Tag Archives: Okefenokee National Wilderness Area

Low water at the first gate, Suwannee River Sill, Okefenokee Swamp 2025-11-20

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Looks like you could paddle through the Suwannee River Sill, but it’s not clear how far you would get through the Narrows below Stephen C. Foster State Park Ramp before you got to the Sill.

[Low water, first gate, Suwannee River Sill, Okefenokee Swamp, Thursday, November 20, 2025]
Low water, first gate, Suwannee River Sill, Okefenokee Swamp, Thursday, November 20, 2025

Yesterday Shirley Kokidko checked on water levels in the Suwannee River in the Okefenokee Swamp. She says there is enough water to paddle to Billys Island or Minnies Lake.

Until we get some rain to break this drought, paddling from SCFSP to Griffis Fish Camp will be doubtful.

Here is a video Shirley sent from the First Gate at the Suwannee River Sill, the 4.5-mile-long earthen dam that was supposed to keep water levels up in the Okefenokee Swamp to prevent fires, but did not work.

https://www.facebook.com/Wwalswatershed/videos/854041060433085

https://youtu.be/xrNMTGZtws0 Continue reading →

Open the Okefenokee Gates 2025-11-15

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Update 2025-11-21: Low water at the first gate, Suwannee River Sill, Okefenokee Swamp 2025-11-20.

Actually, the Suwannee River Sill Gates are always open.

This was a facebook comment yesterday, “Open the dam in the swamp.”

It was on this WWALS facebook post: Very low water, Fargo Ramp, Suwannee River 2025-11-12 Video by Shirley Kokidko for WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. (WWALS):
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1946665392780126

See also:
https://www.facebook.com/Wwalswatershed/posts/pfbid02p1mXs1UZK6ZhGQe4BeEdAa54E1Ws2Dk5AQmKmRsbqKPc3ATi6SxVyZjXL1U54dHRl
https://wwals.net/?p=68851

I’ve also heard from otherwise very knowledgeable Floridians: “When there are big rains, Georgia opens the Okefenokee gates and floods Florida!”

Nope, that doesn’t happen, either.

[Open the Okefenokee Gates, Suwannee River Sill, Actually always open, Since around 2000]
Open the Okefenokee Gates, Suwannee River Sill, Actually always open, Since around 2000

The Sill itself was an experiment in fire prevention that did not work, and also turned out to be a bad idea, because the Okefenokee Swamp needs fire to regenerate itself.

Here’s video and pictures of the Second and First Gates through the Suwannee River Sill, December 9, 2025 2023 [date corrected]
https://youtube.com/shorts/8LA_PLDqXA0 Continue reading →

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]
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? Continue reading →