Great Dismal Swamp
Coordinates: 36°38′27″N 76°27′06″W / 36.640876°N 76.451797°W / 36.640876; -76.451797 Photograph of Lake Drummond, Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia The
Great Dismal Swamp is a marshy area in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, between Norfolk, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It is located in parts of southern Virginia cities Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina Gates, Pasquotank, and Camden Counties. It is a southern swamp, one of many along the Atlantic Ocean's coast, including the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp in Florida, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, the Congaree and Four Holes swamps of South Carolina, and some of the Carolina bays in the Carolinas and Georgia. Along the eastern edge runs the Dismal Swamp Canal, completed in 1805. It is one of the last large and wild areas remaining in the Eastern United States. Some estimates place the size of the original swamp at over 1,000,000 acres, stretching from Norfolk, Virginia, to Edenton, North Carolina.