The Great Dismal Swamp

The Great Dismal Swamp is a Virginia historical marker in Suffolk County, dedicated 1998.

Business Rte. 58, near intersection with Rte. 337

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William Byrd II visited the swamp, just to the south, in 1728 while he was surveying the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina. Byrd, and later George Washington, advocated the construction of a canal through the swamp. Washington and his partners purchased some 50,000 acres, began to log them, and built a ditch to transport the timber. The Dismal Swamp Canal Company, formed in 1787 to connect the Chesapeake Bay with Albemarle Sound, began construction in 1793 and completed the canal in 1805. In 1974, the U.S. Congress created the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge to protect the swamp's fragile ecosystem.

Maps this old were drawn largely by eye, so places on them can sit miles from where they really are. The pin is ours and marks the marker's location today.

TodayHistorical map

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

American Geographical Society Library, UW-Milwaukee

Historical maps covering this location

1670 · Virginia and Maryland As it is planted and Inhabited this present Year 1670 ... (John Carter Brown Library, Brown University)
1708 · Carte Particuliere de Virginie, Maryland, Pennsilvanie. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1719 · A new map of the English empire in America viz Virginia, New York, Maryland, New Jersey… (American Geographical Society Library, UW-Milwaukee)
1755 · Virginie, Maryland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1919 · Suffolk, Virginia (USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection)

Carte Particuliere de Virginie, Maryland, Pennsilvanie, 1708, covering the location of The Great Dismal Swamp, with a pin at the marker's coordinates — Carte Particuliere de Virginie, Maryland, Pennsilvanie, 1708, covering this location. David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries. The pin is ours, placed from the marker's coordinates.

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For example, one family's tree showed the Articles of Confederation marker in Pennsylvania standing under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s.

What that marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years there.

From one family's 77-marker roster

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The Great Dismal Swamp

Historical maps covering this location

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