- 6, Fig. VI - 7). Each colony was represented by its own surveyor: Edward Moseley from North Carolina and William

Mayo from Virginia, as well as the requisite “twelve good and lawful men to swear truth about boundaries” (Buisseret, 2003, 152-153, Negre, 2012, 1). Mayo was the most experienced member of the party at surveying and map-making. Colonel William Byrd II of Westover, Charles City County, Virginia, accompanied the survey party as an observer, representing the interests of the British Crown (Wooldridge, 2010, 100).

William Byrd is often credited with naming the Dismal Swamp as part of his account of the boundary survey the, ‘History of the Dividing Line…” (Byrd, 1922, Olsen,

1962, 1, Bartel, 2010, 1, USFWS, 2006, x). Court records from before the survey include the name or something similar among translations from Native Americans when describing the landscape (Badger, 2007, 123). Byrd’s naming may have been a transcription of what he heard when conversing with nearby residents. A free translation of ‘paquesen’ connoted swamp or dismal among early English settlers of the region (Pugh & Williams, 1964, 1). The terms dismal and swamp were virtually synonymous in the 18th century Tidewater (Simpson, 1998, ii-iv).

Discovery and exploration were key ideas that framed Byrd’s approach to describing landscapes like the Dismal Swamp during the survey (Negre, 2012, 3). This sometimes led him to undervalue local knowledge of the landscape, since:

“It is hardly credible how little the bordering inhabitants were acquainted with this mighty swamp, notwithstanding they had lived their whole lives within smell of it…In short. We saw plainly that there was no intelligence of the ‘terra incognita’ to be got, but from our own experience” (Wilson, 2006, 28).

Byrd’s account includes landscape descriptions based on transcription of first and second-hand accounts, as well as his own observations (Negre, 2012, 2). He did not accompany the survey party as it ran the line through the Dismal Swamp. While surveyors Mayo and Moseley spent several days within the Swamp, he remained housed in nearby Edenton, North Carolina (Badger, 2007, 121-122, Bartel, 2010, 2).

Byrd’s assessments and valuations of the Swamp’s resources drew from 18th century science as well as from his own imagination. He described the landscape of the

Dismal Swamp as an amateur natural scientist devoted to the rational cataloging of resources (animal, vegetable or mineral). Byrd’s account combined inventory and description with speculation on the commercial value of the landscape. Byrd also described biotic communities in the Dismal Swamp in some detail. These are often noted more as obstacles to the progress of the survey (Byrd, 1967). He was reluctant to attribute beauty to the swamp landscape, reflecting on the Swamp’s suitability for life of any kind, he wrote:

“Doubtless, the eternal shade that broods over this mighty bog and hinders the sunbeams from blessing the ground, makes it an uncomfortable habitation for anything that has life…It had one beauty, however, that delighted the eye, though at the expense of all the other senses; the moisture of the soil preserves a continual verdure, and makes every plant an evergreen but at the same time the foul damps ascend without ceasing, corrupt the air, and render it unfit for respiration” (Wilson, 2006, 30).

Byrd also classified the human population living along the route of the survey, most importantly as residing in either Virginia or Carolina. There is little mention of

Native Americans, but the survey party did meet groups of runaway slaves (Negre, 2012,

1). Along the North West River (the eastern edge of the Dismal Swamp), Byrd reported meeting a family he described a as “mulatto herdsmen who claimed to be free,…tho’ by the Shyness of the Master of the House, who took care to keep least in Sight, their

Freedom seem’d a little Doubtful” (Kirby, 1995, 19). This family was not unique. Byrd noted that:

“many Slaves Shelter themselves in this Obscure Part of the World, nor will any of their righteous Neighbors discover [i. e. betray] them. On the Contrary, they find their Account Settling such Fugitives on some out-of- the-way-corner of their Land, to raise Stocks for a means and inconsiderable Share, well-knowing their Condition makes it necessary for them to submit to any Terms” (Kirby, 1995, 19-22).

Even in the early 18th century, the Dismal Swamp housed fugitives from slavery.

Members of this community also had economic connections to other people living in the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp (Sayer, 2007, 11).

The boundary survey provided the most complete inventory of flora and fauna and description of the physical geography of the Dismal Swamp to date (Negre, 2012, 8)

(Fig VI – 6). By 21st century standards, the prose may seem meandering and even poetic; it is scientific by the standards of its time. Descriptions such as the breeze blowing through (Spartina) grasses east of the present-day canal that produced a visual effect “like a Green Sea” were both poetic and intended to be scientifically accurate

(Badger, 2007, 55-56, Royster, 2000, 82). Classical science also shaped Byrd’s descriptions of the landscape, as when he condemns swamps as threats to public health.

Byrd’s harshest language is often for the Dismal Swamp itself. His assessments often reflect the commonly held belief that swamps represented a source of disease. These attitudes were also rooted in the historic experiences of Chesapeake society (Rutman &

Rutman, 1976, 55-60). Byrd’s detailed description of the Dismal Swamp illustrates how language used to describe the landscape is a valuable source of geographic information from this (or any) time period (Stilgoe, 1982, 1-8, Kirby, 1999, 17 - 20, Vileisis, 1997, 7).

The terms swamp and pocosin survive. The term dismal, also used to describe a swamp, does not (Bartel, 2010, 1). The association of swamps and low-lying, wet areas with disease is especially significant, since eliminating miasmas was considered a legitimate rationale for clearing swamplands. Land use decisions in the colonial Chesapeake were driven by the belief that ague or marsh fever was spread by miasma (miasmatic theory)

(Rutman, 1976, 56 - 58).

The two colonies divided by legal boundary in 1728 shared an economic dependence on tobacco cultivation for export. This had a dramatic, transformative effect on the landscape that evolved along with English settlement of Virginia and North

Carolina. It’s difficult to overstate the dominance of tobacco culture in shaping the landscape of the colonial Tidewater (Middleton, 1984, 105 - 112). It produced a pattern in the landscape of large-scale, single-crop plantations devoted to market agriculture.

This was interwoven with scattered, smaller land holding, some devoted to food production. Marginal lands, which were rarely depicted on maps, encompassed those still inhabited by Native Americans or that were viewed as unsuitable for cultivation

(Stilgoe, 1982, 60).

The Dismal Swamp was in the middle of this larger landscape pattern from the late 17th century onward. That Lake Drummond and the Dismal Swamp could be discovered as late as they were, speaks to the apparent unsuitability of the landscape to settlement and cultivation on the English model. In the course of the 17th century geographic information gathered through interactions with Native Americans was phased out in favor of English terms. The Boundary survey established the Dismal

Swamp as a distinct landscape on maps. The detailed inventory of the animals, plants, landscapes and people living in and around the Dismal Swamp supported the idea of the

Dismal Swamp as a place distinct from its surroundings. Cartographic by-products of the survey include Byrd’s written landscape descriptions and classifications, the survey as conducted and recorded by Moseley and Mayo and illustrations of plants and animals encountered by the survey party.

Maps from the 17th century recorded knowledge about the Dismal Swamp landscape gained through exploration, surveying and settlement of the Tidewater region as well as from exchanges with Native Americans living in its vicinity. By the early 18th century the Dismal Swamp had been named, inventoried, measured and many of its components assigned commercial value.

Figure IV - 1 – ‘The South Part of Virginia – Now the North Part of Carolina’ (1657). Nicholas C[o]mberford fe[c]itt anno 1657. (1657) This map is focused on the Albemarle-Pamlico Rivers in present day North Carolina. The string of islands at the bottom of the map are the Outer Banks.

This map includes the earliest depiction of the Dismal Swamp – a grouping of trees and a lake and streams visible at the bottom right with the accompanying text “This is a Swampy Wilderness” (Sayers, 2014, 2007). Shorelines and water features are quite detailed while landscape feature such as trees are more symbolic. It features a graphic vocabulary typical of Late Renaissance/ Early Modern European maps of the late 16th century. North (oriented to the right) is indicated with an elaborate compass rose at bottom left. Scale is shown with both a graphic scale and a measuring compass. This is a navigational chart with basic representations of landscape elements.

The map extends south as far as Cape Fear and north as far as what appears to be the Virginia border. The western part of the map (on the top edge) is marked as Tuscarora Indian territory. The house of Nathaniel Batts, the first known permanent English settler on the Albemarle Sound, appears on the map on a piece of land between the Chowan (labeled Choan) River and the “Morallico River.” (New York Public Library/NCPedia)

Figure IV - 2 – ‘LA VIRGINEA PARS’ (1585) – Thomas Hariot – John White – 1584 (hand colored) – shows names of Native American tribes as landscape – SECOTAN, CHAWANOOK, WEAPEMECC. The Roanoke River (Albemarle Sound) is at the center. The mouth (LoV, 2000, 26). Other landscape elements include a group of mountains (at top center), scattered trees and Native American figures.

The Elizabeth, Nansemond, Albemarle-Roanoke Rivers are charted with accuracy. The North River and Elizabeth River, both sourced in the Dismal Swamp are combined as a single channel. This map is the first to include the ‘Chesepioc Sinu’ the Chesapeake Bay. (Library of Congress)

Figure IV - 3 ‘A Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, The Commodoties, People, Government and Religion...’ (1612) John Smith’s Map to accompany his General Historie…– This map could just as easily be called ‘Powhatan’s Kingdom’. The geographic information represented was gathered by Smith and his team or through interviews with the Powhatan (the Virginia Algonquins).

It shows lands controlled by Powhatan and the area explored and described by Smith in his ‘Historie…’. The Dismal Swamp lies just within the southern region of this map at the bottom left. Smith describes swamplands, but does not differentiate them graphically. Two Rivers sourced in the Dismal Swamp, the Elizabeth and the Nansemond, are included on this map as places visited by Smith and the survey party.

Landscape descriptions are written directly onto the map. It’s curious that no information about the Dismal Swamp or its lake appears on the map or in Smith’s accounts. Archeologists believe the Dismal Swamp played an important role as a seasonal food source for Native Americans such as the Powhatan prior to European contact (Sayers, Kirk). (Library of Virginia)

Figure IV - 4 ‘Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670 / surveyed and exactly drawne by the only labour & endeavour of Augustin Herrman bohemiensis’ - This map was prepared for the 2nd Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert, whose portrait appears at the bottom center. Herrmann served as both surveyor and cartographer. (LoV, 2000, 16). The map is focused on natural resources and existing English settlements. Herrmann was commissioned to create a map which highlighted the suitability of the Chesapeake Bay region, and Maryland especially, to the cultivation of tobacco. The orientation and scope of the map is the same as John Smith’s maps. The waterways (rivers, streams, creeks and landings) of the region are carefully detailed. Information about soils and other natural resources are written directly on to the landscape. Of special note is the summary of landscape conditions between the James and Roanoke Rivers (see detail below). (Library of Congress)

Figure IV - 4a – Detail of notes on ‘Land between James River and Roanoke River…’ The convention of landscape description in lieu of and with equal graphic weight of a symbol. (Library of Congress)

Figure IV- 5 ‘A Map of Virginia And Maryland’, (1676) John Speed , London (Hand Colored) – based on Smith’s Map(s), shows an unidentified Lake (Drummond) among ‘Black waters’ as the source of the Pasquatank River. While this map is based on John Smith’s, many Native American references have not been included. Place names are almost exclusively in English.

Speed includes symbolic representations of landscape recognizable from earlier maps. Mountains (either to suggest possible gold or silver sources), clumps of trees (to indicate timber sources for construction material).

The meandering boundary line between Virginia (pink) and Carolina (green) at left skirts a string of blackwaters (pocosins). It also shows a lake (Lake Drummond) and several rivers sourced in the Dismal Swamp but does not offer a delineation of it. (Maryland State Archives)

Maryland State Archives - http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/html/mpt.html

Figure IV - 6 – Eastern portion of the survey establishing the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia. Edward Moseley (1729) This survey was part of a series included in William Byrd’s account of the Boundary Survey (1728). As shown at the right of this plat, the survey took the Currituck Inlet at Lat. 36 31’ N. (as it was configured in early 1728) as its starting point and proceeded directly westward.

‘The Dismal’ (Swamp) is represented among recognizable features such as the North West River as one in a series of obstacles in the landscape. Byrd’s narrative of the survey included descriptions of the barrier island system, the back bay, the salt and freshwater marshes of the tidewater and the cultivated and populated landscape to the east of the Dismal Swamp. The survey line placed populations within the colonies of Virginia or North Carolina. It also served as a de facto transect, revealing and recording flora and fauna as well as cultural patterns.

Orientation is right to left (east to west) reflecting the progress of the survey party from the Atlantic Ocean into the interior. (docsouth/ UNC)

Figure IV - 7 – ‘Virginiae Pars – Carolinae Pars’ shows boundary line between the colonies of North Carolina and Virginia as surveyed by Royal Commision. ‘The Gr. Dismal’ is labeled, represented as graphically distinct and located between the ‘N.W.R’ (Northwest River) the uplands of the Nansemond Scarp (represented with topo lines). The boundary survey was intended to resolve the political dispute between two colonies over land title. It also provided a great deal of first-hand information about the landscape, flora and fauna of the region surveyed. While William Byrd was no botanizer, he did speculate on the commercial value of many of the resources encountered and identified by the survey party.

This map shows (Top) A the boundary as surveyed in its entirity and (Below) B the easternmost section. Both surveys depicte ‘The Gr. Dismal’ using a distinct graphic signature. These include trees, a soil pattern and a clear boundary. The upper survey includes the term ‘Pocasan’ above the Dismal Swamp, possibly indicating the region of Lake Drumond (which the survey party did not visit). The lower survey is a brief catolog of natural and cultural specimens including a flying fish, an unidentified tree, a rattlesnake, a fork- tailed bird (shrike?), a bird with a long tail (Carolina Parakeet?), an Opposum with three offspring and a Native American with tobacco pipe.

The landscape descriptions included in the Survey Party’s report represent an important early catalog of the natural history of the Dismal Swamp. (docsouth/UNC)

CHAPTER 5 – The expansion of agricultural settlement and canal building 1728 – 1805

During the 18th century the Dismal Swamp was transformed from a problematic outlier in a region largely cultivated in tobacco to the focus of a land rush. Maps depicting the Dismal Swamp were based on three important sources of baseline geographic information: the written descriptions of William Byrd, data collected by professional surveyors filed at the county level and the compiled maps of the individual colonies based on ongoing surveys. As one of the last unsettled parts of Virginia still available during the late 18th century, the Dismal Swamp became the focus of intensive speculation. The surveys prepared for this market in land were notably spare in their descriptions of the landscape as land was valued primarily for what it might produce once drained and cultivated. Mapping techniques associated with military training of officers yielded detailed representations of the Dismal Swamp during the Revolutionary

War. American independence saw reconnections with the global economy for the

Tidewater with a somewhat more diversified economy for the region. The Dismal

Swamp was again the subject of speculative development, this time focused on the construction of a canal. The completion of the boundary survey (1728) and the partial opening of the Dismal Swamp Canal (1805) are significant brackets to this time period.

William Byrd’s vision for the future of the Dismal Swamp was made clear in the title of an unpublished manuscript he circulated between 1728 and 1737 (Byrd, 1922). In his ‘Description of the Dismal, with Proposal to drain it” Byrd argues that draining the

Dismal Swamp would give value to unproductive land, improve public health in the vicinity, diversify the region’s economy and expand trade networks by constructing canals (Byrd, 1922, 7 – 10). This agricultural landscape required significant investment in infrastructure, such as ditches for drainage and transport, earthworks, causeways and

49 canals. It depended on the labor of enslaved African-Americans who were to be housed on-site indefinitely (Byrd, 1922, 21-22).

Byrd’s “Proposal…” also drew from contemporary landscape aesthetics in articulating plans for the transformation of the Dismal Swamp. Westover, Byrd’s plantation in Charles City County, Virginia (V-1a) articulated an idealized English agricultural order on Virginia soil using local materials (Vlach, 1993, 2-6). An anonymous estate map from 1731 (Fig. V – 1) delineated the landscape at Westover on the James River. This map shows streams and watercourses, as well as trees within an area along Herring Creek labeled “Marsh and Suncken Swamps.” The swamplands are delineated on this document as a part of the functioning plantation landscape at

Westover. Two landings with wharves were located within the area delineated as swamp.

Byrd’s inventory of the Dismal Swamp’s resources most resembles the legal descriptions of an estate map in that it provided a visual inventory, a description of buildings and fields including potential and actual crops and land uses, and was aimed at rational management of land and efficient rent collection (Buisseret, 1996, 152 - 153). Westover’s landscape, like other large landholdings in the Tidewater, was intended to function like an English estate (Hilliard, 1994, 104-105). Byrd was unique among the wealthy planters of the region in promoting a more diversified economy beyond growing tobacco for export. He considered the amended soils of the Dismal Swamp suitable for growing alternative cash crops like hemp, (as material for rope and sail cloth) “Indian corn”

(Byrd, 1922, 27), rice and wheat (Middleton, 1994, 180-183).

Byrd’s plans for draining and improving the Dismal Swamp rested on assumptions about public health that were widely accepted at the time. Classical medicine viewed low-lying, wetlands such as swamps as a source of disease in themselves as part of miasmic theory (Kirby, 1995, 20, 140, Vileisis, 1997, 43 – 44).

Some of Byrd’s harshest language was reserved for the landscape itself. Palpable disgust with sheer ugliness of the place apparently justified the considerable labor and expense required for its improvement.

“The exhalation that continually rise from this vast body of mire and nastiness infect the air for many miles around, and render it very unwholesome, for the bordering inhabitants. It makes them liable to agues, and many other distempers, that befall abundance of people, and make the rest look no better than ghosts. It would require a great sum of money to drain it, but the public treasure could not be better bestowed, than to preserve the lines of his majesty’s liege people and at the same time render so great a tract of swamp very profitable” (Wilson, 2006, 32- 33).

As a result, draining the Dismal Swamp was akin to lancing a boil to release puss or applying leeches to relieve the superabundance of ill humors of the human body (Miller,

1989, 183). At heart, the 18th century solution to “the horrors of the desert” was to drain the swamp (Miller, 1989, 44).

Few landowners in Virginia or North Carolina could afford an estate map of their property (Buisseret, 1996, 152). Colony-scale maps like the 1733 “Map of

North Carolina based on an actual survey”, by Edward Moseley, (Figure V – 2) made geographic information available to a wider audience that included settlers and land speculators. It shows settlements, inhabitants, soil conditions, rivers, and principal products. Moseley’s map featured a delineation of the Dismal

Swamp as part of a vital network of internal trade connections. This map shows the Dismal Swamp enmeshed in the roads and navigable waterways so important to the colonial economy of eastern North Carolina. The pine forests of this region provided material for ship building and naval stores. Naval stores included all products derived from pine sap, which was used to manufacture soap, paint, varnish, shoe polish, lubricants, linoleum, and roofing materials. It also included resin-based components used in building and maintaining wooden sailing ships,

51 such as cordage, mask, turpentine, rosin, pitch and tar (Wooldridge, 2012, xx,

LoV, 2000, xx, Middleton, ). North Carolina’s “port and public mart” for its forest products was located in Virginia (Byrd, 1922, 22).

In Virginia, local, colony-scale maps also became widely available from the 1720s onward. Surveyors Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson (father of Thomas Jefferson) produced a series of maps of Virginia starting in 1751. Entitled, “A Map of the Inhabited

Part of Virginia containing the whole Province of Maryland, with Part of Pensilvania,

New Jersey and North Carolina” (Fig. V – 2, 2a) included the Dismal Swamp was as a unique landscape with its own graphic signature. The map series also depicted a lake, sometimes labeled as Lake Drummond along with several rivers including the North

West River that were sourced in the Swamp (LoV, 2000, 83, 87).

The Fry-Jefferson maps show a network of roads west of the Dismal Swamp along the Suffolk Scarp (LoV, 2000, 75) connecting North Carolina to Hampton Roads.

18th century maps like Moseley’s and the Fry-Jefferson reflect a shift in place names.

Beyond the Tidewater, English terms became the rule for when naming flora, fauna and place names. This supplanted the older practice of using Native American terms or a translation when describing the landscape (Wooldridge, 2012, 113). In written accounts, the language used to describe the region’s landscape was sometimes confusing. A 1767 geography reference characterized Virginia as “… country, before it was planted, [that] was either forests, or bogs and morasses, which the people of the West Indies call swamps, : and such the greatest part of it (Virginia) is at present”. The word swamp was also sometimes used to indicate a piece of land that had not yet been cleared

(Wooldridge, 2012, 114-115).

On the Fry-Jefferson maps “Inhabited” lands, referred to those recently claimed, surveyed and settled by Scots-Irish and Germans located in the Piedmont and further

52 west (LoV, 2000, 54-55). Between 1700 and 1750 Virginia’s population quadrupled

North Carolina’s population experienced similar growth during the time period

(Wooldrige, 2012, 111-113, Merren, 1964). Following the “pacification” of Native

Americans in the region, settlers from the Tidewater moved beyond the fall line of major rivers like the James, the York, the Rappahannock, the Potomac and the Roanoke after the 1730s (Wooldridge, 2012, 97, 110). Settlement of the Piedmont region also extended from Pennsylvania along the Shenandoah Valley and as far as the Blue Ridge. This was part of a larger international scale of migration out of the British Isles and northern

Europe to the backcountry of British North America (LoV, 2000, 51, Wooldridge, 2010,

125, 131 - 136). The Fry-Jefferson maps showed the 1728 dividing line extended westward to the Dan River. This was the first single map showing the entire length of the dividing line (LoV, 2000, 51). Other boundaries, especially western boundaries were less precise.

The extent of Fry-Jefferson’s map projected colonial Virginia’s self-image, especially in the representation of its frontiers prior to 1763 (Wooldridge, 2010, 107).

Beyond the surveyed boundary with North Carolina, the maps portrayed the colony of

Virginia extending west to the Mississippi River and north to the Ohio River and even to the Great Lakes on some versions. Many maps of North Carolina and Virginia from the early and mid-18th century reflected the phenomenon of westward expansion in the territory that they included (LoV, 2000, 52). The Fry-Jefferson maps also encompassed territory located north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River. This area was considered an extension of Virginia available for settlement (Wooldrige, 2012, 111-113,

LoV, 2000, 53). The Dismal Swamp was the largest piece of unclaimed, unsettled land within Virginia in 1763. A peace settlement with Native American tribes following the end of the French and Indian War defined the western limit of English settlement as the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains (LoV, 2000, 55, Wooldridge, 2010, 137).

The closed western frontier led to the Dismal Swamp being re-considered as a landscape appropriate for agriculture, settlement and land speculation. Groups of investors formed to purchase and promote settlement of lands west of the Alleghenies and Ohio River redirected resources into schemes for “…draining and improving and

Saving the Land” of the Dismal Swamp. Speculation in land in the Dismal Swamp led directly to the creation of a new business model, the land company. By 1763, Virginia’s

General Assembly had granted land and water rights to syndicates such as the

‘Adventurers for Draining the Dismal Swamp’ and the “Dismal Swamp (Land) Company”

(Royster, 2000, 299). George Washington was a founding partner of both of these companies. He conducted surveys of the Dismal Swamp and declared the soils to be black and fertile (Royster, 2000, 82-83, Vileisis, 1997, 42). Washington also surveyed the forest covering the Dismal Swamp, and identified significant stands of hardwood species such as Gum (Nyssa sylvatica), Red Oak (Quercus rubra), White Oak (Quercus alba), as well as maples (Acer sp.) and elms (Ulmas sp.) (Royster, 2000, 98). These were species with commercial valued as construction material for buildings, furniture and ships.

Washington’s companies were better funded, had larger holdings and were overall more successful in developing land in the Dismal Swamp than many of their competitors. The Washington Ditch was built by the Dismal Swamp Land Company between 1764 and 1772. It may be the oldest artificial waterway in the United States. As built, it measured five miles long, ten feet wide and two to three feet deep (Royster,

2000, 98). It replaced an existing corduroy road. Corduroy roads were typically built across marshy or swampy areas by laying cut logs width wise across a pathway. The

Ditch was designed to allow the Adventurers to drain and improve a portion of the

Dismal Swamp following Byrd’s formula (Badger, 2007, 25).

The Ditch ran west from the Lake, through Dismal Town before heading northwest. Dismal Town was a labor camp that housed the many of the enslaved African

Americans who built and maintained much of the Dismal Swamp Land Company’s infrastructure. Dismal Town was located near a high point in the Swamp. The Ditch was used mainly as a route to float timber rafts and flats of lumber and shingles out of the

Swamp (Nat Reg listing). Because the Ditch worked with the topography, water flowed out of the swamp, transporting rafts and flatboats of wood products to the market of

Suffolk as the land was cleared. This property was the focus of much of the Company’s holdings and commercial activities (Kirby, 1995, 199 - 200). By the late 1760s the canal

(the Washington Ditch) connected Lake Drummond with the Nansemond River (Vlieisis,

1999, 42). In 1769 James Parker and Thomas McKnight formed the Campania Company in North Carolina to construct a canal connecting Lake Drummond to the Pasquotank

River Swamp (Royster, 2000.149).

By the early 1770s, numerous land companies had been formed in both Virginia and North Carolina to exploit the resources of the Dismal Swamp. North Carolina’s governor Earl Granville limited the size of land grants within the Dismal Swamp to 650 acres in an effort to encourage development through land sales (Royster, 2000, 190). By the late 1770s, land companies with holdings in the Dismal Swamp like the Ohio, Loyal,

Mississippi, Vandalia, Indiana and Greenbrier, represented a significant sector in the colonial economy (Royster, 2000, 254-257, LoV, 2000, 53). In the Dismal Swamp vicinity the size of individual land grants reflected the relative wealth of the two colonies;

North Carolina’s portion of the Dismal Swamp was characterized by smallholders, while

Virginia tended towards larger tracts (Royster, 2000, 82). A tract sometimes called the

Washington Entry Tract, which included the Washington Ditch was one of the largest landholdings in the Dismal Swamp (NR Listing for Washington Ditch). The land rush in the Dismal Swamp prior to the American Revolution did not result in much swampland

55 being drained or converted to productive agriculture. Most land company’s lacked the resources or the expertise needed to drain the swamp as Colonel Byrd recommended

(USACE, NR, 1974).

There is little evidence of the land rush of the previous decade on John Collette’s

1770 “Compleat Map of North Carolina – based on an actual survey” map of North

Carolina (Fig. V - 3 ). Like Moseley’s 1733 map, Collett provided detailed representation of North Carolina’s coastal area, including channels, soundings, barrier island, backbays, estuaries, marshes, swamps and pocosins, dunes, estuarine systems and vegetative cover in the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp which is clearly delineated and labeled. At the colony-scale Collet’s map showed North Carolina populated with creeks and streams, decorative illustrations, the location of forts, the names of landowners, mills, mountains,

Native American settlements, places of worship and roads. North Carolina’s portion of the “Great Dismal Swamp” and the “Great Alligator Dismal Swamp” (to the south across the Albemarle Sound) share a similar graphic signature. The result is a map that captures the dynamic interplay of land and water that occurs in coastal North Carolina.

The difficult coastline meant North Carolinians had little choice but to “export” forest products to Virginia first and then on to the larger market. While the swamps might contain valuable resources, the landscape remained a barrier to commerce.

Later in the 1770s, military planners identified the swamplands of the Tidewater as a natural barrier in the defense of the southern portion of Chesapeake Bay during the

American Revolutionary War (LoV, 2000, 59). As a result, the Dismal Swamp was mapped on three typical cartographic products that helped to define the “theater of War”

(Duempelmann, 2014, 160). The 18th century, Continental approach to recording, directing and documenting warfare relied on three scales of maps (Harley, 1978, 5-7). A fortification plan of Portsmouth, Virginia (Fig. V – 4), a vicinity map of Hampton Roads

(Fig. V – 5) and a continental–scale map of the Atlantic colonies (Fig. V -6) were part of a collection of maps compiled by Lieutenant General Rochambeau (LOC).

An urban scale map like the “Fortification Plan of the City of Portsmouth,

Virginia” from 1781 (Fig. V - 4), would typically have been surveyed in non-combat conditions. It provided a visual catalog and assessment of a city’s strategic value in an era when warfare consisted of extended siege of forts (Harley, 1978, 5-6). A portion of the Dismal Swamp is visible at the southern edge of Portsmouth. Its value as an escape route from the city is conveyed thematically with a lattice of pathways cut through the tree canopy (Harley, 1978, 24). The Swamp contrasts with bluffs and high points in the terrain. Topography and landform, especially shorelines are described in detail. The defenses of Portsmouth were never tested as there was no battle there during the

American Revolutionary War. Especially in the Tidewater the conflict did not result in the extended sieges of fortified cities or towns that characterized 18th century European warfare (Harley, 1978, 19).

The regional significance of the Dismal Swamp is captured on the 1781 “Plan des environs de Williamsburg, York, Hampton, et Portsmouth” (Rocheambeau Map Coll.,

LOC, no.65) (Fig. V – 5). At this scale, the Dismal Swamp clearly offers an overland escape route from the Hampton Roads vicinity. It also provided a key link in supply chains for military planners. Labeled ‘Effroyable Marais’, (lit. horrifying or appalling marsh), the Dismal Swamp served as the source of naval stores and timber which could be delivered from Lake Drummond via transport canal (the Washington Ditch). The map records the location of “Dismall Town” with a group of buildings or structures. It was located at a high point in the northwest section of the Swamp along the Washington

Ditch. This map detailed shows features such the local network of the canals and river, stream crossings, campsites, roads, paths and population centers. (LoV, 2000, 60).

The Dismal Swamp was also represented on a continental scale map prepared by engineers responsible for establishing supply chains in support of military action. (Fig. V

– 6a, b, c) The Revolutionary War was conducted at a continental scale and required continental scale maps, since “[o]nce an army reaches a certain size their maneuvers can only be controlled by maps” (Buisseret, 2003, 152). Rochambeau’s march from Rhode

Island to Yorktown and back to Boston (Fig V- 6) was used to prepare daily itineraries as well as recording troop movements (Wooldridge, 2010, 165, LoV, 2000, 60). It included articulated routes as well as the location of encampments. The Dismal Swamp (Fig V –

6a) is included as one of the few landscape features on this map. The topographic surveys and landscape information gathered through interviews were used to direct route planning and warfare (Harley, 1978, 36, Buisseseret, 2003, 139 - 141).

Rochambeau’s continental – scale map also shows many components of an inter- colonial communications network that developed during the Revolutionary War. The port of Edenton, North Carolina on the Albemarle Sound was connected to the Atlantic

Ocean through an elaborate route through Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and their tributaries. The Dismal Swamp served as a trade conduit for land and water traffic between the Albemarle-James region and the larger Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

The Bay offered numerous water routes that provided connections as far north as the Elk

River in Maryland, after which it went overland across the Pennsylvania border to

Philadelphia. This network was initially centered on maintaining trade in tobacco for export, despite Wartime British control of Hampton Roads. It also grew to function as in internal connection between colonies (Royster, 1999, 246 - 247).

A second land rush in the Dismal Swamp took place after the end of the

Revolutionary War. George Washington prepared a survey and report for a portion of the Swamp known as the Washington Entry Tract in 1785 (Fig. V-7). It is typical of

58 mappings from the time period. The graphics are spare, with minimal commentary or landscape description. (Royster, 1999, LoC GW Collection, Wooldridge, 2000, xx, LoV,

2000, 48 - 49). The written section of the “Resolution of the Dismal Land Company”

(LOC-GW Svy) is devoted to calculating costs associated with draining and improving the property. The plat drawing shows mills located along the 200 square mile perimeter of the Dismal Swamp surveyed by Washington (LOC). By 1784, Washington and the

Land Company owned 40, 000 acres of land in the Dismal Swamp (Badger, 2007, 122).

The Land Company experimented with a variety of cultivating cash crops such as rice, cotton and wheat into the 1790s (Sawyer, 2010, 74, Royster, 2000, 300 – 301).

Despite attempts at diversifying the Tidewater’s economy, tobacco remained the region’s most significant export product following the American Revolution. It was traded directly from plantation landings after being harvested and processed by slave labor on site. The Tidewater’s numerous, small-scale producers with direct economic connections to the global economy fostered an abundance of reliable pilots in the region.

While land surveys were a well-developed cartographic product, sea-charts of the

Chesapeake and environs from the 18th century were of poor quality. (LoV, 2000, 59).

Following American independence many global-scale trade networks were revived. The Revolutionary War marked an interruption of trade between North

American colonies and the larger Atlantic economy (Royster, 2000, 247-249). By the end of the 18th century, the port of Norfolk began to diversify its exports beyond tobacco

(Royster, 2000, 254). Corn and wheat resumed importance as export products following

American independence. The city of Norfolk developed as a grain processing and export center (Kirby, 1995, 12). As early as 1784, English travelers observed the Great Dismal

Swamp used as a refuge by runaway slaves or maroons, “who in these horrible swamps are perfectly safe, and with the greatest facility elude the most diligent search of their

59 pursuers” (Sawyer, 2010, 124). Communities of maroons, were reported to be living in the Dismal Swamp throughout the 18th century (Sayers, 2012, Sayers, 2006, 12).

To encourage the further development of trade in the vicinity of the Dismal

Swamp, The General Assemblies of Virginia (1787) and North Carolina (1790) authorized the construction of a canal through the Dismal Swamp (USACE, Royster, 2000, 340).

Political support from the states of Virginia and North Carolina was based on experiences of land speculation in the Dismal Swamp dating from before the American

Revolution. It was modeled on William Byrd’s vision for the Tidewater (Badger, 2007,

122-123, Royster, 2000, 332). The Dismal Swamp Canal (1790-1805) was one of the first national-scale public works projects in the newly formed United States. It was a link in a network of infrastructure projects promoted by the first Secretary of the Treasury Albert

Gallatin that forms the basis of the (Atlantic) Inland Waterway System. Gallatin envisioned an internal trade and defense network to strengthen the inter-dependence of the newly formed United States (Stilgoe, 1982, 107-108). Canal building during the late

18th and early 19th century was also a significant global trend in planned development of the built environment. (N R GDSC, USACE, H.R. 2130, 178, 1 ). The Canal also formalized the intra-state communication network that developed during the

Revolutionary War.

In 1805, two sections of the Dismal Swamp Canal were connected near

Wallaceton, Virginia. The Canal was opened to light traffic such as flat boats transporting cedar shingles to market (USACE, Nat Reg Listing). With the completion of the Canal the landscape of the Dismal Swamp experienced significant changes. Levees built to define the its course altered local geology and blocked drainage to the east. The

Canal created a new, human-built eastern boundary for the Dismal Swamp (Kirby, 1999,

13). The Canal disrupted the hydrology of a landscape characterized by a blended stands

60 of wetland forest and large swaths of grasslands such as the Green Sea (Badger, 2007,

55).

The Dismal Swamp did not experience an increase in settlement as a result of increased economic activity during the late 18th century. Most land exchanged during the land rush of the late 18th century remained both unimproved and uninhabited

(Royster, 2000, 300 - 301). What physical changes were made to the Dismal Swamp’s landscape during this time period were largely the result of the labors of enslaved African

Americans. In addition to clearing forested land in the Dismal Swamp, slaves built infrastructure such as irrigation ditches, transportation canals and causeways (NR

Listing) that have formed a still-visible pattern in the landscape (NR, 1983, Royster,

2000, 341 – 343). As result, the Dismal Swamp Canal, along with Lake Drummond became landmarks on maps of the region by the beginning of the 19th century.

The construction of the Dismal Swamp Canal running north-south between the

Elizabeth River and the Albemarle Sound, became the most lasting evidence in the landscape of the speculative activities focused on the Dismal during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (NR Listing, NWR, 2006). The hand constructed earthworks associated with this significant piece of infrastructure were part of a national agenda of internal improvements promoted by Federal and State government. While other canals in the newly formed United States such as the Erie Canal were commercially successful, the Dismal Swamp Canal struggled financially (Stilgoe,1982, 118 – 119, Meyer, 1990,

252, USACE).

The Canal’s completion help solidify Norfolk’s role as the “port and public mart” of a region that included northeastern North Carolina. Norfolk’s growth during the early

19th century made it an important urban center for the Hampton Roads area. In addition to promoting trade, the Canal was originally intended as an escape route for

Norfolk. (Sawyer, 2010, 104). By 1804 a causeway (present day US Route 17) had been built along the length of the Canal from Norfolk (USACE).

During the early 19th century, the poet Thomas Moore visited Norfolk as representative of the government of Great Britain. Soon after his visit he wrote “A

Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp”, that he claimed was based on local history

(Olsen, 1962, 2). The poem featured a hero who speeds through the “tangled juniper, beds of reeds”…and “many a fen where the serpent feeds” and a “Lady of the Lake

(Drummond)”” who paddles a “spectral craft (canoe) and fire-fly lamp” (Fig. V - 11 ). The tale’s source was mysterious, but many visitors have reported seeing foxfire produced by fungi decomposing in the woods at night in the Dismal Swamp (Badger, 2007, 128).

“Though not the first to write about the Dismal Swamp, [Thomas Moore] was the first to see it as more than simply a desert place” (Miller, 1989, 36). His poem, which affected a

Romantic style in celebrating a desert landscape, helped make the Dismal Swamp famous beyond the region.

Figure V – 1b - ‘Plan of Westover Plantation, Charles City County, VA’ – ink and wash map by an unknown author (ca. 1731) – William Byrd II built one of the first English-style estates in the New World. The main house (see inset below) is barely visible at this scale, but is marked by double rows of Tulip Poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera) which signal to the visitor arriving by water. The property is bounded by the James River to the south (bottom) and a combination of straight property lines and natural features such as the gray area labeled “Marsh” and “Sunken Swamps” to the east and north. (Virginia Historical Society)

Figure V – 1a – Westover plantation was built in the early 18th century by William Byrd II. It face Virginia’s capital, Williamsburg across the James River. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

Figure V – 2 “New and correct map of the Province of North Carolina” Edward Moseley, 1733. (Manuscripts and Rare Books Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C) This is the first map to include the recently survyed Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina, which ran directly though the Dismal Swamp (visible at top right). Moseley was both surveyor and cartographer on this colony- scale project. The Albemarle region is well detailed, including roads west of the Swamp and several individual land-holdings north of Albemarle Sound. (East Carolina University)

Figure V – 2a – Detail of Moseley, 1733. (see above) (East Carolina University)

Figure V – 3 - [1755] Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson . “A Map of the most Inhabited part of Virginia containing the whole Province of Maryland with Part of Pensilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina”. Thomas Jefferys, engraver. London, 1755. State 4. Engraving with outline color and watercolor. The Library of Virginia. The Fry-Jefferson map was revised several times during the early to mid-18th century. Revisions were based on land claims registered as surveys at the county level. It provides a sample of recorded settlement during a period of rapid growth in Virginia’s population. The Dismal Swamp occupies part of the Southside (south of James River) which did not experience growth and remained largely unoccupied. (Library of Virginia)

Figure V – 3a Detail from Fry-Jefferson Map [1755], showing The Dismal Swamp, labeled delineated and hachured. (Library of Virginia)

Figure V – 4 – ‘Plan des Ouvrages de Portsmouth en Virginie’ [Plan of the significant engineering works in Portsmouth, Virginia]

(north oriented to the right) from the late 18th century showing earthworks for defenses, shorelines and swamplands at left. The map is notable for its representation of tidal (saltwater) systems, bluffs,

The Elizabeth River is located at the bottom and the James River along the right side. (Library of Congress)

Figure V – 5 – ‘PLAN des Environs de Williamsburg, York, Hampton et Portsmouth’ (1781) [Plan of the vicinity of Williamsburg, York, Hampton and Portsmouth] (from General Rochambeau’s collection Library of Congress).

The Dismal Swamp is given a northern boundary immediately east of Suffolk and is labeled as ‘Effroyable Morais” [Appalling Morass]. The Lake (Drummond), a canal (possibly the Washington Ditch, the slave community ‘Dismall Town’ and land and water connections to the port of Suffolk are depicted.

(Library of Congress)

Figure V – 6 – ‘Marchee de l’armee (Map II – 42A – B, Rochambeau Collection, Library of Congress, no. 65) (LoV, 2000, 112 – 113) – The Dismal Swamp is represented on this continental-scale map depicting Gen. Rochambeau’s march from Newport Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia and back to Boston, Massachusetts (ca. 1781).

[Differents camps de l'armée de York-town à Boston.]

Figure V – 6a – Detail of the unlabeled Dismal Swamp showing the port of Edenton, North Carolina, an existing overland road to James River, the Swamp, including an unlabeled Lake Drummond, the South Branch of the Elizabeth River and the port of Norfolk. (Library of Congress)

Figure V – 6b – location map Dismal Swamp area shown in red box (Library of Congress)

Figure V - 7 – ‘A Compleat Map of North Carolina’ – from an actual survey –John Collet (1770) – This is an example of shows the Great Dismal Swamp, Lake Drummond, the North West, Pasquotank and Nansemond Rivers and the surveyed boundary between North Carolina and Virginia. The Great Dismal Swamp is represented as part of larger, generalized Swamplands along North Carolina coast.

The map shows the physical geography and evolving cultural landscape of late 18th century North Carolina. The The Dismal Swamp is part of a Tidewater region depicted in great detail. The barrier island system (Outer Banks) is delineated and includes charted shoals. The Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds are described using an elaborate graphic signature. Coastal estuarine systems and pocosins such as Lake Drummond are represented as regional pattern. Especially striking are the river and stream systems as these were the highways providing access to the interior for settlers.

This map includes all of North Carolina from the coast westward and illustrates the western movement of population to and across the Piedmont during the middle of the eighteenth century.

(Library of Congress, UNC Maps Collection)

Figure V – 8 - ‘George Washington – Survey of the Dismal Swamp’ 1785 – Geo. Washington conducted surveys in the Swamp in 1763. This plat includes located features such as the ‘Carolina Line’, ‘Lake[Drummond]’, a ‘Corduroy [Road] to Lake’,’ Dismall Town’, and four privately owned ‘Mills’, located along what Washington correctly identified as a slight drop in elevation, falling away from the Lake. The Suffolk Scarp is delineated along the left side of the plat, but not labeled. ‘Cypress Swamp’ is indicated to the west of Dismall Town with a cut in the Scarp. The property surveyed in this plat, the ‘Washington Entry’ tract became part of the Dismal Swamp Land Company and eventually part of the current USFWS Refuge.

(Library of Congress)

Figure V – 11 – “The Lake of the Dismal” – poem by the Irish poet Sir Thomas Moore took Lake Drummond as the setting for a tale of separated lovers that ends in tragedy. Moore supposedly based the characters on an Indian legend he overheard while visiting Norfolk. The ‘lady of the lake’, a lost Indian maiden, was a quasi-historic character who figured in promotional literature throughout the 19th century.

(http://allthingswildlyconsidered.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-ballad-lake-of-dismal-swamp.html)

http://dismalswampwelcomecenter.com/history/

CHAPTER 6 - A diversified landscape undone by Civil War 1805 – 1867

Antebellum maps of Virginia and North Carolina tended to emphasize landscape elements associated with commercial activities rather than portraying their state’s physical geography. The Dismal Swamp was included on a series of maps that featured the expansion of public works and commerce by newly formed United States. Maps that did portray the Dismal Swamp relied on the place name, a generalized graphic pattern,

Lake Drummond and, most importantly, the association with the Dismal Swamp Canal.

As represented on state-scale maps from the early 19th century, the transportation and communication systems of the Tidewater remained closely interconnected with natural systems like rivers and channels. There are far fewer examples of maps representing the physical geography of the region. This reflected the inconsistent funding at the state level for surveying and mapping natural resources for much of the early 19th century.

The Dismal Swamp was represented with a kind of graphic shorthand for much of the first half of the 19th century.

Swamps became a subject of interest for artists, writers and tourists as a part of the global-scale Romantic Movement in the arts. The Romantics valued uninhabited or desert landscapes for their scenery which was to be experienced while contemplating larger philosophical questions. Swamps were also of interest to the agronomist Edmund

Ruffin who promoted a system of land conservation that valued local soils as a source of organic fertilizer. He advocated reforming agricultural practices as well as draining swamps like the Dismal Swamp for the benefit of public health.

Following a slave revolt led by Nat Turner, swamps gained notoriety among many southern whites who viewed them as places harboring dangerous fugitives. Turner’s aborted plan relied on the Dismal Swamp as a refuge. In the years leading up to the Civil

War, writers and artists that supported the abolition of slavery in the United States

73 seized on the Dismal Swamp and its resident maroon population as symbols of resistance. By this time, the Dismal Swamp was also promoted as a destination by travel writers who emphasized its proximity to the urban centers of the East Coast and its exotic landscape scenery.

At the beginning of the Civil War the Dismal Swamp was mapped as part of plans for battle. The Dismal Swamp had strategic value during the Civil War as a refuge and as access to the Hampton Roads. Only after the end of the war was there an attempt to document the population living in and around the Dismal Swamp. By that time, many long-term residents of the Swamp had become part of local communities or had left the area altogether.

Landscape changes in and around the Dismal Swamp from the canal-building era

(1790 – 1805) (NR DSC, 1983) are visible on a map from the early 19th century (Sayers

2012)(Figure VI-1). This regional-scale map shows the Dismal Swamp as a brown wash between the James and Albemarle Rivers. The Washington Ditch, Jericho Ditch, Dismal

Swamp Canal and Lake Drummond are also clearly rendered. Less prominent, but still visible are the road systems of the region. Navigable waterways are shown in blue, while the vast network of smaller streams that lace the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp are rendered in brown. Cities such as Norfolk, Suffolk and Edenton are labeled, but not highlighted. There is little or no indication of landform, either through topographic survey lines or a thematic devise such as hachuring. As on maps focused on the state scale, the emphasis is on the built environment. It was likely included in a re-printing of

William Byrd’s “Proposal…” (Royster, 2012, Sayers, 2012). This map is unusual in its focus on the Dismal Swamp. It’s typical of local maps based on surveys that accompanied internal improvements like the Dismal Swamp Canal (LoV, 2000, 120).

The Dismal Swamp was included on State-scale maps such as Bishop James

Madison’s 1805 map of Virginia (Fig. VI – 2) and Matthew Carey’s 1812 map of North

Carolina (Fig. VI – 3). These maps were typical cartographic products from the years before the Civil War. Both maps highlighted existing and proposed transportation networks like rivers, canals, roads and turnpikes. They were intended to promote the movement of goods to market, not facilitate settlement or encourage internal migration like colony-scale maps of the 18th century (LoV, 2000, 125 – 127). Following American independence, individual states like Virginia and North Carolina funded private individuals to produce general purpose maps. The governments of the newly formed states viewed maps as a way of promoting their own political significance and encouraging investment in commercial activities (LoV, 2000, 247).

Madison’s map included the depiction of the first toll road in Virginia, which ran along the western edge of the Dismal Swamp (Badger, 2007, 125-126). It also featured the newly completed Dismal Swamp Canal. The map does not include the Feeder Ditch, completed in 1812 to supply water to maintain levels in the Canal from Lake Drummond

(USACE). Among physical features, drainage patterns including rivers and streams are well detailed. Topography is represented more thematically, including “elongated molehills” for mountains in the western part of the state. The Dismal Swamp is labeled and delineated, with the headwaters of nearby rivers like the Northwest, Elizabeth and the Nansemond visibly separated from the body of the Swamp (LoV, 2000, 120-121).

The Dismal Swamp was represented with a similar graphic signature on Matthew

Carey’s 1812 Pocket Map of North Carolina. The Philadelphia printer included this general reference map as part of an atlas of states. It shows counties and townships, major roads, waterways and cities among other smaller cultural features (LoV, 2000,

125). In the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp, it highlighted the established network of

75 water and road access to the Swamp’s resources (Wooldridge, 2012, 205). In North

Carolina, the detailed representation of the landscape articulated transportation networks. Waterways remained essential components of transportation networks for local economies. Maps focused on representing public improvement projects like canals and turnpikes did not generally reflect population or landscape scale surveys like the colony-scale maps of the 18th century (LoV, 2000, 120-125).

In Antebellum Virginia and North Carolina, surveys and mapping focused on physical geography were largely funded by the individual states. Virginia conducted a

State Geological Survey between1835 and 1842, but it produced no maps for use of the general public. Maps based on scientific surveys such as geologic or mineral surveys were chronically underfunded through the early 19th century (LoV, 2000, 124). As a result, few maps were produced in Virginia or North Carolina that focused on the soils, hydrology vegetative patterns or land use prior to the Civil War (LoV, 2000, 248).

Antebellum maps of individual states often included scenes of state sponsored public works or picturesque agricultural scenes as part of their composition. These types of landscapes representations also became popular in their own right (LoV, 2000, 122 -

124, Vileisis, 1997, 64 - 65). The Dismal Swamp Canal was a popular subject for promotional art following improvements that expanded its capacity (Pugh & Williams,

1964, 10). Robert Salmon’s 1830 painting “Dismal Swamp Canal” represents some important features associated with the Dismal Swamp during the 1830s (Fig. VI - 4).

The painting portrays economic activities associated with the Dismal Swamp Canal once it was opened for all sized craft in 1814 (Sawyer, 2010, 101). These included agriculture, shingling (collecting cedar and cypress bark, mostly from fallen trees), logging, plank production and small-scale boat-building (Sawyer, 2010, 157). Freight steamers, sailboats and canal barges also carried products like corn, wheat and pork to Norfolk. An

76 important improvement to the Canal came in 827-1829 when the Canal was widened and deepened and locks were converted from wood to stone construction (USACE). The

Canal gave the Roanoke River above the falls (and areas directly west of the Dismal

Swamp) a direct, linear connection to Norfolk, via the Albemarle Sound, the Pasquotank, the Canal, the Elizabeth and finally the James River (Sawyer, 2010, 111). Another version of this scene (1837) appeared on state currency symbolizing progress and that swamps could be developed (Vileisis, 1997, 65).

Salmon’s painting also featured tourism, an economic activity recently gaining popularity in the United States. At the center of the composition is the Lake Drummond

Hotel, sometimes referred to as the Halfway House (Badger, 2007, 126-127, Vileisis, 65).

Visitors to the Hotel arrived by Canal via sternwheelers (steamboats) or by the stage road. The Hotel opened in 1830 and measured 128 feet long (Pugh & Williams, 1964). It straddled the Virginia-North Carolina border. Four rooms were located in Virginia and four in North Carolina (Sawyer, 2010, 104). In local history, the Hotel was a popular location for quick marriages, duels and various activities that took advantage of its border location (Pugh & Williams, 1964, 18, 108-142). The Dismal Swamp Hotel was promoted as a health resort (Simpson, 1998, 113). The juniper waters of nearby Lake

Drummond were considered to have health benefits. The acidic content of the Swamp's water made it a sought after commodity for suppliers of naval stores. Mariner's reported the Dismal Swamp water could be stored for up to a year on ocean voyages (Olsen, 1962,

2).

Soon after the Hotel opened, a series of events made the Dismal Swamp into a place of national interest. Following Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion swamps were sometimes portrayed in popular media as sinister places harboring dangerous fugitives.

The Dismal Swamp was an integral part of Nat Turner’s planned insurrection in

Southampton County, Virginia (Higginson,1831, Sayers, 2006, 12 - 13). Newspaper accounts of the rebellion, the largest slave revolt in U.S. history, associated swamps with runaway slaves (Vileisis, 1997, 104, Sawyer, 2010, 126). While Turner and his followers remained at large, residents of Southside Virginia demanded Federal military support for county militias as they searched for the fugitives. A combined force that included

Federal troops as well as volunteers, totaling more than 800 men:

“…were ordered to scour the Dismal Swamp, where it was believed that two or three thousand fugitives were preparing to join the insurgents. It was even proposed to send two companies from New York and one from New London to the same point” (Higginson, 1831).

The Dismal Swamp emerged from these accounts in the national media as the source of

Nat Turner’s rebellion (Kirby, 1999, 178-180).

In Antebellum America there was little to counter persistent ideas about swamps as the source of infectious air (miasmas). The widely held belief that decaying vegetable matter and stagnant water were the source of ‘mala-aria’ (foul airs) was rooted in classical ideas about medicine, the body and the environment (Miller, 1989, 183, Kirby,

1999, 140). The agronomist Edmund Ruffin, a native of nearby Southampton County,

Virginia, referenced William Byrd when he promoted draining swamps to promote public health.

“If I know of anything that would induce me to accept the dictatorship of a country it would be that of having the power to constrain the inhabitants in the bilious fever region to remove all stagnant water from it, and to keep all arable land in the fall covered with vegetation and thereby sheltered from the power and influence of the sun” (Kirby, 2010, 139- 140).

The Dismal Swamp had been reduced in size by the time Ruffin visited in the 1830s.

After surveying it, he proposed draining all of it and converting the land to food production. Like Byrd he sought to improve trade networks in the region of the Swamp by building two additional canals along its west side to connect the Nansemond and

Perquimans Rivers (Kirby, 1999, 83). In addition to Byrd, Ruffin’s model for the

Tidewater included the reclaimed, engineered landscapes of the Netherlands (Kirby,

1995, 75-76). Like Byrd’s and Washington’s models, Ruffin’s schemes relied on the labor of enslaved African-Americans. By the 1830s, there were also technological means to drain the swamp, including the steam dredges with large beams for maintaining channels and 40 cubic foot iron scoop boxes known as "monster ditchers" for expanding the existing systems of drainage ditches in the Dismal Swamp (Vileisis, 1997, 67).

Some of Ruffin’s plans for landscape improvement in the Dismal Swamp were also informed by his understanding of the soils and geology of the Tidewater region. For

Ruffin, landscapes like the Dismal Swamp offered a salvation for a region defined by decades of exhaustive agricultural practices. In 1832 he wrote:

“a great resource…is presented in your great inland swamps, now only wide-spread seed beds of disease, pestilence and death; and which by drainage, with certainty and great profit, might be converted to dry fields of exuberant fertility”(Wilson, 2006, 45).

Ruffin promoted the use of “Calcareous Manures” or “marling” as a way to revive exhausted cropland. Marling meant balancing the Ph of the soil by adding lime from locally available sources (mudstone or marl) which were found in the region’s swamps

(Wilson, 2006, 42 – 43). Ruffin identified the widespread occurrence of calcium carbonate throughout the Tidewater region during field surveys. Although overshadowed by Ruffin’s later, more political works, his writings on the Dismal Swamp and vicinity are considered “founding work[s] of soil science” (Kirby, 1995, 75). Based on his understanding of regional history, Ruffin also linked out-migration by the rural white population to soil exhaustion. He predicted that exhausted soils only exacerbated this trend, further destabilizing society and the region’s economy (Wilson, 2006, 41-43,

Kirby, 1995, 75-77).

Promoting the value of swamp soils became central to Ruffin’s vision for the region’s economic and political stability. He identified specific agricultural and land-use practices as threats to the already unstable, exhausted landscape in the vicinity of the

Dismal Swamp. Free-range stock-raising, semi-controlled burning of forests to create pastureland and the maintenance of mill ponds were each the subject of blistering, moralistic publicity campaigns (Sawyer, 2010, 178 – 179, Wilson, 2006, 46). He also sought the reversal of the general practice of fencing in crops while livestock were allowed to range free (Kirby, 1995, 77). Perhaps it’s not surprising that some people living in the Tidewater preferred the Dismal Swamp where the:

“wetland environment rendered free humans freer to resist both bourgeois society and agronomic reformers… In and near the Great Dismal, especially, woods-burning and hog-running country folk might live their “careless” lives…and still raise cash at will, on the periphery of the world’s market order” (Kirby, 1999, 160).

Among the scattered white population of the Tidewater turning livestock out to graze on native grasses, or in the woods was established common practice. Mast, acorns and various tubers formed the diet of these free-range cattle, horses and especially pigs.

Early English settlers probably learned to clear land by setting fires or girdling trees from

Native Americans. The resulting landscape resulted in grasslands for grazing cattle as well as open land for cultivation (Stilgoe, 1982, 62).

Ruffin’s essays on the soils, geology, land use and agricultural practices were based on his own field work conducted over several years (Ruffin, 1861, 224 – 225). His writings offer insight into landscape formation during a time period when the Tidewater was losing population, political significance and economic vitality (Ruffin, 1861, 186).

His writings on the Dismal Swamp and other swamps of the region were the first scientific studies of swamplands since William Byrd’s Westover Papers which he re- published in 1837. Unlike Byrd he showed an appreciation for the Swamp’s beauty

(Vileisis, 1997, 68). He employed contemporary Romantic imagery in describing the

Dismal Swamp as a wild place even as he plotted how best to drain and clear it for agriculture (Stilgoe, 1982, 26). During an 1836 visit he wrote:

“I reached Suffolk by way of the railway, from Portsmouth, which passed through a few miles of the swamp at its northern extremity, and thus permitted a first slight glance…It seems unfortunate that the first approach to the swamp, of almost every person hereafter, will be the rapidly moving railway train. The savage gloom of the face of nature is altogether unsuited to the highly artificial facilities by means of which the traveler is flying past – and the discordance serves to lessen the high gratification which either the conveyance or the scene alone would cause, when new to the observer” (Kirby, 2000, 148).

As a national figure, Ruffin is best remembered as a vehement proponent of Slavery, or a

Fire-Eater, who committed suicide as the Civil War was coming to an end (Wilson, 2006,

45-46). The outcome of Ruffin’s landscape-scale surveys were lectures, pamphlets, articles and books that promoted conservation practices a regional scale. His many publications did not include maps.

For much of the early 19th century, the best mapping of the physical geography of

United States was conducted by the United States Coastal Survey (USCS). The USCS, part of the Department of Treasury, was regarded as one of the nation’s pre-eminent scientific organizations (Wooldridge, 200x, 246-249, LoV, 2000, 120). USCS maps and navigation charts supported commercial activity and military planning, especially along the Atlantic coast. The Dismal Swamp Canal was not part of the USCS’ coastal surveys, despite being an important link between the Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound

(Wooldridge, 2012, 227-228). During the 1840s and 50s the US Coastal Survey continued to produce general navigation charts for multiple users. By contrast, typical state-scale maps from the same time period, such as Morse’s map of North Carolina,

(Fig. VI - 5) showed little detail in representing physical geography. The Dismal Swamp appears as an isolated natural feature set in a network of transportation infrastructure

81 that connected North Carolina’s northeast to the ports of Suffolk, Portsmouth and

Norfolk. The map relies on two landmarks, the Canal and Lake Drummond to articulate the Dismal Swamp.

By 1850, the Elizabeth River region (Portsmouth and Norfolk) had developed into an important urban and shipping center at the southern end of Chesapeake Bay.

Many economic activities were associated with the operations of the Norfolk Naval

Shipyard. The Tidewater cities shared many characteristics with other cities within the emerging American manufacturing belt. The Dismal Swamp Canal was part of a set of regional industrial systems (Meyer, 1994, 240). Commodities flowing through these port facilities included corn and wheat (to the Caribbean) and lumber as well as a variety of wood products such as turpentine, tar, pitch, and other ship-building materials. The landscape of the urbanizing Elizabeth River basin included sawmills, brick kilns, gristmills, ropewalks, factories for manufacturing boots, shoes, hats, firearms, wagons, carriages, furniture, books and cigars. This growing urban area also housed a fish and seafood processing industry. Truck farming sent produce like kale, lettuce, onions, strawberries, beans, cabbage, cucumbers, potatoes and watermelons to the urban centers of the northeast such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York (Kirby, 1995, 11-12). The material for the region’s urbanization flowed out of the Dismal Swamp on canals and ditches by flatboat, canoe, barge and steamer as well as overland. By 1848, the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad connected to Norfolk. Soon after Norfolk was connected to

Raleigh, North Carolina and Lynchburg, Virginia via Petersburg by what became the

Norfolk-Southern Railroad. (LoV, 2000, 167)

Opportunities for work at shipyards or timber processing facilities as well as ongoing construction projects with the Canal Company attracted labor from throughout the region. This in turn reduced the available labor for agriculture, making large

82 landowners more dependent on slave labor for their operations (Kirby, 2000, 191 - 192).

While landowners could not prevent the movement of free labor into the urban

Tidewater, they could impose further restrictions on the enslaved population. In a typical measure, the General Assembly of North Carolina passed legislation in 1848 that imposed penalties on landowners employing runaway slaves. This was aimed especially at landowners in proximity of the Dismal Swamp who employed runaway slaves or maroons. This legislation required landowners to maintain a registration and description of their labor force (predominantly enslaved African-Americans) (Sawyer,

2010, 124).

Among the most influential surveys of the economics of slavery in the United

States was written by Frederick Law Olmsted. He visited the Dismal Swamp while conducting field research for his book, Journey Through the Coastal Slave States (1853).

At the time he was known primarily a journalist with an interest in progressive agriculture (Kirby, 1995, 155). Olmsted interviewed landowners like Major John Wallace whose holdings included nearly 400 acres of reclaimed swampland. Wallaceton, Virginia

(located near the family’s house) was a landing on the Dismal Swamp Canal located just north of the connection with the Feeder Ditch. At the time of Olmsted’s visit most of the land east of the Canal had been drained and cleared of vegetation. The only variance in visual pattern he noted was created by wide drains (ditches) running perpendicular to the Canal at 125 yard intervals. Corn and potatoes were the principle crops under cultivation. Olmsted observed that the soils of the reclaimed Dismal Swamp in this area were very fine in texture and fertile. They did not require the use of manure or any other type of fertilizer for productivity (Kirby, 2010, 123).

Olmsted traveled by boat on the Canal to access the Dismal Swamp. He was accompanied by a man named Joseph Church, a slave owned by the Canal Company.

Church also served as guide and cook during Olmsted’s stay in the area. In conversation, Church confirmed that there were permanent, long-standing communities of maroons living in the Dismal Swamp.

“[t]he Dismal Swamps are noted places of refuge for runaway negroes…Children were born, bred, lived, and died here. Joseph Church told me he had seen skeletons and had helped to bury bodies recently dead. There were people in the swamp still, he thought, that were the children of runaways, and who had been runaways themselves all their lives. “What a life it must be; born outlaws; educated self-stealers; trained from infancy to be constantly in dread of a white man as a thing more than wild-cats, or serpants, or even starvation” (Wilson, 2006, 12).

Olmsted did not meet with any members of maroon communities during his survey for

‘Journey..’. The details he was able to collect about runaway slaves living in the Dismal

Swamp later informed writings by Northern Abolitionists that portrayed Maroons in heroic terms (Kirby, 2010, 190, Sayers, 2012).

During his tour, Olmsted also visited a shingleyard located on the western shore of Lake Drummond at the mouth of the Jericho Ditch. Here he observed the “invisible hands” of the shingle trade at work (Kirby, 2010, 197, Sayers, 2012). His description of the shingle processing economy traced a cash-driven network that included Canal

Company employees, African-American slaves, maroons and local whites or “swampers”

(Olmsted, 1853, Sayers, 2006, 12 - 14). The shingle trade included the collection, processing and transport of shingles out of the Dismal Swamp along waterways like the

Jericho Ditch. Shingles were made from the bark of trees known locally as cypress (Bald

Cypress - taxodium distuchum) and cedar (Atlantic White Cedar - Chamaecyparis thyoides ). African American men formed the bulk of the labor force. The work environment resulted in “degrees of freedom” for a labor force that included company- owned slaves, freedmen and Maroons. The labor force of the Dismal Swamp also harvested, gathered and processed products such as tar, pitch, cedar shingles, staves and

84 timber that were used by the ship building industries of Hampton Roads (Sayers, 2012,

Kirby, 1995).

Olmsted’s account provided only a glimpse into the maroon community living in the Dismal Swamp during the 1850s (Sayers, 2006, 14). Settlement patterns and survival strategies have been difficult to document historically. From the colonial period through the end of the Civil War in 1865, maroon communities numbering in the thousands lived in the Dismal Swamp. Colonial terms for Maronnage included petit marronage (temporary runaway status) and grande marrononage (permanent removal from slavery and residence in a refuge landscape like the Dismal Swamp). Mostly because of its size, the Dismal Swamp was inhabited by both peripheral and interior populations of maroons (Sayers, 2007, 60-65). Not surprisingly, the Dismal Swamp was an important section of the Underground Railroad during the years prior to the Civil

War. Because of its size and its proximity to the port cities of Hampton Roads it served as both a conduit and as a destination. By the 1850s, the network formed to aid runaway slaves included many Quaker settlements that predated the 1728 boundary line survey

(Sayers, 2007, 68, Sawyer, 2010, 121).

In 1856, another popular 19th century writer, Porte Crayon (the pen name for

Henry David Strother) made the Dismal Swamp a destination. Like Olmsted, Strother’s writing provided landscape descriptions to a popular audience. Strother ‘s articles also featured illustrations of scenes, people and activities from sketchbooks that he kept during his travels. While writing for Harper’s Monthly he travelled to the Dismal

Swamp from New York City, via Suffolk and the Jericho Ditch by flatboat. (Kirby, 1995,

152-153, Vileisis, 1997, 65, Miller, 1989, 28). This mode of transport allowed a more direct experience of the landscape than that available from the 'Sternwheelers at the

Half-Way House' (Vileisis, 1997, 98 - 99).

“Once more in the canal, we were completely protected from the wind by the dense undergrowth, and, under a cloudless sky, the aspect of things was more cheerful. We also met a number of lighters, bound for the distant shores of the lake to take in lumber, or carrying sand, to be used in the construction of a Watergate, at the lake terminus of the canal” (Porte Crayon, 1856, 142).

For Strother, the opportunity to view Lake Drummond was the primary reason for visiting the Dismal Swamp. The “Lake of the Dismal” (Fig. VI – 9) was an image known to the literate public based on the continued popularity of Moore’s poem (Miller, 1989,

29).

Although a travel writer who represented the Dismal Swamp as exotica, Strother also included basic geographic information about the landscapes he described (Miller,

1989, 28, Vileisis, 1997, 98). Within the Dismal Swamp, he portrayed Lake Drummond as a subject for contemplation as well as a source of trivia for the armchair traveler:

“Its area has been estimated at from six hundred to a thousand square miles. Lake Drummond lies on the Virginia side, near the center of the Swamp. It is a pond of eighteen or twenty miles in circuit, about seven across, measured from its most distant points, and averaging twelve or fifteen feet in depth. The water of the lake and of the Swamp generally is dark colored, like French brandy or strong coffee. It is fresh, healthful, pleasant to the taste, and, it is said, will keep pure for an unlimited time. Hence it is often used by vessels going on long voyages. The lake is twelve miles distant from Suffolk, and twenty-two from Norfolk; its surface is eleven or twelve feet above mid-tide, and there has been for a long time a question of supplying the latter city with water from this source. The practicality of doing so remains to be tested” (Porte Crayon, 142-143).

As an early example of nature tourism Strother’s account of visiting the “Lake of the

Dismal” is representative of a new landscape aesthetic in the United States. He was less interested in landscapes as scene for moral insight and more for their role in providing sanctuary from an increasingly commercial and technologically determined life (Miller,

1989, 1, 31). In representing the Dismal Swamp, Strother’s writings show less concern

86 with the capability of soils or crop yields and more with sharing entertaining tales of camping out, eating local foods and hearing ghost stories.

Although Strother’s writing on the Dismal Swamp was often a travelogue with only casual references to geography, some of his illustrations contain a valuable record of life in and around the Dismal Swamp during the 1850s (Sayers, 2006, 14). He included a portrait of the slave Jim Pierce, who Strother hired as guide and cook during his visit.

Pierce is shown wearing snake-proof boots and weatherproof clothing and holding an axe (Fig VI – 6). The scene of a functioning shingleyard at a location called Horse Camp shows a working landscape, a place of residence, a corduroy road and shingles in various states of processing for transport to market by mule-drawn cart (Fig. VI – 7). Strother also included a sketch of a mill pond in Norfolk County, in the vicinity of the Dismal

Swamp in his account (Fig, VI – 8). This was a regional landscape feature singled out by

Edmund Ruffin as a source of disease and a threat to public health (Kirby, 1995, 152). It may not have been familiar to Strother’s readers.

When visiting the Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Strother spent much of his time on land owned by the Dismal Swamp Land Company. Founded as the Dismal

Swamp Company by George Washington and “Adventurers” , by the 1850s it had …

“realized almost fabulous proceeds from the timber – juniper, cypress and white pine- that covers their grant” (Porte Crayon, 1964, 145). In addition to land, The Company also owned and hired-out the enslaved African Americans responsible for many construction projects in the Dismal Swamp. These large-scale projects included the construction of irrigation works and ongoing clearing of timber. The Company also hired-out slaves to local landowners for the construction and maintenance of irrigation ditches, transportation canals and roads. Company-owned slaves as well as freedman formed the labor force that repaired and operated the Dismal Swamp Canal (Fig VI – 10)

(Sayers, 2012). Olmsted and Strother moved through a landscape largely constructed, maintained and populated by African-Americans, most, but not all of whom were slaves.

Olmsted’s and Strother’s accounts were published at a time when portrayals of

‘desert’ places among were especially popular Romantic writers and artists,. Swamps were unique among wilderness landscapes in that they also provided refuge for runaway slave populations or Maroons. Literary works, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "A Slave in the Dismal Swamp" (1842) and Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel "Dred, a Tale of the Dismal Swamp" (1856) referenced the physical setting of the

Dismal Swamp in their titles, playing on the public’s contemporary aesthetics (Sawyer,

2010, 124 - 127, Olsen, 1962, 2). Abolitionists like Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe chose the Dismal Swamp as the setting for fictional slave hunts in their works. Olmsted's survey provided Stowe with essential information about the Dismal Swamp's maroon community which she then included in "Dred..." (Badger, 2007, 129-130). Thomas

Moran's painting "Slave Escaping through a Swamp" (Fig. VI – 13) depicted the Dismal

Swamp as romantic wilderness landscape. The landscape serves as both symbol and sanctuary (Vileisis, 1997, 104). Finally, Senator Daniel Webster used imagery long- associated with swamps to condemn the slave-States during the lead up to the Civil War.

“[But] secession and disunion are a region of gloom, and morass and swamp; no cheerful breezes fan it, no spirit health visits it; it is all malaria. It is all fever and ague. Nothing beautiful or useful grows in it; the traveler, through it breathes miasma, and treads among all things unwholesome and loathsome” (Wilson, 2006, 40).

The region in question turned out to be an unknown landscape for both the

Union and Confederate armies. The physical geography of states like Virginia and North

Carolina had not been mapped in any detail for decades (LoV, 2000, 189). As a result, the Civil War was fought by generals “in their own country not knowing where they were going or how to get there” (LoV, 2000, 189). The Dismal Swamp appeared on maps

88 prepared by military planners from both armies. Its most obvious strategic value was in the Dismal Swamp Canal. Prior to 1862, when the Union Army gained control of

Hampton Roads, the Canal, served as a “Water highway” for the transport of corn, wheat and pork to the Confederate States further south (Sawyer, 2010, 143). It would eventually provide access to the middle of Hampton Roads for Union forces at the start of the Peninsula campaign, in the summer of 1862 (LoV, 2000, 195).

The Dismal Swamp sits at the southern edge of a typical map compiled during the

Peninsula Campaign in 1862 by US Army topographic engineers (Fig. VI – 11). This map combines data gathered by survey to describe channel depths, shoreline configurations, communication networks (like existing roads and railroads) and vegetative cover.

During the early years of the Civil War, maps like this were quickly assembled in the process of planning battles. The Peninsula Campaign, between Hampton Roads and

Richmond relied on War Department maps for planning (Wooldridge, 2012, 296). The

Dismal Swamp appears as a significant landscape bisected by two rail lines connecting

Suffolk with Portsmouth and Norfolk. The advance of the Union Army into the lower

Chesapeake after 1862 also made the Dismal Swamp into a refuge for embattled regular and irregular Confederate troops. African American slaves, former slaves and maroons played a key role in securing valued strategic components such as the Canal as well as the ports of Suffolk and Norfolk (Kirby, 1995, 184-185).

A hand-drawn plan of South Mills, North Carolina by topographic engineer

Robert K. Sneder summarized the 1862 battle for the southern entrance lock to the

Dismal Swamp Canal (Fig VI - 12). Like topographic sketches and road traverses, after- battle maps were often quickly prepared in the field (LoV, 2000, 194-195). This map shows a rough delineation of vegetated cover, terrain analysis (sunken or marshy areas versus built up or elevated areas) and an inventory of cultural features in the landscape.

Sneder also clearly located troops and earthworks as a way to recount the battle for the southern entrance to the Dismal Swamp Canal.

Eventually map makers from the US Army gathered enough data to assemble a regional scale map of the Hampton Roads area for larger scale planning (Fig. VI – 15).

Throughout the War the Union Army relied on the Corps of Topographical Engineers as well as the ongoing efforts of the USCS to rapidly prepare maps of areas like the

Tidewater that had strategic value (Wooldridge, 2012, 256-257). The Dismal Swamp is represented on this map with a network of canals and ditches that emanate from Lake

Drummond. The region is shown to be laced with roads and railroads (shown in red) that converge on Suffolk and Norfolk. The Dismal Swamp is labeled and differentiated from the surrounding landscape with its own pattern.

Another important source of maps during the Civil War was newspapers and pictorial journals of the time. Maps of the Tidewater depicting basic geography of the region for the public appeared in the national media as part of their coverage of the war.

Some publications portrayed the Seat or Theater of War from the Bird’s Eye view

(Wooldridge, 2012, 261, 268, LoV, 2000, 202). A Map published in Harper's Weekly from 1862, shows an area between the mouth of Chesapeake Bay and Cape Lookout in

North Carolina (Fig. VI – 16). The map's scope extends west into the Piedmont and shows a rail line effectively bypassing the entire Tidewater region. The Atlantic coast and Albemarle-Pamlico Sounds of North Carolina are shown as covered with shaded areas indicating wetlands. The Dismal Swamp was included as an inland landscape feature. Lake Drummond and the Canal are both visible as is the proximity to Hampton

Roads to the north.

Mapping during the Civil War led to innovations in field survey methods, intelligence gathering (including the use of stationary balloons for capturing aerial views

90 of battlefields) as well as advances in printing and reproduction processes that made maps available quickly and to a broader audience. (Buisseret, 2003, 185, LoV, 2000,

203-204). Of necessity, the mapping of the Dismal Swamp vicinity was especially intensive during the Civil War, when the Union Army began to include more formal attempts at describing its population (Morris, NYT, 2013). Possibly as many as 1000 people were living in the Dismal Swamp at the beginning of the Civil War (Badger, 2007,

129). Newspapers and periodicals also employed combat sketch artists who compiled representation of battle scenes and landscapes for a popular audience,

Figure VI- 1 Undated map of the region between the James River and the Albemarle Sound showing the delineation of the Great Dismal Swamp. Dismal Swamp Canal (1805), Jericho Ditch (18xx?), Washington Ditch, Feeder Ditch (1812). Water, shorelines, tributaries are depicted and labeled. Roads and larger settlements are labeled. In an era of increased investment in public works such as canals and roads, the Dismal Swamp and its region were still defined by the elaborate interplay of water and land. This map shows the partial realization of William Byrd's vision for the region. The Albemarle Sound has been connected by Canal to the James River. At this scale the many landholdings in and around the Dismal Swamp are not visible. (Royster/UNC)

Figure VI – 2 – Tidewater Sheet (1 sheet only of 8 sheets), ‘A Map of Virginia Formed from Actual Surveys, and the Latest as well as the most accurate observations’ (1807), James Madison (The Library of Virginia.). The Dismal Swamp can be located on this map by two landmarks; Lake Drummond and the Dismal Swamp Canal. The Swamp is the only landscape of its type in Tidewater and is represented with shading and hachures. (Raremaps)

https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/34658/Tidewater_Sheet_1_sheet_on ly_of_8_sheets_A_Map_of_Virginia_Formed_from/Madison-Bossler.html

Figure VI – 3 - "North Carolina." From American Pocket Atlas. Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, (1814) – The Dismal Swamp and the Great Alligator Swamp are both featured on this entry in early 19th century popular cartographic product, the pocket atlas. (PhilPrint)

(http://www.philaprintshop.com/ncarolina.html)

Figure VI – 4 Halfway House (Hotel) – Robert Salmon, The Halfway House Hotel was opened in 1829. It was built on the western shore of the Dismal Swamp Canal straddling the Virginia – North Carolina border. This view, looking south along the Dismal Swamp Canal, shows two types of water traffic. Sailboats used the Canal to bypass the treacherous shoals off of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Steamboats such as the one arriving at the Halfway House provided access for tourists and other travelers. Both banks of the Canal are earthen with a towpath. Lumber can be seen in piles on both banks. The Dismal Swamp is only hinted at with trees visible at either side of the composition. Despite completion in 1805, the Dismal Swamp Canal was not dimensioned to accommodate watercraft larger than rafts or skiffs until 1828. (VFMA)

http://vmfa.museum/collections/art/dismal-swamp-canal_88-161/

Figure VI – 5 ‘North Carolina’ - Morse, S.E. Morse’s North American Atlas. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1842-1845, This map shows a detailed representation of North Carolina’s road system in the 1840s. The Dismal Swamp is depicted as a part of the system of public works that date from the early 19th century. (Rumsey)

http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps5524.html

Figure VI – 6 – “Jim Pierce Dismal Swamp 1856”, Strother, David Hunter, (West Virginia Historical Art Collection)

Figure VI – 7 ‘Horse Camp Road. Dismal Swamp, Va.’ March 20th 1856, Strother, David Hunter(West Virginia Historical Art Collection,

Figure VI – 8 ‘Mill pond near Suffolk - April 3rd 1856’, Strother, David Hunter, (West Virginia Historical Art Collection)

Figure VI – 9 June 25, 1859, “The Lake of the Dismal Swamp” , Strother, David Hunter, (West Virginia Historical Art Collection) scene reminiscent of the poet Thomas Moore’s ‘Lake of the Dismal. ’

Figure VI – 10 ‘Dismal Swamp Canal’ from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, May 1860, African-American canal workers (likely Canal Company-owned slaves) manually open a lock along the Dismal Swamp Canal. The landscape beyond the Canal and towpath is romantic wilderness, complete with fallen timbers and Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides). (CALO)

100

Figure VI - 11 – US Army Hampton Roads Map, (1863) - At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, there were few current or accurate maps of states like Virginia and North Carolina for either army. Officers from both armies were forced to record field conditions as they prepared battle plans. Strategic features such as roads (shown in red), railroads (red.with labels), landings, bridges and cities fleshed out the Tidewater landscape. The Dismal Swamp is represented as a green mass bisected by rail lines connecting Suffolk and Portsmouth and Suffolk and Norfolk. (Library of Congress)

101

Figure VI – 12 – ‘Plan of Battle of South Mills. Dismal Swamp Canal, N.C.’ (19th April 1862), This hand drawn field map is typical of the maps produced by both armies during the Civil war.

The DS Canal had strategic value especially for Union troops stationed in the Albemarle. It provided a conduit for movement into Hampton Roads. (Library of Congress)

102

Figure V - 13 Thomas Moran ‘Slaves Escaping through a Swamp’ or 'Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia' (1862), the swamp as symbol and sanctuary… This painting combined romantic depictions of the American wilderness with the narrative of fugitive slaves finding sanctuary in the Swamp. Two fugitive slaves wade through the waters of the swamp while a pack of hounds gives pursuit from the opposite bank. (Moran) Thomas Moran, The Complete Works - http://www.thomas-moran.org/Slave- Hunt,-Dismal-Swamp,-Virginia.html

103

Figure VI – 14 - ‘ Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp, Virginia’ — by David Edward Cronin, (1888). Painting depicting the pre-Civil War era of slavery in Virginia, of enslaved African Americans in the Great Dismal Swamp. maroons. in the GDS from the 18th cerntury onward. They were assigned a symbolic value in the years prior to the Civil War by Abolitionists. (New York Historical Society)

104

Figure VI – 15 – Untitled map of the Hampton Roads vicinity – United States Topographical Engineers, Department of War (ca. 1862) – This map shows the Dismal Swamp located among a network of roads (brown) and railroads (red). The Dismal Swamp Canal, Feeder Ditch Hampton Roads was important strategically. (Library of Congress)

105

Figure V - 16 JANUARY 3, 1863, HARPER'S WEEKLY. MAP OF NORTH CAROLINA, SHOWING THE FIELDS OF OPERATIONS OF GEN. FOSTER AND THE ARMY OF THE BLACKWATER. Map of Eastern North Carolina from Civil War era newspaper clipping shows railroad connections between Suffolk, Va. And Morehead (City), N.C. The Swamplands between James River and Neuse River are effectively bypassed. The Dismal Swamp is depicted using the same graphic signature as the coastal wetlands to its south. ( NCgenweb) http://www.ncgenweb.us/beaufort/maps/bo1862.htm

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CHAPTER 7 - A post-conflict landscape developed for extraction 1867 – 1929

Between the end of the Civil War and the first decades of the 20th century, the

Dismal Swamp was increasingly shaped by large-scale resource extraction activities in its vicinity. Changes in the landscape reflected the consolidation of land holdings for agriculture as well as for the processing and export of forest products. The Tidewater region, like much of the Post-Civil War South experienced population loss through out- migration associated with economic collapse. At the same time, the manufacturing sector in the Tidewater expanded leading to the growth of cities like Suffolk and Norfolk.

Although the Dismal Swamp was sometimes portrayed as a unique wild landscape in the popular media, there were no large-scale efforts aimed at conserving it. During the early

20th century the Dismal Swamp became the subject of focused scientific study that included mapping of resources like plant communities and soils.

Mappings prepared for battle during the Civil War also provided needed baseline surveys for economic plans during Reconstruction. The Dismal Swamp Canal is nominally the focus of an 1867 map by the Civil Engineer D.S. Walton. As the title indicates it also depicts a network of proposed and existing canals “…Connecting

Chesapeake Bay with Currituck, Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and Their Tributaries”

(Fig. VII-1). The map was centered on the coast of North Carolina and shows the anatomy of a peripheral area with close connections to the cities of Virginia’s Tidewater.

This map’s scope shares a striking similarity to a ‘theater of war’ map from 1862 (Fig VI

– 16). The proposals outlined on this map address an age-old challenge for North

Carolina’s Tidewater, where “long, long before demography, morphology – especially drainage was destiny” (Kirby, 1999, 2). The challenge was transportation. Walton’s map placed Norfolk, Virginia at the core of a region defined by a transportation network that included rail lines and canals. Many parts of United States were mapped with a similar

107 diagrammatic approach during the late 19th century. Railroads were especially influential in structuring the landscape and focusing growth into urban areas (Meyer,

1990, 253 – 254,, Corner & McLean, 1996, 106). The map maker likely drew from standards and techniques developed during the Civil War in preparing plans for economic reconstruction (LoV, 2000, 204). Beyond Lake Drummond and the Canal, the

Dismal Swamp is undifferentiated from the region’s landscape. The map highlights components of the existing and proposed transportation network and downplays landscapes like swamplands. Walton’s map does not promote a specific economic strategy, but shows the Dismal Swamp Canal as part of a region suitable for investment.

The existing transportation network in the Tidewater also provided access to wild landscapes like the Dismal Swamp for visitors from beyond the region. In popular media travel and nature writers contributed to a brief period of “swamp vogue” after the

Civil War. Like other swamps in the South, the Dismal Swamp was portrayed as part of an “aesthetic of ruin” that drew from Romantic ideas about wilderness landscapes. This aesthetic was in marked contrast to the Antebellum Tidewater’s self-image of a “slavery- based, rural Venice” (Sawyer, 2010, 111). An illustration from the Harper’s Weekly from the 1870s provides a typical representation of the Dismal Swamp landscape as a scene for hunting and tourism (Fig VII- 2).

During the post-War period writers like Edward King described the swamps of the American South as exotic landscapes (Wilson, 2006, 75-77). King was a native of

Massachusetts who promoted nature-based tourism in the South as part of a larger agenda aimed at reconciliation and assimilation. King believed that tourism offered a way for the region to rebuild its economy and reconnect with the rest of the country during Reconstruction. He included descriptions of the Dismal Swamp landscape for the would-be traveler in magazine articles as well in a chapter from his book, The Great

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South (King, 1875, 588-591). The Dismal Swamp was among the landscapes that he promoted as a tourist destination to a national audience (Fig. VII – 3). Wilderness- based tourism was targeted at an audience that was primarily affluent, urban, Northern and male. As portrayed in popular sporting media, the Dismal Swamp landscape represented exotic scenery for sport fishing and hunting waterfowl. The Dismal Swamp was portrayed in the national media as a wilderness area suitable for tourism based on its natural beauty, its history as well as its abundant game (Figs. VII – 1, VII – 3). The tourism economy focused on the Dismal Swamp and other wild landscapes in the South did not attract tourists as King had hoped.

During the late 19th century both agriculture and the forest product industry expanded in scale and intensified their extraction and production techniques. Timber and truck agriculture were two large-scale economic activities that shaped the post-Civil

War landscape in and around the Dismal Swamp (Sawyer, 2012, 158 – 159, Kirby, 1995,

207). During the 1870s, the manufacturing sector of the urban Tidewater expanded.

The economic growth of cities like Suffolk and Norfolk was based on processing of natural resources for export. Lumber and wood product industries constructed mills and other refining facilities in and near the Dismal Swamp. They built railroads to transport products from the periphery to the core of the manufacturing belt. These specialized extensions of infrastructure left a distinct signature on the landscape that included an expanded network of roads, scattered mill sites and canals that were wider and deeper

(Meyer, 1994, 259).

Forested lands along the east side of the Dismal Swamp were the first section to experience large-scale transformation by the harvesting activities of the Post-War wood products industry. The Roper Lumber Company was the most active on lands to the east of the Canal between Norfolk and the Albemarle Sound. The company was founded by

109 the Pennsylvanian John L. Roper. He established residence in Norfolk in 1865. Soon after he began acquiring timber lands in the Dismal Swamp and vicinity that he had scouted the while serving as a Captain in the Union Army during the Civil War. The headquarters of Roper’s manufacturing and export lumber business was located in

Norfolk. The first sawmill Roper built utilized the Albemarle-Chesapeake Canal to transport semi-processed lumber to Norfolk, bypassing the older Dismal Swamp Canal

(Kirby, 1995, 174, Sawyer, 2010, 158 - 159).

Roper’s lumber company was a part of the economic growth that made Norfolk into the regional center for a resource-based manufacturing economy during

Reconstruction. The primacy of Norfolk and it neighbor across the Elizabeth River,

Portsmouth were featured in an 1873 panorama (Figs. VII 4 & Fig. VII - 5). This thematic map was a typical cartographic product from the era after the Civil War.

Panoramic or Bird’s Eye maps like this view were constructed from an aerial perspective.

The viewer was presented an oblique angle view of the landscape from an elevation of

200 or 300 feet (LoV, 2000, 251). This panorama was produced and distributed by a real estate company to promote the region as a place of. Elements of the Tidewater’s physical coastlines, rivers and topographic relief, such as mountain ranges were portrayed to provide visual balance to the compositions. These types of maps portrayed the United

States after the Civil War as an increasingly urbanized nation investment (LoV, 2000,

251-252) . As a primarily artistic composition, conveys some important themes. The

Dismal Swamp, and wild nature in general, are used as an extension of the picture frame.

This contrasts with the careful location and labeling of the emerging urban fabric.

Nature supports the city just as the landscape around the Tidewater cities played a supporting role in the economy of the region.

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By the mid-1870s, the wood products industry sourced in the Dismal Swamp experienced a shift in focus. The invention of asphalt shingles for roofing and their adoption by the global market brought the shingle trade based in the Dismal Swamp to an end. Shingle-getting was labor-intensive work that often involved harvesting components of already fallen and even submerged or buried trees. Bark from “Cedar”

(Atlantic White Cedar) (Chamaecyparis thyoides) and Bald Cypress (Taxodium dichicum) were the most sought after. The resinous content of their wood acts as a natural sealant making them resistant to rot. Prior to the 1870s, non-shingle business represented s smaller proportion of forest product harvesting. The Dismal Swamp Land

Company continued operations into this time period. It held land in the Dismal Swamp.

Most of its income was derived from rent or from cedar shingles, even after the Civil

War. The wood products industry refocused its harvesting, processing and production to accommodate the increased demand from the construction industry. Lumber from the

Dismal Swamp, like lumber from the southeast in general supplied house construction material for the settlement of the western United States. About this time most hardwoods in the Dismal Swamp were mined out (USFWS, 2006, 21-22, 69)

During the 1870s, the forested lands along the western side of the Dismal Swamp also experienced more intensive logging activity. The Camp family based in Franklin,

Virginia, began operations as a lumber company in the Dismal Swamp during the 1870s.

They rose to regional prominence following the shift from shingle production to lumber for export. The Camp brothers owned land in the north and west portion of the Dismal

Swamp. The Camps utilized existing infrastructure like the Washington and Jericho

Ditches for removing timber for processing and export through the port of Suffolk.

Later incorporated as The Camp Manufacturing Company in 1887, they took advantage of low land values to increase their holdings and market share in the region during the decades after the Civil War. The success of lumber companies like Roper and the Camps

111 allowed them to buy and consolidate land holdings in the Dismal Swamp. As a result, much of the remaining Swamp was in private corporate hands by the end of the 19th century (Kirby, 1995, 210).

The expanded timber industry produced signature patterns in the landscape that included railroad lines, timber mills and camps, “gum roads” (small-scale tracks for removing forest products from the gum-swamps), expanded canal and ditch systems, roadways and upgraded or reinforced earthworks, as well as a variety of small-scale industrial sites such as processing plants and mills. The extension of infrastructure and built form into the Dismal Swamp was associated almost exclusively with the extractive industries. It was accompanied by a dramatically more extensive approach to land clearing and swamp draining technology. In addition to the more widespread removal of tree canopy and understory, industrial scale logging in the Dismal Swamp included canal and ditch construction, railway construction and an increase in the incidence of wildfires. (Kirby, 1995, 200-201).

Railroads provided the most efficient means of transporting lumber from mill to market. They also diminished the commercial viability of the Dismal Swamp Canal. Rail lines centered on Suffolk and Norfolk provided a network for efficient, industrial-scale resource extraction. Lumber company spur lines and commercial railroad lines converged on these two port cities. The City of Norfolk, Virginia, was able to capitalize on its location and became the railroad service center for both southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. By the end of the 19th century the Dismal Swamp was effectively bounded by the Norfolk Southern Railroad along its eastern, southern and western sides. The Virginian, Seaboard Air Line and Norfolk & Western railroad lines also traversed the northern portion of the Swamp (Kirby, 1995, 209). Multiple freight rail lines also converged on Suffolk, a transition point between the agricultural lands, as

112 well as the resource rich lands of the Dismal Swamp, and the larger market. The Dismal

Swamp was promoted as a tourist destination by the twin cities of Norfolk and

Portsmouth (Fig. VII – 6). Roper Land and Lumber Company (1887) became the

Richmond Cedar Works. The name change reflected the focus on harvesting Atlantic

White Cedar as well as new ownership (Sawyer, 2010, 159).

Despite the success of railroad transport in the region, the Dismal Swamp Canal continued to operate as a privately held transportation conduit during the late 19th century (Fig. VII – 7). It was one of the few means of accessing the Dismal Swamp or visiting Lake Drummond. The journalist John Boyle O’Reilly (1890) provided landscape descriptions, photographs, prints and a map of a canoe trip he took during 1888. While paddling between Norfolk and Elizabeth City, North Carolina, O’Reilly found the Canal in a state of naturalized ruin.

“While we were in the main canal we found the banks high, especially on the western side, where the diggings and dredging of the channel have been heaped for a century. On this side, behind the bank, lay the unbroken leagues of the swamp, crowded with dense timber and canebrake jungle, the surface of the land or mire being considerably lower than the surface of the canal. On the east side ran the road, and beyond this, long stretches of level country, formerly part of the Dismal Swamp, but now more or less cleared, with here and there a farm of astonishing superiority, and at long intervals a straggling village, usually connected with a saw-mill for juniper or cypress. Originally the canal ran right through the swamp, which it now borders on the eastern side” (O’Reilly, 1890, 5).

According to landowners living in the vicinity of the Canal it seems to have outlived its usefulness. By the time of O’Reilly’s visit commercial traffic between Norfolk and the Albemarle Sound had largely shifted to the publicly owned and operated

Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal (O’Reilly, 1890, 41). In addition the Dismal Swamp

Canal posed a constant threat to the hydrology in the area. Because the Canal is higher in elevation than surrounding land (including that still covered in forest or swamp), it exacerbated flooding and drought conditions in the area. One response, on one of the

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Wallace’s holdings was to dig a drainage culvert beneath the main north-south Canal to provide drainage directly into the ‘free-flowing’ Northwest River (O’Reilly, 1890, 15).

A hand-drawn map in included in O’Reilly’s article shows more than a tourist’s interest in the Dismal Swamp landscape (Fig VII - 8). The Canal cuts through a patchwork of land holdings clustered along its banks to the east and west. The map labels these properties by landowner. Some labels include acreage held and some unimproved lands (undrained, uncleared or both) are referred to as ‘swamps’. The map also identifies ‘Cultivated Lands’, mostly to the east of the Canal. Among the largest holdings are those of the Wallace family (‘Wallace’s Swamp’). These include land on both sides of the Canal near the intersection with the Feeder Ditch. The map also shows a saw-mill and factory owned by John Roper.

After taking in the view of Lake Drummond, O’Reilly declared it a national treasure, especially for sportsmen. During his trip he met groups of conservationists.

These were members of clubs mostly interested in maintaining access rights to hunt in the Dismal Swamp and fish Lake Drummond (Fig. VII – 14).

“The region of the Dismal Swamp was intended by nature to be a pleasure ground, a health resort, and a game preserve for the eastern side of the continent. In spite of all that has been done and left undone to destroy it, the swamp itself is probably the healthiest spot in America. Its delicious juniper water prevents malaria more effectually and perfectly than the famed eucalyptus of Australia. The flying game of the continent centers in this region, and the lake in winter is the best shooting ground in the country. Now that wealthy clubs and individuals are buying up the coast for shooting, this incomparable natural preserve ought to be secured for the nation or the State” (O’Reilly, 1890, 3).

O’Reilly’s account focused on describing agriculture and the availability of game along the Canal and in the vicinity of Lake Drummond. He ultimately agreed with a plan that proposed replacing the Canal (Fig. VII – 15) with a railroad line so that the resources of the Dismal Swamp could be exploited more efficiently (O’Reilly, 1890, 5, 28-

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29). The landscape changes he documented were primarily associated with agriculture in the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp. Soon after O’Reilly visited, in 1892, the Lake

Drummond Canal and Water Company took over ownership and operations of the Canal from the Dismal Swamp Canal Company (USACE).

During the decades after the Civil War, the activities of the wood products industry also significantly altered the Dismal Swamp landscape (Fig. VII – 16). These changes became more apparent starting in the 1890s, when state and federal level agencies began to conduct resource-specific scientific inventories. Surveys like the North

Carolina Geological Survey (NCGS) and the Virginia Division of Mineral Resources

(VDMR), applied research techniques and standards developed by Federal agencies when mapping natural resources. One of Gifford Pinchot’s protégés, W. W Ashe of the

NCGS, conducted the first tree survey of Eastern North Carolina in 1894 including that state’s portion of the Dismal Swamp. While primarily an inventory of baseline conditions of the state’s forest lands, Ashe noted the change in composition of the forest as a result of wood product industry practices, including changes in the regional distribution of the Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda) (Kirby, 2010, 221). About this time the commercially valuable hardwoods of the Dismal Swamp such as Oaks, Hickories and

Maples had been harvested or “mined out” by the timber industry by the 1880s. At the time, sawmills were described as “a kind of topside coal mine – noisy, dangerous work, with an inexorable tendency to destroy the worker”. For many African-American men, working in forests of the swamps of the southeast represented an alternative to sharecropping (Kirby, 1995, 214). The Camp Lumber Company continued to expand into the late 1890s. Eventually they would acquire the Washington Entry tract (surveyed by George Washington & Adventurers, later Dismal Swamp Land Company, then Dismal

Swamp Company) in 1899 more than twenty years after the effective end of the shingle trade (Kirby, 1995, 212).

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Starting in the 1870s and 80s, state level surveys that focused on mapping the geology, natural history, climatology, minerals, agriculture and other natural resources drew from standards and techniques developed by the United States Geological Survey

(USGS). Since its founding in 1879 as a fact-finding agency with no regulatory powers, the USGS established and standardized many cartographic techniques including for data gathering and graphic representation. USGS maps provided an inventory of physical features, identified elevations, water, vegetative cover, roads and transportation systems and many cultural features. Working with the VDMR, the USGS began its initial mapping of Virginia by the 1890s (LoV, 2000, 253, 256).

Following the USGS, maps of areas within the United States used an increasingly standardized graphic vocabulary in how they represented physical geography. They did not represent forest composition or land cover types beyond open or vegetated. Its signature cartographic product has been the 15 minute topographic quadrangles covering the United States. The most popular scale has been at 1:24,000 scale and

1:62,500 scale. The USGS’ graphic standards also became the standard palette for representing the physical landscape in many related agencies. In the course of survey

USGS maps also collected important cultural information and built environment. The adoption of USGS mapping standards marked a shift towards viewing the landscape as scientific space to be mapped by measurement, and informed by theory and empiricizing

(Short, 2009, 18).

The USGS was not the only federal agency mapping the Dismal Swamp at the turn of the 20th century. In 1901 the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a botanical survey focused on the identifying and inventorying plants of the

Dismal Swamp. Plant communities were valued as indicators of the “quality of the soil” suitable for agriculture (Kearney, 1901). The survey also provided a description of plant

116 communities, the “assemblages that make up the plant cover” in the Swamp. The Dismal

Swamp was identified as the northernmost occurrence of a “palustrine forest” that extends along the southeastern coast, along the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River.

For Kearney, the Dismal Swamp’s low elevation and proximity to the Atlantic Ocean were key factors in explaining its composition.

“The southeastern corner of Virginia, including the Great Dismal Swamp, constitutes the northeastern termination of the Austroriparian Area. Here this area covers “a limited tract which does not greatly exceed the bounds of the Dismal Swamp region. It is the low elevation of this strip of sandy coastal plain and its neighborhood to the ocean that permits the presence of Austroriparian flora biotic [communities of the southeastern coniferous forests of North America], while not far westward, with a comparatively only slight increase of altitude, the Austroriparian element becomes subordinated to the Carolinian (Upper Austral), which prevails throughout the hilly middle country or Piedmont region of Virginia, the Caolinas and Georgia, as well as in the greater part of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. This transition from the Lower to the Upper Australzone is probably induced as much by increasing distance from the sea, with its tempering influence upon the climate, as by the relatively insignificant increase in the elevation of the land” (Kearney, 1901, 338-339).

The Dismal Swamp was delineated on maps (Fig. VII - 9 , Fig. VII - 10 ) and represented with photographs showing the headwaters of the North West River (Fig. VII - 11), the interior of a cypress and gum swamp (Fig VII - 12 ) and the condition of the Canal (Fig.

VII - 13). These landscape views record existing conditions and are intended to support the argument presented in the study, not promote tourism or make artistic statements.

The maps included in Kearney’s report used a recognizable graphic signature to delineate the Dismal Swamp within the physical context of the Tidewater region. The report also mentions long-term effects of the Dismal Swamp Canal on local hydrology.

The Canal raised the water table on swamplands to its west, saturating the soils and altering the composition of plant communities (Kearney, 1901, 339).

By the 1910s many principles of scientific forestry (as promoted by Gifford

Pinchot and the USFS) were being applied at the local level by state forestry departments

117 as well as by private industry. The Weeks Act (1911) was among the earliest pieces of

Federal legislation aimed at protecting watershed forests. The Act enabled federal and state governments to protect forested wetlands through purchase. It focused on the eastern states and promoted best practices in fire control on prioritized forested lands.

In part because of the Weeks Act, Virginia created its Division of Forestry in 1914 (Kirby,

2010, 221-223).

Despite decades of intensive logging, the soils of the Dismal Swamp remained a definitive and vital landscape feature in 1919. Another USDA survey (Osbon, 1919) included a map that delineated the Dismal Swamp based on the occurrence of peat soils

(Fig VII – 17). Although not labeled as a soil survey, this publication focused on the ongoing formation of peat soils that are associated with the decayed litter from two tree species, the “black-gum” (Nyssa sylvacita) and “juniper” (Chamaecyparis thyoides).

Historically, an important soil type associated with peat throughout the swamps of the

Tidewater was marl. Formed from fossil shell beds, marl is a locally available, low-cost means of reducing the acidity of peat. Without marl or some other neutralizing agent, the soils of the Dismal Swamp are “valueless for agriculture” (Osbon, 1919, 49-50).

For agricultural purposes, the structure of peats soils gives them hydrologic value. They can absorb and retain water over long periods of time. When chemically balanced, peat soils combined with a long growing season, mild winters and abundant sunshine lead to the ‘luxuriant’ vegetation found within the Dismal Swamp (Osbon, 1919,

45). Peat soils become economically productive once they have been drained, cleared and freely aerated. They are then suitable for cultivation in cash crops such as vetch, buckwheat, oats, rye, as well as some types of corn, cranberries, strawberries, blueberries and potatoes (Osbon, 1919, 51).

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The report promoted two additional uses for Dismal Swamp’s peat soils that require processing and export. When mixed with potash or phosphate, then limed and treated with nitrifying organisms peat soils can be made into fertilizer. This mix can then be applied as a fertilizer or used as a nitrogenous ingredient of commercial fertilizers. In addition peat represents energy that can be dried and burned as fuel.

During the early 20th century peat was considered a viable alternative to wood and coal for the domestic market in the United States, especially during “economic and industrial crises.” Comparative models for landscape management for peat fuel are cited in

Canada, Russia, Ireland and Scandinavia (Osbon, 1919, 54-57). The economic value of peat soils for all of these uses depends on a significant supply of material. The report details the physical extent of this source area:

“The Dismal Swamp cover(ed) approximately 2,200 square miles, of which a little more than 700 square miles has been permanently drained to a depth of 3 feet or more by Dismal Swamp Canal and smaller ditches… Much of the drained land is farmed. In the remaining 1,500 square miles peat deposits ranging in depth from 1 foot to 20 feet are found. The thickest beds lie in the region east and northeast of Lake Drummond, where peat of 18 feet deep was exposed by comparatively recent excavations. The peat in this area is black and low in inorganic impurities and is probably the best in the swamp” (Osban, 1919, 46).

Although focused on the utility of the landscape, the report is based on field surveys that reveal an understanding of processes that give it form. “As the limits of the swamp depend largely upon rainfall and vegetation, as well as topography, they are rather irregular and are not sharply defined” (Osbon, 1919, 41).

By 1919, when Osbon was conducting field work , The Dismal Swamp

Canal was in physically and economically in decline. Despite a round of improvements in 1899 that reduced the number of locks to two, the Dismal

Swamp Canal could not compete with the rival Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal

(A&C) for commercial traffic in the region. The A&C, owned and operated by the

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USACE since 1913, was toll-free and better maintained than in competitor

(USACE). Two private entities, the Richmond Cedar Works and the Roper

Lumber Company owned large tracts of land along its length. Its function in the landscape was no longer primarily for transporting goods to market.

“the Dismal Swamp Canal is almost a thing of the past. It now exists largely because it is in the interest of two big lumber corporations, the Richmond Cedar Works and John L. Roper Company. The canal serves these companies in that it holds the water on their millions of acres of juniper timber” (Sawyer, 2010, 158 -159).

By the 1920s state-sponsored studies revealed changes in forest composition that resulted from decades of harvesting. These surveys showed the Atlantic White Cedar

(Chamaecyparis thyoides) and Longleaf Pine (Pinus palustris), both once abundant in the Dismal Swamp, had been virtually harvested out. In the landscape they were frequently replaced with the fast-growing Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda) (Kirby, 2010, 223).

Since most land in the Dismal Swamp was privately owned in large tracts, it’s difficult to assemble a picture of how close to forty years of continuous timber harvesting played out in the landscape. Natural resources were the focus of maps produced by the USGS VII –

17 and VII – 18). The Dismal Swamp is featured on maps from the early 20th century, but with little to indicate changes in the landscape associated with land uses like logging or agriculture.

Probably one of the most significant developments in cartographic technique following World War I, was, the use of aerial photography and imagery in the assessment of natural resources (Antrop, 2013, 14 - 16 , LoV, 2000, 255, Buisseret, 2003, 185,

Duemplemann, 2014, 2, 78 - 79). An early account of the use of aerial photography focused on eastern Virginia mentions Lake Drummond and the Dismal Swamp as visible landscape elements. The description mimics the process of verifying field located elements using remote imagery. Viewed from 3,000 feet:

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“The general impression gained from this flight was much the same as that gained by looking down on a map spread on a table. There was no difficulty in recognizing the objects mapped, such as villages, streams, and roads. Even details like the color of the soil appear startlingly clear, and it was easy to distinguish the well-cultivated from the weedy fields. Town houses and streets appeared as if laid off by a draftsman’s rule” (Lee, 1920, 311-310).

Later in the same flight, Lee describes the Dismal Swamp:

“The smoke from Norfolk obscured our vision somewhat while we were over that city, but with our rate of 100 miles an hour we soon emerged from it to find ourselves over Dismal Swamp, which had the appearance of a vast dark-colored monotonous plain. Lake Drummond, the central body of water in this swamp, had the general aspect of a great hole in the plain rather than that of a body of water. Although the water of the lake is dark brown, like the water of the southern swamps generally, the lake bottom was dimly visible. It differed but little in color from the surrounding forest-covered land except that it was mottled with light areas of irregular shape. The general appearance of the lake basin reminded me of the photographs of lunar craters. The Nansemond scarp where the forested swamp gives place to the tilled fields of the higher lands to the west was clearly recognized. Still farther west the country consists chiefly of wooded valleys, “pocosons,” and forested plain with here and there a clearing. Near the main streams, however, the flat lowlands are generally cleared and cultivated” (Lee, 1920, 311-312).

Lee’s descriptions of the Dismal Swamp and environs from the air contain list many recognizable elements identified by previous mappings. He observed that the aerial view provided access to difficult terrain, such as swamps and mountainous areas for the map maker. It also provided perspective on physiographic processes including subaqueous landform (Lee, 1920, 316).

The Dismal Swamp is included on a 1919 USGS quad map (Fig VII - 18) that displays geographic information gathered by survey prior to the use of aerial photography. The Suffolk Scarp, the western boundary of the Dismal Swamp, is described with contour lines indicating elevation data gathered by survey in the field.

The two-foot contour interval is significant since there is less than 20 feet of elevation change across the Dismal Swamp. The USGS map represents a great deal of information

121 about the landscape captured by surveys conducted and verified on the ground. The

Dismal Swamp is labeled and delineated by vegetative cover, wetland symbol pattern and surrounding topography. The landscape is described in three dimensions primarily through use of lines of topography. The adjacent landscape also contains several features labeled as swamps and pocosins. These are named elements in the cultural landscape, not merely generic landscape types. Between Suffolk and the village of Holly

Grove there are six named pocosins (Daughtrey, Devil’s, Ruby, Parker, Black Mingle and

Hall) as well as twelve named swamps (Quaker-Jones-Spivey, Cypress-Council-Dragon,

Moss, Taylor-Adams-Pine and Goodwin-Duke). All of the swamps except for Quaker-

Jones-Spivey flow west to east or downhill into the Dismal Swamp.

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Figure VII – 1 – D.S. Walton, Civil Engineer, Dismal Swamp Canal – Connecting Chesapeake Bay with Currituck, Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and Their Tributaries - (1867) – This map shows the expanded transportation network centered on railroad and canal connections to the port cities of Suffolk and Norfolk, Virginia. Coastlines and the signature network of rivers and streams of the Tidewater are well represented. Lake Drummond is the only natural feature associated with the Dismal Swamp to be depicted. Industry triumphs over morphology. (University of North Carolina Collection)

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Figure VII- 2 "SKETCHES IN THE DISMAL SWAMP" [Drawn by W. L. Sheppard], published in "Harper's Weekly" June 1873. ‘Lake Drummond’, ‘Going into the Swamp – A check on the Tow’ and ‘The Lone House’ - Following the Civil War – The portrayal of the Dismal Swamp as a Romantic Wilderness was revived after the end of the Civil War. This 1873 selection from Harper’s Weekly, features Lake Drummond, hunting for waterfowl and a canal lock among its attractions. (CALO)

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Figure VII - 3 ‘A Peep into the Great Dismal Swamp’ from Edward King’s The Great South…(1875) – King promoted the Reconstruction-era South in Romantic terms as a “landscape of ruin”, in a series of articles later assembled in book form. A Northerner and Unionist, he promoted the idea of a nature-based tourism as a means of assimilating the South into American society following the Civil War. In this illustration from King’s book, Dismal Swamp is portrayed as mysterious and wild. (King, 1875)

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Figure VII – 4 – Bird’s Eye view of late 19th century Norfolk & Portsmouth, Virginia (1873) – Increased scale and scope of extractive industries and agriculture fueled urbanization in Virginia’s Tidewater. (Library of Congress)

Figure VII – 5 – Bird’s Eye View of Norfolk, Virginia (1873) – In addition to being the home of the Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk was the railhead for numerous rail lines including those from Eastern North Carolina and the Dismal Swamp. (Library of Congress)

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Figure VII - 6 - Dismal Swamp and Suffolk Farmhouse from OUR TWIN CITIES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: NORFOLK AND PORTSMOUTH THEIR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. - Robert W. Lamb, Ed. (1887-88) – The Dismal Swamp was described among assets of the growing cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, offering game, historical architecture and unique wild scenery for tourists. (Lamb, 1877-78)

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Figure V – 7 - ‘Photograph of Wallaceton (Virginia) late 1800s” – Wallacxeton was the landing on the Dismal Swamp Canal built by the Wallace family. It was located at the intersection of the Dismal Swamp and Northwest canals. George T. Wallace and his sons owned large tracts of land between Lake Drummond to the west and the Canal. The Canal is visible at the right. The structure on the right bank is a sawmill operated by the timber and lumber company Wallace & Sons. At the center of the photo is an unpaved roadway fronted by company buildings that include a store (location of the Wallaceton Post Office) and Superintendent’s house. Other Landings located along the Canal during that developed during the late 19th century include West (end of Cornland Road), Douglas (end of Douglas Road) and Stuart’s (opposite the nd of Beechwood Road) as well as Lynch’s Wharf (end of Ballahack Road).

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Figure VII – 8 – Hand-drawn map from John Boyle O’Reilly’s Sketches…(1890) Oriented to the Right, shows the Dismal Swamp Canal as paddled by O’Reilly between locks at ‘Village of Deep Creek’, VA (far right) to ‘Village of South Mills’ , NC (far left). Although a field sketch this map is rich in cultural and natural information as observed and recounted by O’Reilly. Of special interest is the use of the terms ‘swamp’ and ‘cultivated land’ to describe land-holdings. At center the North West River runs beneath(?) the Canal and is sourced in Lake Drummond. At top right is the Dismal Swamp Land Company property line. All properties above (west of) the Canal besides those owned by the Wallace family are currently within the NWR. (O’Reilly, 1890)

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Figure VII –9 – “Map No. 2 – Norfolk Peninsula Showing Fresh and Salt Water Marshes, Sand Dunes and Uplands” from Kearney’s 1901 Botanical Survey of the Great Dismal Swamp showing hard and soft edges of the Swamp. ‘The Green Sea’ a grassland just north of the North West River is visible at the center. (Kearney, 1901)

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Figure VII –10–‘ A SKETCH MAP of the Dismal Swamp District of Virginia and North Carolina’ (1901) from Kearney. The legend shows symbology for “Inundated Lands” and the note “The white areas within the swamp are drained lands”. This map does not include representation of topography, but does represent several important features of the region’s physical geography. Norfolk is represented the metropolis of the region amidst several railroads. The Dismal Swamp is labeled and bounded on the west by the Nansemond Escarpment and by an unnamed rail line emanating from Norfolk. The southern and eastern edges of the Dismal Swamp are less distinct, reflecting conditions in the landscape surveyed by Kearney. The Dismal Swamp Canal is one of many drainage ditches in the area. The railroad line connecting Norfolk with Hertford, North Carolina serves as a defacto perimeter. Note the spur line connecting Norfolk with the tiny ocean front settlement of Virginia Beach. Suffolk, another significant railhead for the region, is not included in this map. (Kearney, 1901)

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Figure VII –11– “View on the Headwaters of Northwest River, Dismal Swamp” Photo from Kearney’s Botanical Survey (1901). The North West River was one of the entry points into the Dismal Swamp for Kearney’s botanical survey. (Kearney, 1901)

Figure VII –12– “Black Gum Swamp showing Knees of the Cypress (Taxodium) and arched roots of the Black Gum (Nyssa Biflora). from Kearney’s Botanical Survey (1901). These two types of forest cover along with Atlantic White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides) form the three primary forest cover types of the Dismal Swamp. (Kearney, 1901)

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Figure VII – 13 “The Dismal Swamp Canal Near South Mills, N.C.” from Kearney (1901). Although a significant landscape feature, the Canal no longer carried significant commercial traffic by the time of Kearney’s survey. Water levels in the Canal were maintained by releases from Lake Drummond through the Feeder Ditch. The banks of the Canal appear to have been cleared and maintained. There is little evidence of economic activity on this section of the Canal. (Kearney, 1901)

Figure VII – 14 – “Hotel at Lake Drummond – Suffolk, Va.” A hunting party from the early 20th century is shown posing with several canoes (at left) on the porch of the hotel. Retreats such as this one represent the most permanent structures built on or near the Lake.

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Figure VII – 15 – ‘Making up a Tow at South Mills, North Carolina , postcard (1906), This postcard shows (left to right), two tugboats and several sail-powered boats at the south terminus of the Dismal Swamp Canal. (CALO)

Figure VII – 16 Undated photo from early 20th century of railroad line leading out of Dismal Swamp. Tracks have been laid on built up platform of log crossties. Rail lines such as this were used to extract timber from the Dismal Swamp for much of the later half of the 19th century and well into the 20th century. Once the focus of the wood product industry in the Dismal Swamp shifted from shingle-gathering and making to lumbering production, the landscape became increasingly industrialized. Privately owned and operated infrastructure such as rail lines played a significant role in shaping the Dismal Swamp. (CALO)

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Figure VII – 17 – Delineation of the Peat Soil of the Great Dismal Swamp, from C.C. Osbon’s survey for the USGS, 1919 -shows distribution of peat (green) and location of test borings (red circles). The Dismal Swamp is not bounded but is represented with its own symbol. Railroad lines are also depicted and labeled (such as Norfolk-Southern, Atlantic Coast Line). Seven rivers are sourced in the Dismal Swamp as are several waterbodies. Otherwise there is little information about the physical landscape shown. The amount of peatland-swamp still in existence to the south of the state boundary (North Carolina and east of the Canal is striking. (USGS, 1919)

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Figure VII - 18 “TOPOGRAPHY – SUFFOLK [, VA. – N.C.] QUADRANGLE, Department of the Interior, War Department and State of Virginia Geological Survey (1919) Survey team is listed at bottom left and includes several geographers. The legend in the lower right margin calls out two patterns, “Woods” (olive green) and Woods and Brush” (light green). (USGS,)

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CHAPTER 8 - A turn towards Conservation 1929 – 2011

For much of the 20th century, the Dismal Swamp remained in private ownership.

The land uses of agriculture and timber harvesting continued to play a significant role in shaping the landscape. Between 1929 and 2011 a number of factors led to significant portions the Dismal Swamp being protected as public lands. Efforts to conserve the

Dismal Swamp were aided by shifts in the international economy, increased awareness of the value of wetlands, developments in map-making techniques and the efforts of a political constituency that valued it for many reasons.

The Dismal Swamp Canal and Feeder Ditch were the first components of the

Dismal Swamp landscape to be transferred into the public domain. They were acquired by the Federal government in 1929 when the Lake Drummond Canal & Water Company declared bankruptcy. The administration of the Canal and the water rights to Lake

Drummond (via the Feeder Ditch) were assigned to the United States Army Corps of

Engineers (USACE). This land transfer ended 124 years of private ownership and operation. The Canal had become increasingly obsolete for its original purpose after the opening of the Chesapeake and Albemarle (C & A) Canal in 1853. The C & A had been owned operated by the USACE as part of a toll-free inland waterway since 1913 (USACE).

By the early 20th century, The Dismal Swamp Canal's physical condition was deteriorated and required maintenance from its new administrator. The water rights to the Lake were originally secured to maintain the levels of the Canal. The USACE incorporated the still-functional Dismal Swamp Canal into the Atlantic Coastal

Waterway. The Lake continued to supply water to the Canal. USACE administration allowed for access to Lake Drummond by hunters and fisherman. No conservation measures were included in the USACE’s long term plans for its portion of the Dismal

Swamp (USACE, Sawyer, 2010, xx, NR DSC - 1987).

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Federal policies that reflected a greater understanding of wetland landscapes began to take effect during the early 20th century. Among the most significant was the passage of the Migratory Bird Conservation Act (MBCA) in 1929. This Act marked the effective beginning of federally sponsored wildlife conservation. The MBCA was an extension of an international treaty (signed in 1913) aimed at conserving habitat for waterfowl along the Atlantic flyway. It provided the regulatory basis for creating wildlife refuges in the United States (Badger, 2007, 3). The MBCA provided funding for land acquisition, enabling the Federal Government to purchase land for habitat protection. It drew political support from hunters and fishermen as well as from naturalists and others interested in protecting wildlife populations. Since the MBCA focused on the habitat of waterfowl populations this made wetlands a priority. Specifically the MBCA meant that wetlands along the Atlantic flyway could be delineated as habitat, purchased by the federal government and protected within a system of national wildlife refuges by the

United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) (Sawyer, 2010, 184, USFWS, 2006)

This marked a turning point for the conservation of wetlands in the United States

(Badger, 2007, 3 – 4, Vileisis, 1997, pp.). Adding land to the public domain reflected a re-valuing of landscape that made protection of wildlife habitat into a public good.

By the 1930s, the widespread adoption of techniques and practices of professional forestry were also shaping the Tidewater landscape whether publicly or privately owned. Surveys that identified and inventoried trees were used in formulating management plans. Although forest conservation usually meant managing forested lands as commercial enterprises, scientific forestry did include practices intended to preserve landscapes. The wood product industry employed fire suppression techniques developed by the USFS. The industry also accepted grading systems for lumber that included labeling (Kirby, 1995, 223 - 224). The generic term Southern Yellow Pine

(SYP) dates from this time period. It refers to any of five commercially valuable native

138 pine trees found in the southeastern United States. As defined by the United States

Forest Service (USFS) process lumber that attained a minimum structural capacity could be graded SYP and marketed to the construction industry. Four of the five pines identified as SYP are native to the Dismal Swamp (USFS, 1931, 2-3).

The ecological crisis, including the Dust Bowl, that accompanied the Great

Depression brought the conservation of natural resources to the forefront of public policy in many forms. Federal programs like the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), the

Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the

Works Progress Administration (WPA) played a significant role in shaping the landscape in regions like the Tidewater (Vileisis, 1999, 171-172). Through the years of the Great

Depression, the Dismal Swamp was held as private property. Its land use pattern was very similar to that of the Tidewater region. Large tracts of the remaining Swamp were owned by timber companies or were maintained in industrial-scale agriculture. Despite the prevalence of privately owned land, Federal investment in the region in the form of

New Deal programs did shape the landscape. National programs like the Civilian

Conservation Corps (CCC) played an important role in fire suppression on the private as well as public forested lands of the region. The timber industry adopted such practices and accepted federally funded labor such as the CCC to implement them (Kirby, 2010,

224). WPA sponsored projects built roads and highways that improved communications, implemented soil conservation programs and promoted improved agricultural practices throughout the Tidewater. In the region’s forested lands, New Deal programs constructed fire and logging roads sized to accommodate trucks, which had become the preferred mode of transport. The system of roads and ditches supporting access to the Dismal Swamp for fire management remains visible in the landscape. In addition to adopting forest management practices, resource managers on public lands often included recreational planning (Zelinsky, 1994, 325-328, Vileisis, 1997, 171-172).

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The emphasis on natural resource planning brought changes in mapping as well.

Starting in the 1930s, a new cartographic technique was integrated into natural resource management practice. At this time USGS cartographers began using aerial photographs to survey as well as to make revisions to maps of natural resources. Aerial photography was initially developed as a surveillance technique by the military. It became a way to supplement traditional, survey-driven mapping and was especially valuable in visually classifying land uses (Duempelmann, 2014, 161, Buisseret,LoV, 2000, 255, 263). Aerial photography also allowed map makers to survey, revise and monitor environmental conditions and to supplement existing data gathered by ground-level surveys. USGS maps that include the Dismal Swamp from the early and mid-20th century represented a view into the landscape previously not available to the public or from traditional terrestrial surveys (Lee, 1920, 316).

In the Dismal Swamp, the USACE directed New Deal resources towards the maintenance and improvement of the Dismal Swamp Canal. Starting in the early 1930s, these included several public works projects. In 1933, the Canal was dredged to a width of 50 feet and a depth of nine feet for its entire twenty-two mile length. In 1934, The

USACE built drawbridges over the remaining locks at Deep Creek (VA) and at South

Mills (NC) to accommodate US Route 17 crossings. A new control spillway was built on the Feeder Ditch in 1935 and new concrete and steel locks were added at Deep Creek and

South Mills during a project lasting from 1940 to 1941 (USACE).

The 1940s and 1950s were an especially intensive period for timber harvesting in the Dismal Swamp. Regional landscape patterns associated with industrial-scale timber harvesting and agriculture continued following World War II, reflecting continuity in land ownership and economic activity. This pattern included elements in the built environment such as the network of canals, drainage ditches, levees and roads or

140 causeways built across heavily altered swamplands (USFWS, 2006, 54) the absence of tree cover and gaps in the wetland pattern may indicate intensive timber harvesting.

Industrial sites like mills, and spur rail lines were a telltale signature of logging activity on USGS maps. Cultural features recorded in and around the area labeled as Dismal

Swamp are more telling of environmental conditions.

A set of USGS maps from the 1940s and 50s shows several significant landscape patterns in the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp (Fig VIII – 1 – VIII – 5). Established land uses like large-scale agriculture and industrial forestry are indicated with a combination of vegetative cover and graphic representations of cultural features. These maps also include cartographic signatures for urban or built up areas and the expanding network of transportation systems, both of which were shown in red. Regional maps from the post-

War period provided valuable records of industrial growth in established urban areas like the Tidewater. At this scale maps like those produced for the USGS showed the physical interconnectedness of the Dismal Swamp and the surrounding landscape.

During the time period after World War II Rapid growth of cities like Portsmouth and

Norfolk led to the creation of new cities like Chesapeake (from Princess Anne County) and Virginia Beach (from a portion of Norfolk County during the 1940s (Kirby, 1995,

230-231). The aerial view helped to define region in ecological terms on maps showing urbanized or built-up areas as well as rural, agricultural and natural areas like the

Dismal Swamp (Duemplemann, 2014, 229). The combination of more widely available mapping and survey technology and developments in the natural sciences (ecology) was partly a response to urban and industrial growth in population centers like Virginia’s

Tidewater (McHarg & Mumford, 1969, 19).

Rapid urban growth in and around many American cities gave an urgency to the practice of land planning. It became regional in scope to include changing environmental

141 conditions. The region became a significant scale and regional-scale planning became an important arena for applying both research agendas and plans to shape future development (McHarg, 1969, 153, 174-175). Regional-scale maps were useful in identifying illegal or deteriorating buildings, air and water pollution and changes in vegetative patterns. Using the aerial view, land planners from a variety of disciplines could see the distribution patterns of landscape elements or ecosystems (Duempelmann,

2014, 209-210). The aerial view showed landscape at a scale that revealed patterns like urban growth and its connectedness to the natural landscape. This technology in turn, changed the way that the landscape was experienced, visually and from the air. The aerial view portrayed landscape as both a whole and interconnected surface bounded by the camera or recording device and as a fragmented surface (Corner & McLean, 200x, 15

- 16). Landscape patterns showed interconnectedness and as well as sharp divisions.

The rapidly developing post-War landscape meant that environmental planners needed to learn to read the natural patterns in the regional landscape (as made available by aerial photographs) in order to direct conservation and guide future development.

The aerial photo rather than the map became the preferred scale of analysis for planners.

Ecology offered an integrated theoretical approach that corresponded to the visual pattern (Duempleman, 2014, 221-223). At this scale, the landscape was defined by ecological patterns (the flows of animals, plants, energy, mineral nutrients and water; and the ecological changes in the landscape over time (Forman & Godron, 1986, 1-5).

From an aerial perspective it becomes apparent that the human pattern appeared to dominate, perhaps more prevalent than previously understood (Corner & McLean, 1996,

4).

An important cartographic product associated with this approach to mapping at the regional scale was the overlay or ”layer-cake representation” map developed by the

142 planner Ian McHarg (Forman & Godron, 1986, 483-484, Corner & McLean, 2000x, 14 -

16). Layer cakes were essentially suitability maps which were based on detailed (mostly ecological) inventories. These regional-scale maps were especially effective at conveying factors in the physical landscape and their predicted relationship to land use patterns.

Cultural values were more problematic to represent and to analyze (Duemplemann,

2014, 226-228). This definition of the region became a standard unit of analysis and sometimes a political entity such as a conservation district or a regional planning district.

It remains an effective scale for showing the human-environment interface. Layer cake representations were (and are) designed to be legible to a broad audience. Layer cake maps and the region as defined by a spatial analysis methodology became standard planning tools. The aerial view became an important perspective on the landscape, taking in cultural and natural pattern. J. B. Jackson’s Landscape magazine sought landscape studies that were “illustrat(ed) by aerial photograph” (Forman & Godron,

1986, 7). These were among methods and tools developed by the military during the

Cold War such as the use of aerial and satellite photography to be combined with the goals of the environmental movement (Dumpelmann, 2014, 221-223). Aerial photographs have been especially useful in portraying ecosystems that make up landscapes and at illustrating their boundaries (Forman & Godron, 1986, 11). The aerial view has shaped how we view wilderness as well.

“The maps all show the continent to be green wild landscapes save for the sepia cities huddled on lakes and seaboards, but look from a plane as it crosses the continent and makes idiocy of distance, see the wild green sectioned as rigorously as the city” (McHarg, 1969, 22-23)

By the early 1960s several decades of intensive timber harvesting had taken a visible toll on the Dismal Swamp. As the pulp and paper industry shifted to the South plantation scale, industrial forestry became the rule in the Dismal Swamp and in the region. Indicators of landscape change were noted in the composition of forest’s ecology.

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Pulpwood production led to an even more widespread planting of the fast-growing, native Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda) which continued a trend first noted by Ashe (1911)

(Kirby, 1995, 224). The transition in the global market for the wood products of the

Dismal Swamp and vicinity was also marked by the rise of corporate forestry in the region. During the early 1960s the Union Bag and Paper Company acquired of Camp

Manufacturing, including its land holdings in the Dismal Swamp. Wood pulp for paper rather than wood for lumber for construction became the most important commercial product for export (Sawyer, 2010, Kirby, 1995, 234).

Even as it was being logged out, the Dismal Swamp remained a destination for hunters and fishermen. The romantic wilderness with limited access enjoyed by sportsmen was a familiar scene held over from earlier experiences of the Dismal Swamp.

A 1962 article from Sports Illustrated provided a rare glimpse into the landscape described as a “boggy, watery wilderness full of secrets” (Olsen, 1962, 2). Readers were advised to visit this roadside attraction while it still existed. Beyond the logging operations of companies such as the Union Bag-Camp Paper Company private hunting and fishing clubs formed the most significant surviving human presence in the Dismal

Swamp. Guides in the region were beginning to accommodate naturalists and bird- watchers, in addition to hunters and fishermen. Despite being accessible from US Route

17 (en route to the Outer Banks from points to the north) little formal conservation had occurred by the mid-20th century. Access to the Swamp was granted mostly to sportsmen via parcels assigned to private clubs. As of 1962, there were still dozens of abandoned logging camps and mill sites in the Dismal Swamp, evidence of the activities of independent loggers from a previous generation. The Dismal Swamp’s future was very much in doubt at the time the article was published. Although environmental quality was peripheral to the article's focus, which by the time of the author's visit was in the process of being logged out intensively (Olsen, 1962, 1-5).

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The campaign to conserve the Dismal Swamp as a publicly-owned, protected wild area with national historic significance dates to the early 1960s. In some ways it resembled the national pattern of conservation activism and drew from a varied constituency. Popular support for Federal and State levels protection of tidal wetlands was often based on the increased understanding of their value to fisheries as well as to water quality. Political support for conservation of the Dismal Swamp began as a local effort led by Richmond native Alva Carter Duke and included William Ashley, of the

Isaak Walton League (Sawyer, 2010, 185). Like similar campaigns aimed at protecting wetlands the campaign to protect the Dismal Swamp focused resources on conserving waterfowl, habitat and parkland through lobbying, public education and land acquisition. Some support for conserving the Dismal Swamp came from citizens opposed to the construction of an planned airport to serve Norfolk. An airport was proposed within the Dismal Swamp Environmental activism created a new constituency in support of conservation (Vileisis, 1997, 223, 226-228).

The Union-Camp Corporation was the largest land owner in the Dismal Swamp when it made a donation of its entire holdings, including the old Washington Entry tract, to the Federal government. Union-Camp received a tax credit of $12.6 million from the

Internal Revenue Service (IRS). At the time it was the largest wildlife preserve ever given to the American public (Kirby, 1995, 234, Sawyer, 2010, 185). It was also one of the largest single corporate gifts in history (Vileisis, 1997, 223). This land transfer was facilitated by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Conservation Fund (CF), environmental conservation organizations with expertise in real estate, land development and finance. TNC brokered this land transfer by negotiating tax credits from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) based on the value of conservation easements attached to the Union-Camp properties. The Corporation donated both conservation easements and land to the Department of the Interior. The innovative approach

145 included re-valuing the Union Camp’s Dismal Swamp properties based not on their capacity for producing wealth (which had been exhausted by industrial scale timber harvesting) but on their value to the public as an ecosystem (Sawyer, 2012, 185 - 186,

Vileisis, 1997, 289-290). The Dismal Swamp Act of 1974, Public Law 98-402, (PL 98-

402) established the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge was formed from assembled properties donated to the Federal government by the Union-

Camp Bag Corporation. PL 98-402 also prioritized the water rights of the Lake and

Feeder Ditch for use in maintaining wildlife habitat in the GDS rather than for maintaining water levels in the Canal (PL 98-402 – AUG. 30, 1974, USACE).

At the center of the creation of the GDS was a re-valuing of the landscape. The dimensions of what became the GDS were based on it being defined as an ecosystem.

The boundaries of the newly created GDS were based on available land (from Union-

Camp) and on recommendations from environmental surveys. Key data from the

Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 1972 survey of the Dismal Swamp established thresholds for the recommended size of the proposed Refuge. Initially a 210,000-acre study area was proposed for protection and restoration. Eventually the Secretary of the

Interior recommended 123,000 acres for protection (USFWS, 2006, 93). According to the USFWS the Dismal Swamp NWR is among the first of its protection areas (units) to focus on the management of an ecosystem. The size and shape of the GDS were established not just to accommodate wildlife habitat or to demonstrate compliance with the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Delineation is a reflection of it being defined as an ecosystem (Sawyer, 2010, 185-186). Since the 1990s the USFWS has emphasized an ecosystem approach to fulfilling its mission of habitat and wildlife protection on other

Refuges throughout the country (USFWS, 2006).

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The creation of the GDS brought an end to industrial scale logging in the Dismal

Swamp. It also ended activities associated with the timber industry like road construction, the extension of rail lines and the operation of mills and processing plants.

It’s not clear what was envisioned for the Dismal Swamp landscape in the immediate aftermath of conservation. It did represent a significant accomplishment for the constituency formed in support of conservation.

“The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, exists today as a product of the conservation activism of the 1970’s. We may no longer have to be concerned that any of the numerous get rich quick schemes that have been proposed since (William) Byrd first recommended that the, “horrible desert” which was “…a blot on His Majesty’s Kingdom.”, be drained…, will be brought to fruition. With careful management, someday our grandchildren may be able to experience some aspects of what George Washington described in his letters to Light Horse Harry Lee …as “a paradise” (Levy, 1991, 416).

Ending logging and fire suppression, mitigating the impacts of infrastructure, managing hydrology, limiting hunting and re-establishing vegetative communities are a few of the measures undertaken since 1974, when the Dismal Swamp Act established the National

Wildlife Refuge (USFWS, 2006). The creation of the NWR made the navigational needs of the Canal secondary to the water conservation needs of the GDS. This has limited the amount of water drawn from Lake Drummond to maintain levels in the Canal (USACE).

Since the GDS was created with support from a diverse constituency, it follows that it is managed for multiple users. The 2006 Comprehensive Plan (CP) summarizes this approach and serves as a catalog of the types of uses accommodated on the GDS. In the USFWS the concept of multiple users is often expressed in a definition of community as an extension of the ecosystem. This reflects the agency’s adoption of ideas promoted by Aldo Leopold. The idea of a land ethic stressed an ecological and ethical approach to land and resource management that treated the environment as equal partner (USFWS,

2006, v).

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Maps have an important role in representing the GDS as a landscape that balances access for recreational activities for human members of the community with longer term conservation goals. (Fig VIII – 6 through Fig. VIII - 9). While hunting and fishing are still permitted within the NWR, buildings such as cabins or lodges to accommodate overnight stays that once lined Lake Drummond have been removed or allowed to fall into ruin. Much of the road system constructed in the 20th century was designed to support heavy equipment associated with timber harvesting or to support fire equipment. Some transportation structures associated with logging activities were kept in place and have been repurposed for recreational use by the public. Among the varied management goals are plans that prioritize the GDS’ value as habitat, manage the necessary fire cycle to maintain species diversity and community structure, and educate the public about the Swamp’s role in the Underground Railroad. Since 1988, the Dismal

Swamp Canal has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NR) as well as designated a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark USACE, USFWS, 2006).

The Dismal Swamp is currently valued for several qualities, for wildlife habitat by the USFWS, recreational opportunities available through the State Park, along the Canal and in NWR, for as the location of historic structures associated with the Dismal Swamp

Canal. More recently it has been valued as the location of archeological evidence of

Maroon communities prior to the Civil War and as a key component in the Underground

Railroad.

For the last 40 years the USFWS has balanced access for recreation with ecosystem management goals. More recently ecological restoration in the Dismal

Swamp has been the result of active intervention in the landscape. During the last fifteen years the NWR and northeastern North Carolina has been the scene of active restoration focused on the Swamp’s peat soils (Shelton/USFWS, 2012) as well as on the re-planting

148 of Atlantic white cedar (TNC, 2009). Re-watering the Swamp also helps to suppress wildfires (USFWS, 2012). Peat soils are especially flammable during extended periods of drought. The historically altered water table tends to exacerbate these conditions. Re- planting cedar swamps also helps to stabilize the water table. As the Swamp’s bio- physical ecology is restored, collective memory of the character of the Swamp’s (oral histories for examples) has often proven a valuable record for baseline data regarding flora and fauna (Simpson, 1998).

The USFWS now claims the GDS as the “largest urban wildlife refuge in the US” since the adjacent Tidewater region has a human population of more than 1.6 million

(USFWS, 2006, 93). The proximity to the urban population of the northeast

(Megalopolis) is now viewed as an opportunity to promote the GDS as a laboratory and for public education (USFWS, 2006, 21). These are lofty goals, typical of a vision statement found in a document like a Comprehensive Plan. The descriptions offered by the CP indicate that the GDS is valued as a varied and dynamic landscape. The GDS is not a wilderness, as it lacks the necessary pristine qualities. Its climate and location have resulted in a unique blending of northern and southern species. The “highly disturbed ecosystem” of the Dismal Swamp makes it the most complex publicly owned ecosystem in the Northeastern Region of the USFWS (USFWS, 2006, 20-21). The superlatives go on.

The primary purpose of the GDS remains to protect this unique ecosystem where the USFWS pioneered the concept of “natural resources stewardship on the landscape scale”. In recent decades this has also meant restoring the biological diversity of the GDS through hydrologic restoration and fire management. There are also now programs in place aimed at restoring historic populations of black bears, migratory birds and communities of Atlantic Cedar through natural regeneration. (USFWS, 2006, 78).

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According to the USFWS, the GDS is now delineated on the north by U.S.

Highway 58, on the east by the Dismal Swamp Canal, on the south by U.S. Highway 158 and on the west by the Suffolk Scarp (USFWS, 2006, 35). This delineation defines the

Dismal Swamp as lands within the NWR, the USACE and SP. The boundary is reinforced by elements in the built environment such existing highways, roads and earthworks (Fig. VIII – 10). The effect is the creation of an edge that is legible on maps and visible in aerial photographs and satellite images at many scales. This boundary has also been codified as a the 'Swamp Periphery'

“…of the swamp offers only a hint of the vast forested area lying beyond. Along most of its periphery, the swamp acts a backdrop for various landscapes including highways, farms, and residences. Because of the sudden disruption of forest lands by development or clearing, the swamp's essential character as a potential ecological isolate, or "island", is emphasized” (USFWS, 2006, 50).

The Dismal Swamp’s current boundary is the result the confluence of a number of historic processes. These include changes in how wetlands like swamps are understood and valued as well as changes in the global market for wood products. After World War

II, advances in natural science also linked wetlands with fisheries and public water supplies. Environmentalists convinced the public that conserving wetlands like the

Dismal Swamp was a vital national interest. Conservation efforts that focused on landscapes like the Dismal Swamp drew from an accumulated set of federal protection policies aimed at resource protection at the habitat and ecosystem scale. The availability of geographic information showing the physical extent and interconnectedness of the urban and the rural landscape patterns gave graphic weight to the argument that environmental quality and urban growth were interconnected. Conservation plans included public access to the Dismal Swamp for long-time visitors which helped to build a constituency for its conservation. Access to the GDS for recreation is provided to the public via a built environment that has been re-purposed since the Refuge was created.

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Many layers of the history of the Dismal Swamp are contained within its cultural landscape. Maps hold the key to reading its history and appreciating its fluctuating boundary.

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Figure VIII – 1 Beckford Quadrangle (NC), 1940 – WAR DEPARTMENT, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, The southwest portion of the Dismal Swamp is included on this map. It is represented with a combination of standard wetland pattern (blue) and vegetative cover (light green). Vegetation is not differentiated. At this scale (1:62,500) the western edge of the Dismal Swamp is distinctly visible. The Suffolk Scarp is indicated by topography, land use pattern and a series of small population center at the western edge of the Dismal Swamp. A paved highway runs north to south connecting Suffolk, Virginia with Edenton, North Carolina. Several place names include ‘Forks’ and Crossroads’. None of the areas pocosins are labeled. (USGS, 1940)

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Figure VIII – 2 - South Mills (NC) Quadrangle, 1940 – USGS – This map includes the town of South Mills, North Carolina, the southern terminus of the Dismal Swamp Canal (upper right). The Canal joins the Pasquotank River which flows southeast into the Albemarle Sound. This map features two areas labeled as the Dismal Swamp (top center and lower center). At the top center of the map is an area centered on the population centers of Lynch’s Corner and Morgan’s Corner that shows the signature of the wood product industries. North and South of State Highway 158 is a network of ditches, spur railroad lines, mill sites and logging roads. White spaces in this area have been drained and the vegetative cover removed. This contrasts with the surrounding Dismal Swamp landscape, which is represented with a combination of wetland pattern (blue) and vegetative cover (green). Horseshoe, the location of a shingle-getting camp portrayed by Porte Crayon during his 1856 visit, is visible near the top center. (USGS, 1940)

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Figure VIII – 3 - Lake Drummond (VA – N.C.) Quadrangle, 1940 – USGS, This map shows all of Lake Drummond (at center left) and the entire section of the Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia. Deep Creek, the northern terminus of the Canal is visible at the top center, amidst the agricultural landscape just south of Norfolk. The area west of the Canal is almost uniformly represented as vegetated (green) and as wetland (blue standard pattern). The signature of large scale agriculture is visible to the east of the Canal along the North West River. Irrigation ditches (blue lines) and farm roads (brown) appear along paved local roadways (redlines and dashed red lines). The Canal includes a series of Landings (West, Douglas, Arbuckle) and the population center Wallaceton near the center of the map. It is unclear whether any of the landscape east of the Canal is still considered part of the Dismal Swamp from this map. (USGS, 1940)

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Figure VIII – 4 - Suffolk (VA) Quadrangle, 1954 – USGS – This map shows the close physical proximity of the Dismal Swamp to the city of Suffolk, Virginia (shown in red at top). The Suffolk Scarf is visible running north to south and forms a clear physical edge of the Swamp. Several smaller named swamps and pocosins are also visible. The region to the west of the Suffolk Scarp is characterized by farmland and north-south transportation corridors. (USGS, 1954)

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Figure VIII – 5 - Deep Creek (VA), Quad, 1954, USGS – This map is focused on the northeast portion of the Dismal Swamp. The Elizabeth River and portions of the growing cities of Portsmouth and Norfolk are visible at the top center. (USGS, 1954)

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Figure VIII – 6 – Refuge and Resource Descriptions, Forest Cover Communities (USFWS, 2006, 68)

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Figure –VIII – 7 - Public Use Map (USFWS, 2006, 96)

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Figure VIII – 8 - Deer Hunt Map (USFWS, 2006)

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Figure VIII – 9 - Bear Hunt Map (USFWS, 2006)

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Figure VIII – 10 - “Dismal Swamp Storyboard, USACE (2012)

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CHAPTER 9 – FINDINGS & AFTERWORDS

The Great Dismal Swamp (GDS) currently has a clear visible boundary on maps and in the landscape. This thesis has documented some of the most significant landscape changes that have led to its current configuration. In order to highlight its evolution as a cultural landscape, this thesis has presented evidence of change over time by assembling maps, images and written accounts.

The survey of maps dating from between the late 16th and early 21st centuries shows a pattern of variation in how the Dismal Swamp has been represented. This landscape has been represented on maps since the earliest European exploration of the

Tidewater region. In that time, representations of the Dismal Swamp have varied in size, shape and composition. Even Lake Drummond, a constant landscape feature, has varied in size, location and in how it is related to physical geography of the region. The chronology that emerges from this process reveals a landscape that has been represented in a variety of ways over time as it has evolved amidst larger regional patterns. There are several possible explanations for this.

A simple explanation is that map making techniques have evolved over time. The maps that include the Dismal Swamp reflect this process. Surveying and mapping practices changed considerably between the late 16th century and the early 21st centuries.

So have techniques for producing maps. The information available to mapmakers about the Dismal Swamp landscape has also increased as the Swamp and the Tidewater region have been explored, surveyed, settled and cultivated, logged, and urbanized. In this thesis the first-hand accounts of visitors to the Dismal Swamp serve as indicators of the growth in knowledge about it. Cartographic representations also reflect advances in knowledge. For much of the 18th century and again during the first half of the 19th century, the Dismal Swamp was mapped more as a tracing, a kind of graphic short hand,

163 than as a surveyed landscape. Eventually during the late 19th century through 21st century, the Dismal Swamp was mapped with increasingly standardized approaches and techniques. These reflected an increased understanding of soils, hydrology, plant communities, topography and other natural systems that contribute to the ongoing formation of the Dismal Swamp landscape.

Mapping the Dismal Swamp is not a new cartographic challenge. As a landscape type, swamps have proven difficult to map. At heart this is a deceptively simple problem.

In order to delineate a swamp, two of its most important components must be identified, separated, and represented graphically. What is land and what is water? The landscape history of the Great Dismal Swamp has been written in the ever changing re- interpretation of how these two interrelated elements have been defined. Since delineation refers to both drawing and description, pairing landscape descriptions with maps when building a chronology to explain how and why the Dismal Swamp has been mapped is helpful. Although swamps like the Dismal Swamp are now better understood than previously, it’s not clear that delineating a swamp has become any easier. Currently

USGS maps offer several categories in representing swamplands in the United States. A swamp might be represented with a symbol that represents it as” Marsh or Swamp”,

“Submerged marsh or swamp”, “Submerged wooded marsh or swamp”, “Wooded marsh or swamp” or simply “Land subject to inundation” (Wood & Fels, 2008, 210). All of these landscape conditions are represented in the GDS.

Changes in how the Dismal Swamp has been mapped are also reflections of changes in the landscape resulting from larger, long-term processes. The GDS is dynamic and part of larger processes of landscape formation. The GDS is located within a region, the Tidewater that has been formed by the long-term erosion and weathering of the Appalachian Mountains, by established climatic patterns like hurricanes and

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Nor’easters as well as by the tidal actions of rivers, bays and estuaries. Human activities have shaped and been shaped by the landscape over time as well. Depending on which indicators were prioritized in delineating the Dismal Swamp, its shape or boundary has varied. One time period’s mappings might have prioritized forest cover while another emphasized soil characteristics, producing boundaries with different configurations for the same landscape. The GDS’ boundaries are further complicated by fire cycles, weather patterns and land use.

The way the GDS has been mapped has also reflected changes in the meaning of the swamp. Over time the increased understanding and appreciation of the Dismal

Swamp has led to its protection as a public landscape. Graphic representations and written accounts reflect the experiences of people who visited the GDS at a given time and often reveal attitudes towards the landscape, about nature and its evolving cultural value. The GDs was created in 1974, by a local political movement that drew from a larger reconsideration of wetland landscapes. This change in perspective has taken place especially during the 20th century, as swamps and other wetland landscapes have been recognized for their value in providing wildlife habitat and in their role in affecting water quality for human uses. In its current state, the Dismal Swamp is valued as an ecosystem, a land unit dimensioned to accommodate certain ecological functions.

Because it has been protected as public land for over forty years, landscape change associated with many natural processes has shaped the landscape of GDS, sometimes in ways that were unanticipated.

The GDS can be viewed, experienced, interpreted and managed as a historic landscape in addition to being valued as a unique ecosystem. The most apparent element of the cultural landscape is the hydraulic system. Currently physical access to the GDS is via this set of component of the cultural landscape. As the historic

165 infrastructure allows physical access, an understanding of the history of the cultural landscape also allow the visitor to see more than a wilderness or disturbed landscape or a post-industrial landscape in recovery. This cultural landscape study has been based on a documented comparison between existing conditions and historic conditions in the GDS.

The documentation of changes in the landscape using maps, images and written accounts has been

The Pine Barrens of New Jersey offers an example of a landscape with some similarities to the Dismal Swamp. It’s an example of a historic wetland being protected and managed through a combination of ecological and cultural resource management by the Pinelands Commission of New Jersey. This state-level agency has mapped the cultural landscape as a set of layers that are included in planning documents

(http://www.state.nj.us/pinelands/). (Demitroff, 2014) Cultural landscape studies suggest that the protection of cultural resources in the Pine Barrens can be integrated with those of natural resources as part of an ongoing planning and management process

The assembled cultural landscape history should be integrated into a Geographic

Information System (GIS). This could be as simple as geo-referencing the historic maps that already exist in digital form and scanning those that do not. This map compilation could then be used to integrate historic maps into existing planning documents like those maintained by the USFWS or State and local agencies. A GIS would allow for quick visual comparisons between time periods. Geographic data, such as landscape-scale observations from the historic record, could also be included in GIS layers. Digitized maps that have been geo-referenced set accurate spatial relationships between elements identified in the landscape as part of ongoing cultural resources surveys such as archeology and landscape studies (Knowles, 2002, 2005, 2008).

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Figure IX - 1 - Aerial photo – The Great Dismal Swamp from Satellite image (2012) Early 21st century map centered on the Great Dismal Swamp oriented with north to the right. The region between the mouth of James River at Hampton Roads (center right) and the Albemarle Sound has experienced development in the form of agriculture and urbanization, especially during the latter half of the 20th century. (Earth Snapshot)

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Figure IX – 2 – detail of “Submerged Areas and Bogs” - Standard legend USGS (USGS/ Wood & Fels, 2008))

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Figure IX – 3 Lake Drummond (2012) Low angle aerial view looking southeast to northwest across the “Lake of the Dismal” (USFWS/ USACE)

Figure IX – 4 Aerial view of Lake Drummond showing wooded shoreline and clouds reflected in its signature black water. (USFWS/ USACE)

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Figure IX – 5 Low angel aerial photograph of the Lateral West fire advances through the area west of Lake Drummond (2011). (Los Angeles Times)

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Figure IX – 6 – ‘PUBLIC INFORMATION MAP – LATERAL WEST FIRE – GREAT DISMAL SWAMP (USFWS, 2011)

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Figure IX – 7 – View northwest of area burned by Later West fire (summer 2011). The southwest edge of Lake Drummond is visible at the right. (USFWS/ USACE)

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Figure IX – 8 – Aerial view of USACE Lock on Feeder Ditch. Since its construction in 1812, the Feeder Ditch has provided water to maintain the level of the Dismal Swamp Canal. Currently it provides public access to Lake Drummond. Like the Canal, the Feeder Ditch has undergone numerous physical alternations associated with ongoing operation and maintenance. Along with the canal it is administered by the USACE. Visible in this photo are fire crews (in yellow) on training at the USACE – operated campground. (USACE)

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Figure IX – 9 – Aerial view looking north along the Dismal Swamp Canal (center) of the Dismal Swamp State Natural Area (operated by NC State Parks). Completed in 2010(?) this multi-modal recreation hub provides access to the Dismal Swamp for visitors interested in experiencing and learning about its natural and cultural history. At center right is a parking lot and visitor center connected to US Route 17 (top right). The visitor center also serves boat traffic from the Canal (center) and is accessible via the re-purposed “Old Route 17”, which runs immediately parallel to the Canal. The bikeway has been integrated into the City of Chesapeake’s Comprehensive Transportation Plan (2011?). A lock and drawbridge across the Canal (visible at center) provides pedestrian and bicycle access to a museum. The museum site also functions as a trailhead for a system of walking paths, bike paths and boardwalks that wind through sections of the Swamp. (North Carolina State Parks)

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Figure IX – 10 – LandSat image focused on a portion of the Dismal Swamp still held in private ownership. At center is the Feeder Ditch which connects Lake Drummond (just visible at left) to the Dismal Swamp Canal. Infrared imagery clearly shows land use activities such as soil mining and agriculture east of the Canal. At center right is the historic community of Wallaceton, VA. The regenerated forest cover of the Great Dismal Swamp can be identified by texture and color (deciduous tree cover appears light green and coniferous as red). Also visible at this scale are remnant network of canals and ditches. The signature grid pattern associated with 20th century to the south of the Feeder Ditch contrasts with the more spoke-like configuration of irrigation structures from the 19th century and earlier. Such images allow for the monitoring of environmental quality is indicated by biomass, vegetative cover, surface temperature, and the absence or presence of water. (LandSat)

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Figure IX – 11 – Map of the Americas, The Audubon Society (2013), Among its designations the Great Dismal Swamp has been included among US Important Bird Areas. This designation recognizes the significance of the FWR for its global scale role in providing habitat for waterfowl along the Atlantic Flyway. (Audubon Society)

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Digital Sources for Basic Physical Data / General information on the GDS

Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study (website) http://www.gdsls.com/

Great Dismal Swamp Megasite–( http://dismalswamp.net/),

Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, (http://www.fws.gov/northeast/greatdismalswamp/),

Simpson, Bland, Dismal Swamp Canal, (2006) (website) NCpedia entry - http://ncpedia.org/dismal-swamp-canal

United States Forest Service (USFS), Chapter 21, Ecological Subregions of the United States, Outer Coastal Plain Mixed Forest, Seven Sections have been delineated in this Province: 232A--Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, (website), http://www.fs.fed.us/land/pubs/ecoregions/ch21.html#232A

Virginia Places (website) – Lake Drummond and the Great Dismal Swamp http://www.virginiaplaces.org/watersheds/drummond.html

Virginia Places (website) – Virginia-North Carolina Boundary (maps) http://www.virginiaplaces.org/boundaries/ncboundary.html

Virginia Places (website) – Swamps of Virginia, Draining http://www.virginiaplaces.org/transportation/canaldrain.html

Virginia Places (website) – Lake Drummond, source http://www.virginiaplaces.org/watersheds/drummond.html

Walbert, David, 7.2 The Dismal Swamp Canal, LEARN NC, North Carolina Digital History, (website) http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4462,

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Appendix 2: Regulatory Documents

United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE-2011), Historic Waterways – The

Dismal Swamp and Albemarle and Chesapeake Canals

(http://www.nao.usace.army.mil/Portals/31/docs/civilworks/AIWW_Brochure_2011.p df)

United State Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS-2006), Great Dismal Swamp National

Wildlife Refuge – North Carolina and Virginia,

(http://www.fws.gov/refuge/great_dismal_swamp/

United States Fish & Wildlife Service, (2006), Great Dismal Swamp Wildlife Refuge and

Nansemond Wildlife Refuge, Final Comprehensive Plan, July 2006

USFWS, Northeast Region, Virginia Ecological Services, South Martha Washington

Wetlands Restoration | Partners for Fish and Wildlife | Ecological Services–Virginia

Field Office | Northeast Region, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (website) http://www.fws.gov/northeast/virginiafield/partners/south_martha_washington_wetla nds.html

United States Forest Service (USFS), Chapter 21, Ecological Subregions of the United

States, Outer Coastal Plain Mixed Forest, Seven Sections have been delineated in this

Province: 232A--Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, (website), http://www.fs.fed.us/land/pubs/ecoregions/ch21.html#232A

United States Geological Survey, (USGS-hydro), Hydrologic and Water-Quality Factors

Affecting Habitat Restoration and Management of the Great Dismal Swamp, Problem and Implications, (website), (http://va.water.usgs.gov/dismal_fws/dismal_nwr.htm)

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Appendix 3: Sources for Maps accessed in digital format

Captain John Smith Historical Trail – National Park Service – interactive map / website) http://smith.npschesapeakebay.net/visit-the-trail/historical

Moseley, Edward, (1733), A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina by Edward Moseley, late surveyor general of the said province ([London]: Sold at the Three Crowns, 1733). Shows settlements, inhabitants, soil conditions, rivers, and principal products, with insets showing Port Brunswick or Cape Fear Harbour, Port Beaufort or Topsail Inlet, Ocacock [Ocracoke] Inlet, Explanation, and Directions for Ocacock [Ocracoke] Inlet. (digital map) Digital Collection, East Carolina University, http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/1028

North Carolina Maps (website) ‘A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina drawn from the Original of Colo. Mosely's.’ http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/1245

The Royster Guide to Northeast North Carolina: (website) (http://gradschool.unc.edu/funding/gradschool/royster/explorenc/northeast/northeast /dismalswamp.html)

The University of North Carolina – Map Collections (online resource) http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/1245

United States Geological Survey, Historical Maps - (www.nationalmap.gov/historical/)

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Appendix 4: Aerial Imagery

Earth Science Picture of the Day (website) – Lake Drummond and the Great Dismal Swamp, November 24, 2006, Provided and copyright by: Rob Bruner, NOAA , Summary authors & editors: Rob Bruner - http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2006/11/lake-drummond- and-the-great-dismal-swamp.html

Earth Observatory (website), Hurricane Irene Dampens Dismal Swamp Fire, August 15, 2011, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=51941

Earth Snapshot (website), Fire in Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia, USA – August 20th, 2011 - 36.5N 76.4W, http://www.eosnap.com/?s=Great+Dismal+Swamp

Frogsview’s Blog (website) © Karl Bowden and Frogsview, 2013. – Aerial View – Dismal Swamp State Park & Rest Area in NC – February 1, 2012 http://frogsview.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/aerial-view-dismal-swamp-state-park- rest-area-in-nc/

NASA Landsat Science (website) images (7x) + John Smith’s 1612 Map of the Chesapeake Bay http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/archive/e0008.html

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Appendix 5: Images of the Dismal Swamp landscape (historic and current)/ descriptions

Buchanan, Laura E., A brief interlude of sensational experience (website/ blog) – Friday, August 5, 2011, A Tale of the Dismal Swamp (includes photos and map of American University Field School in Historical Archeology) http://lauraebuchanan.blogspot.com/2011/08/tale-of-great-dismal-swamp.html

CALO website http://www.prisource.com/Projects/CALO/Illustrations/ and E-Bay (website) which featured various books, prints and souvenirs from the Great Dismal Swamp (includes dates and titles for photos and illustrations)

E-Bay (EB) various books, prints and souvenirs from the Great Dismal Swamp (includes dates and titles for photos and illustrations) http://www.ebay.com/itm/1884-Dismal- Swamp-Draining-Land-Tramway-Lake-Drummond-/400135269192

Harper’s Weekly, June 1873, Sketches in the Dismal Swamp, description and offering on e-bay (website)http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEGROES-GOING-INTO-DISMAL-SWAMP- LAKE-DRUMMOND-SWAMP-/360337501754

Knopps Island Scrapbook (KNIS), which focuses on (Eastern North Carolina), included historic images and maps of the Dismal Swamp landscape from several time periods.

West Virginia Historical Art Collection, Crayon, Porte (pseudonym for David Hunter Strother), (http://images.lib.wvu.edu/cgi/i/image/image- idx?;q1=strother;rgn1=wvca_cr;op2=And;rgn2=wvca_all;g=wvcart;c=wvca;type=boolea n;view=thumbnail;corig=wvca;start=1;size=20;sort=wvca_ti)

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Appendix 6: The Dismal Swamp as portrayed in the popular media

Los Angeles Times – Nation Now – (website/ blog)

Wildfire at Great Dismal Swamp extinguished; it started Aug. 4, November 22, 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/11/wildfire-at-great-dismal-swamp- put-out.html

Hurricane Irene nearly douses wildfire at Great Dismal Swamp, August 30, 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/08/hurricane-irene-wildfire-great- dismal-swamp.html

Weil, Martin, (2013), 4 found dead in wreckage of plane in Va.’s Great Dismal Swamp, Washington Post (online), Post Local, October 12, 2013 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/4-found-dead-in-wreckage-of-plane-in-vas- great-dismal-swamp/2013/10/12/dc8de394-339b-11e3-8627- c5d7de0a046b_story.html)

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