Okefenokee Swamp

The Okefenokee Swamp is an around-1800-kilometer peat-filled wetland straddling Florida-Georgia border in the United States.   A majority of the swamp is in Georgia and protected by the Okefenokee National Wild Life Refuge and the Okefenokee Wildness.   

The Swamp was formed when waters from an ancient ocean receded and a mammoth sandbar blocked most of the water flow to the sea.  

Water in the Swamp is dark, like tea that has steeped for a long time.  The color came from the tannin that seeps from towering cypress trees draped in Spanish moss.  The Okefenokee Swamp is the largest feat-based “black water” swamp in North America, and one of the largest in the world. 

You may be fascinated by the Swamp’s unusual name “Okefenokee”, which is from a Native American Indian word, meaning “trembling earth”.  Way back in the swamp are small floating islands, called hammocks, which one can walk across. And they tremble.  Standing on them is like trying to balance on a floating mattress.

The view across the broad swamp is beautiful.  However, better to avoid the unstable hammocks all together since they are filled with snakes, occasionally bears, and flesh-eating plants which feed on mosquitoes.  Alligators are ubiquitous in the adjoined areas in the swamp.