>>Can you tell us a little bit about this trail that we are on now?

>>Yeah, so we're on the Washington Ditch Trail which is an old logging road and it's named after George Washington.

Yep, when he arrived here on the swamp, sort of as a land surveyor in 1763, he saw the landscape with fertile soil, good for farming and to do that, you have to get some of the water out of the swamp and so the Washington Ditch was dug to get water out of the swamp and also irrigate, log the forest and then farm the land.

>>And there's many trails throughout the refuge and we're coming up on a boardwalk now.

>>Yeah, so the boardwalk that goes into the forest off of this road is called the Dismal Town Boardwalk because when George Washington and his partners had the company here, the Dismal Swamp Land Company, they established Dismal Town.

This was their hub for their operations.

And so the boardwalk will take you through the forest a little bit, give you a better feel for the different habitat types that exist in the larger refuge area.

>>Yeah 'cause right now I'm looking and it looks more like a hardwood forest instead of what you would think a swampy area would be.

>>Yeah, that's right and when you say the great Dismal Swamp, it isn't like a typical southern swamp like you'd find in Florida and such.

It is a forested wetland and so there is slight elevation changes and the higher ground has more of a deciduous forest and then you can see areas where it's more swamp like.

>>So the ecology changes as you're walking along.

>>That's right, absolutely.

>>Oh Chris, you can really see the transition here now and now and it's starting to look like what I would imagine a swamp being.

Can you tell us a little bit about the trees and everything here from the transition?

>>Yeah, so a little bit different forest community, a lot of bald Cyprus, more ferns, as a ground cover, the native Virginia switchcane as an understory vegetation.

And so yeah, it's definitely more swamp like and less dense understory because typically it's wet.

>>Oh yeah, and yes, I can definitely see how dry it is, but it does still look and feel like a swamp.

And I know the great Dismal Swamp has a ecological significance, but I understand it also has a great historical significance.

Can you tell us a little bit about what happened from years ago?

>>Certainly, first off, the indigenous peoples lived off the swamp for food and resources, but at one time, we had generations of freedom seekers, enslaved people that came and lived here in the swamp for several generations and this was freedom for them.

>>Yes, so the swamp was no man's land so they found refuge here.

>>Correct, yep.

>>And I hear there is one other feature that a lot of people come here to see.

>>Oh, you must be talking about Lake Drummond.

>>Can you show us the lake?

>>Oh, absolutely, can take you right out there.

>>Okay, let's go.

Wow, Chris, we finally made it out to the lake and it is magnificent.

>>We call it the heart of the swamp.

It's so important for the ecological integrity of this ecosystem to keep the water in the lake for ecological purposes to try to keep this piece soil wet.

It is a swamp and so the water is the driver.

>>So how large is this lake?

>>It's 3,100 acres, about three miles across any way you cross it 'cause it's almost perfectly round.

>>And another thing I noticed too though is the unique color of the water.

Can you give us some insight on why it is this color?

>>Yeah, sure, we call it black water and it's really because of all the groundwater that filters its way through the soil, which is organic soil or peat soil.

So that acts like a teabag.

When you make tea and you put that teabag in clear water, it produces that darker color.

And probably the most logical, or at least scientifically speaking way that the lake was formed is actually from a deep burning peat fire.

This area might have been on fire.

It burned down through that peat soil down to the sand layer 'cause it is a sand bottom.

It's only maximum six feet deep and we have about six to seven feet of that peat soil that is actual fuel and can burn right down to the water table or down to the sand layer.

>>As far as conservation, how does this area get managed?

>>Our priorities are to restore the hydrology of the swamp, to try to slow the drainage, re-wet the peat soil for the benefit of the soil and the benefit of the forest.

And then with that, we can manage the water for specific diversity of habitat types, which then supports a diversity of wildlife.

That's what we focus on.

First, we protect it 'cause it is federal property, it's protected.

We conserve it and enhance it where we can.

>>And you've mentioned wildfires.

>>I'm glad that you brought that up.

I actually have folks on staff that are wild land firefighters.

And so if we have a wildfire out here on the refuge, they will go and attack that fire and try to put it out.

We also do controlled burns or called prescribed burns where we wait for the right weather, wind, humidity conditions so that we can actually set wild land fire on the ground and that's a tool we use also to manage our habitats.

The water management and the fire management are both tools to manage the habitat and sometimes we get wildfires that get beyond our capacity.

Folks that come out here will see there is not a mature forest bordering where we're standing right now and that's because a large wildfire came through last in 2011.

Fire is part of the natural ecosystem.

It's just a matter of how severe these fires get.

I mean, with the swamp being dried out, it's more susceptible to more catastrophic fire.

So what we're trying to do through restoring the hydrology to control burns is reduce that impact of wildfire when it comes.

>>And then now everything is starting to regrow so you're not gonna have the mature forest, but in the future, what do you expect this area to start looking like?

Is it going to get back to where it was or how do you see the park looking in the future?

>>So we are managing it for a forest.

The Dismal Swamp has always been a forest as far as any documents of it.

It's a forest as well.

And we want to always make it a forest for the wildlife, habitat for the wildlife.

And so we're managing it for it.

We've planted trees to try to stimulate the regrowth with species that we prefer.

And again, we're also managing the water to allow that forest to grow 'cause the trees aren't gonna grow underwater so we do actually try to keep the water a little lower to allow it to grow.

>>This is a really beautiful park and I'm glad we made it out to see the lake and I thank you again for taking us on this tour.

>>Yeah, thank you.

Hopefully this will give people some information that it's a refuge for wildlife, it's a refuge for people and it's not dismal at all.

Come on out and see us.