Dismal Swamp Canal South Mills Lock, North Carolina

The southern end of the Dismal Swamp Canal is marked by the lock at the town of South Mills, North Carolina. A second lock on the canal is located in Deep Creek, Virginia, at the canal’s northern end, 22 miles away. Both ends flow through engineered waterways that lead to the Atlantic, at Norfolk, to the north, and Albermarle Sound in the south. The Dismal Swamp Canal, hand dug by slave labor starting in 1793, opened in 1805, and is often called the oldest continuously operating canal in the nation. The canal connected Albemarle Sound with the Chesapeake Bay, spanning watersheds, and creating a shipping corridor that avoided the long and shallow waters to the south, and the small treacherous cut to the ocean at Okracoke Island. It provided conveyance for goods between Virginia and North Carolina, including lumber harvested from the Great Dismal Swamp, which once covered 2,000 square miles, before it was mostly drained and developed. Today the canal runs along the east side of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the 200 square miles of swamp that remain. The canal is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, and is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, used primarily by recreational boaters.