Great Dismal Swamp National Heritage Area
Feasibility Study
Overview
In Public Law 117-339, Congress directed the National Park Service (NPS) to study the suitability and feasibility of designating certain areas in North Carolina and Virginia as the Great Dismal Swamp National Heritage Area (NHA).
The study team is working with local stakeholders, experts, and the public to evaluate support for NHA designation and whether key groups can commit to managing a National Heritage Area in partnership. The team will submit the findings and any recommendations to Congress for consideration upon completion.
This website shares the background and a timeline of the study, NHA information, and an overview of the information gathered so far. The website provides links for you to share your knowledge and opinions during public comment periods. We look forward to hearing from you!
Get Involved: Click the "Comment Now" button below to deliver comments to the project team.
Introduction
What is a National Heritage Area?
A National Heritage Area (NHA) is a place designated by Congress where natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources come together to form a unique landscape shaped by human activity and geography. These patterns make National Heritage Areas represent the national experience through physical features that remain and the traditions that have evolved in them. Continued use of National Heritage Areas by people whose traditions helped shape the landscape enhances their significance. They are living landscapes where a local coordinating entity works with communities to make heritage relevant to local interests and needs.
Through the recent congressionally established National Heritage Areas System, the National Park Service provides technical, planning, and limited financial assistance to National Heritage Areas. The National Park Service is a partner and advisor, leaving decision-making authority to local people and organizations. Currently, there are 62 designated National Heritage Areas in 36 states and territories across the country that support a variety of conservation, recreation, education, and preservation activities. Three National Heritage Areas are in Virginia, and three National Heritage Areas are in North Carolina. To learn more about National Heritage Areas and the NHA System, visit https://www.nps.gov/subjects/heritageareas/index.htm .
Study Area
The study area includes the cities of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk and the county of Isle of Wight in the Commonwealth of Virginia and Camden, Currituck, Gates, and Pasquotank Counties in North Carolina. The feasibility study may include other areas in Virginia or North Carolina that are next to these cities or counties or have similar heritage aspects.
This study is not focused on the feasibility of expanding the boundary of the existing Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge nor will a future designation of a National Heritage Area expand the boundary of the refuge.
Study Process
The National Park Service follows legal requirements and bureau guidelines during the feasibility study to determine if a unique, nationally important story is being told. This story, or stories, should be experienced through existing places and the shared culture of those who call the area home. The study also documents public support for the designation of the National Heritage Area and whether an organization is ready to lead its management, if created. Community input is critical to completing this study.
The Great Dismal Swamp National Heritage Area feasibility study evaluates information gathered by asking the following questions:
- Does the region have a collection of natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources that, when connected, help tell a nationally important story?
- What makes this area of southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina unique, and how does the study area contribute to or highlight an important aspect of America’s national heritage?
- What unique American stories are told in this area, and why is this region the best place to tell them?
- Are there opportunities to improve resources through conservation, recreation, and education?
- Is there an organization or several organizations with the financial and organizational capacity to manage a National Heritage Area locally if one is designated?
- Is there public support for a National Heritage Area designation and the proposed boundary?
Timeline
The National Park Service will submit the findings and any recommendations to Congress for consideration upon completion. Any correspondence received demonstrating support for, or opposition to, the establishment of the National Heritage Area will be included in this submission. The study began in August 2023 and is currently expected to conclude in 2026.
August 2023
The study began
May 2024
Research and site visit
December 2024
Potential coordinating entity outreach
Winter and Spring 2025
Stakeholder and public outreach
2026
Expected date of completion
Tell Us What You Think
The NPS study team has been working hard to understand how the Great Dismal Swamp area, through its landscape, resources, and people, may support or function as a National Heritage Area. We now need your help to continue the analysis.
Your thoughts are needed on how the Great Dismal Swamp area tells a nationally important American story. The study team is also interested in your suggestions for sites, resources, and cultural events and traditions related to this story. Since it is important that National Heritage Areas have wide community and regional support, please share your thoughts on this initiative and the questions in the “Study Process” section of the StoryMap.
The National Park Service will publicly release the final study report on the project website after it has been sent to Congress.
We are excited to hear from you!
The “Comment Now” button below will take you to the study project website where you can share your thoughts with us.
Online | Phone | |
|---|---|---|
Visit the study project website or click the “Comment Now" button above. | Send your comments to: National Park Service – Denver Service Center Attn: Julie Bell, Project Manager 1 Denver Federal Center Building 50 PO Box 25287 Denver, CO 80225 | Contact Julie Bell (project manager) at: 720-989-0282 |
Known Resources Overview
Natural
The area known as the Great Dismal Swamp (the swamp) once covered 1.4 million acres and was equally divided between the Commonwealth of Virginia and North Carolina. It stretched across a large area of land, from the James River to the Albemarle Sound and the North Landing River and North River. Over time, development and natural impacts have greatly reduced the swamp to 113,000 acres, with less than a 10th of this vast habitat protected in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
The Great Dismal Swamp is unique for many reasons. The landform is a relatively young, formed in the early part of the Holocene, less than 9,000 years ago. Typically, rivers and streams are the water source for most swamps. This unique swamp formation is located on a hillside, called an escarpment or scarp. Water levels rise and fall throughout the year as the swamp is fed almost entirely by precipitation and surface water flowing from the west along the Suffolk Scarp. Lake Drummond and some of the deeper, human-made ditches are usually the only areas with standing water year-round. These cyclical inundations are critical to the habitats and species the swamp supports.
Identified as a temperate to subtropical, forested peatland, the swamp lies in the Middle-Atlantic coastal forests ecoregion. It contains several freshwater wetland communities, including marshes, rare Atlantic white cedar forests, cypress swamps, wet hardwood hammocks, and bogs. A raised bog called a pocosin (an Algonquian word meaning “swamp on a hill”) is typically found in the southeast, but here, a few remnants of these communities exist in the northernmost extent of its range.
Despite heavy modifications to the land from lumbering, ditching, and large wildfires, this area still contains a unique mix of habitats that support hundreds of plant and animal species, both common and rare. Some of the largest remaining Atlantic white cedar woodlands in the United States are found here, considered a globally rare community. Abundant cavities in mature pine, cedar, tupelo, and gum forests provide safe havens for woodpeckers, flying squirrels, and owls. Forest floors host rare carnivorous plants, such as Venus flytraps and pitcher plants. A significant population of breeding black bears and over 200 migratory or resident bird species make this area important for wildlife.
The swamp benefits humans through numerous ecosystem services. Despite its tannic brown color, the swamp water is unusually pure and is part of the water supply for the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, which is home to about two million people. This complex system improves air quality, sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, and protects surrounding communities from catastrophic wildfires.
Cultural
Native people have lived in the region of the study area for approximately 12,000 years, before the region began its transition from open marsh to swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp today contains the ancestral lands of the Nansemond Indian Nation, Meherrin Tribe, and Haliwa-Saponi Tribe and continues to be significant for many other Tribal Nations and Native peoples.
The area dramatically changed with European colonization and the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to English colonies in the 1600s. English colonists gained control of the area following the 1607 establishment of Jamestown in the English colony of Virginia (chartered in 1606) through warfare with the Tsenacomoco (Powhatan paramount chiefdom), the dispossession of the Tsenacomoco, and the establishment of the English Province of Carolina in 1663. By the 18th century, English surveyors and land speculators established the boundary between the two colonies and provided descriptions of the Great Dismal Swamp. These speculators also saw commercial profit in the swamp’s natural resources, especially timber and farmland, and in digging a navigable canal through the swamp to connect Virginia and Carolina’s commercial centers with access to the swamp’s timber-rich interior. Enslaved people were forced to provide the labor for canal construction, lumbering, and timbering, which were early economic drivers in the Great Dismal Swamp.
The Great Dismal Swamp had long served as the homeland for Native peoples, and colonial dispossession forced many to seek refuge in the swamp. These Native peoples were soon joined by enslaved African fugitives known as maroons, who were seeking freedom in the Great Dismal Swamp. These maroons established permanent homes and communities alongside Native Americans, Free People of Color, and some outcasts from nearby white American communities. The Great Dismal Swamp is officially recognized as a water-based stops on the Underground Railroad, supported, in part, by the communities within it.
During the 19th century, recreational activities such as hunting and fishing, along with growing legends and stories associated with the people who lived in the Great Dismal Swamp, brought more people and attention to the swamp. The legends and stories, much of which contained an abolitionist sentiment, became well-known in contemporary literature and art.
The continued exploitation of the swamp for timber into the 1900s led to the construction of railways and railway communities. The idea of draining the swamp to create farmland also continued into the 20th century. By the 1950s, the last of the virgin timber in the Great Dismal Swamp had been removed. Throughout the 20th century, urban communities grew partly due to the presence of the US military and businesses attracted to the area, such as those supporting agricultural production.
Since the mid-20th century, conservation groups have worked to preserve the remaining Great Dismal Swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1974. Efforts to maintain and restore the swamp’s biodiversity have coincided with interest in learning about the Great Dismal Swamp’s role in developing the United States and renewing the cultural heritage of those whose ancestors called the Great Dismal Swamp home.
Recreation
The study area offers a variety of recreational opportunities. Public lands and trails managed by national, state, and local agencies are abundant in the study area. Experiences include hiking, biking, fishing, auto-touring, interpretive programs, hunting, picnicking, boating, wildlife viewing, and photography.
Visitors can learn about recreational opportunities in the study area at visitor centers in local communities, at the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, at local and state parks, and at transportation hubs.
FAQS
Is a National Heritage Area a unit of the national park system?
A National Heritage Area is not a unit of the national park system, nor is any of its land owned or managed by the National Park Service unless such land was or is set aside as a unit of the national park system. Designated by Congress, National Heritage Areas are managed by local coordinating (management) entities that accomplish goals of interpreting the heritage area history and traditions through partnerships with governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals.
Who designates an area as a National Heritage Area?
Only Congress may designate regions of the country as National Heritage Areas. The National Park Service may be requested by Congress to testify whether or not a region has the resources, national importance, and local financial and organizational capacity to carry out the responsibilities that come with designation.
Why are feasibility studies important?
National Heritage Area feasibility studies provide a means to inventory, assess, and document the nationally important resources and stories of a potential National Heritage Area. These studies examine tangible and intangible resources for what is unique, important, and/or endangered; what is underutilized; who is going to be involved; and what potential new opportunities can be created by the establishment of a National Heritage Area.
What makes a National Heritage Area designation different from a state or local designation?
National designation occurs through an act of Congress. If achieved, it requires the coordinating (management) entity to assume management responsibilities, including the development and implementation of a management plan and its operation under performance and accountability standards connected with the receipt of federal funds.
How do National Heritage Areas affect private property?
A National Heritage Area designation will not require the infringement of private property rights. National Heritage Areas are lived-in landscapes and do not require property owners to allow access to or use of their property to support the National Heritage Area. A designation also does not restrict private property owners from participating in any plans or modifications to their property. Designation does not convey any land use or other regulatory authority to the named local coordinating (management) entity. Unlike national parks, the federal government does not own or manage all lands in a heritage area unless previously designated.
What kind of financial and human resources are necessary for success?
One of the critical components necessary for success is demonstrated support and commitment from a variety of partners that includes staff time, supplies, money, and subject matter expertise. The National Park Service asks potential local coordinating entities to complete a “conceptual financial plan” as part of the feasibility study process (included in the Feasibility Study Guidelines ). Following designation, the named local coordinating entity of the National Heritage Area completes a management plan that dives deeper into financial and business planning. Most National Heritage Areas are required to provide a one-to-one nonfederal match to the federal funding it receives.
For more information, visit National Heritage Area Feasibility Study Process Frequently Asked Questions
