Floyds Island 1838, Hebard Cabin 1925, Okefenokee Swamp

Update 2024-12-09: Pictures: Departing Floyd’s Island, Okefenokee Swamp 2023-11-05.

Answers to some popular questions about Floyds Island, up the Middle Fork of the Suwannee River in the Okefenokee Swamp.

Meanwhile, you can help stop a proposed strip mine near the Swamp:
https://wwals.net/issues/titanium-mining

Collage, Floyds Island

Who was Floyds Island named for?

The Okefenokee was a Creek hunting ground in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Briefly in 1836 and for most of 1838 theSecond Seminole War in Florida extended into the Okefenokee. Roads and forts were built around the perimeter of the swamp, and Georgia militia and U.S. army troops patrolled intensively. They burned down a Seminole village on an island that they subsequently renamed Floyds Island, for Charles Rinaldo Floyd. In response to this violence, the Seminole began to leave the swamp in 1838, but skirmishes continued to occur along the Georgia-Florida boundary as late as 1840.

C.T. Trowell, New Georgia Encyclopedia, Originally published Sep 20, 2002, Last edited Feb 23, 2022, Human History of the Okefenokee Swamp.

Who was Charles Rinaldo Floyd?

Charles Rinaldo Floyd, the third child and second son of General John Floyd, followed his father into battle, plantation society, and the political arena in the early nineteenth century.

During the Second Seminole War (1835-42), Floyd was most famous for his excursion into the Okefenokee Swamp in the winter of 1838-39, although this campaign has often been mistakenly credited to his father.

Charles Rinaldo Floyd, Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries.
Found in Megan Kate Nelson, Charles Rinaldo Floyd, New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Dec 23, 2016.

So, Floyds Island is named for the man who burned down the Seminole village that used to be there: Charles Rinaldo Floyd.

But he did not build the cabin, says Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge on facebook, November 11, 2018:

This historic cabin was built by the Hebard Cypress Company and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The documentation for that reveals that Daniel Hebard built the cabin in 1925, when his family owned the Okefenokee Swamp to log, primarily for cypress.

Table 1. Chronology of Alterations to and Use of the Hebard Camp.

It was repaired several times over the decades.

There were also several other buildings.

The Cook’s House, Billy Spaulding’s House & Garden, Guide Huts

The Indian mound with the gully for the former cypress logging railroad is shown on several maps.

Map 4: Floyds Island, Sketch Map, 1993.

This is what the railroad looked like.

Photo 2: Main line in Okefenokee between the Swamp’s edge and Cravens Hammock constructed with a pile driver – 10

This is what it was for.

Photo 5: First Log, 1909. Overhead skidder cleans up about 28 acres from one spar or “head tree.” Pulls in and loads logs at the same time (Photo by Dolan, Waycross, Georgia and in Hopkins, 45 Years with the Okefenokee Swamp, 1947)

Here is the railroad through the Indian mound.

Photo 6: View of the railroad across Floyds Island (McQueen and Mizell 1926).

Yes, there were burials in the mound. Or some mound on Floyds Island.

Boy Scouts from Albany visited island in 1924 and excavated one of the mounds. They recovered beads, arrowheads, pottery, shells, and two skeletons.

Hebard Cabin looked pretty much the same in 1929 as today, except the cookhouse was knocked down in the 1970s.

Photo 9: Mr. Dan Hebard’s Hunting Lodge on Floyds Island. Billy Spaulding is sitting on the steps. The Cook’s Cabin is on the right (Hill, “Okefenokee Swamp,” Inspection News, April 1929).

For much more history of the island and the attempts to preserve the Okefenokee Swamp while logging was going on and while others were trying to dig a canal through it or to run roads across it in two different directions, see this article by C.T. Trowell.

Supplement A: Trowell, C.T., 1998 “Seeking a Sanctuary: A Chronicle of Efforts to Preserve the Okefenokee.” Okefenokee Wildlife League, Special Publication No. 6.

It starts with “Roland M. Harper called for the preservation of swamps in 1906 and 1909. He listed their importance as headwaters for streams, refuges for wildlife against their extermination by hunters, natural research laboratories, and lastly, for their beauty.”

Few people listened to Roland’s words. “But they ignited the interest of Francis Harper, his younger brother, and a group of biologists at Cornell University. In 1912, these scientists began a series of biological explorations of the Okefenokee Swamp that continued for over three decades.”

The story gets more complicated from there, but the NWR got established by Executive Order of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “In 1974 the sanctuary that had been sought and created was secured. The Okefenokee Swamp was designated a National Natural Landmark in September 1974. A month later President Gerald Ford signed the law creating the Okefenokee National Wilderness Area. In 1981 the wilderness canoe trails in the Okefenokee were designated to be part of the National Wilderness Trail System.”

Hebard Cabin on Floyds Island is mostly preserved, but it is a relic of the logging that destroyed almost all the original forest cover of the Okefenokee Swamp, and the island’s name is a relic of the earlier expulsion of the Seminoles.

Floyd’s Cabin Kitchen to Center Rm 8/94

Here you can see the railroad route from Jones Island (where Stephen C. Foster State Park is) to Billys Island and on to Floyds Island.

Railroad from Billys Island to Floyds Island, with Indian Mound and Cabin

There are more maps and pictures below.

The history is complicated and sad in many ways, but now the Okefenokee Swamp is mostly a Wilderness Area in a National Wildlife Refuge.

Which does nothing to stop mining nearby, but you can help stop that.
https://wwals.net/issues/titanium-mining

-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

Short Link:

WWALS Watershed Coalition (WWALS) is Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

A healthy watershed with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable water.

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