Green Swamp River Project

The Green Swamp, quietly heroic, never shouts its story. The swamp technically is not even a swamp at all. It is a slight elevation, a bowl cradled between the Lake Wales and Withlacoochee Ridges, that intersects with the Floridan aquifer and that supports a rich mosaic of pine flatwoods, sandhills, cypress swamp, and marsh.

The Withlacoochee, Ocklawaha, Hillsborough, and Peace Rivers flow from headwaters here in four directions. Commuters from Tampa to Orlando skirt the edges of its 560,000 acres along Interstate 4, US 301 to the East, SR 50 to the West, and US 27 to the North. With 110,000 acres of conservation land under the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) and 145,000 acres in Withlacoochee State Forest, Floridians have unlimited opportunities to roam the Green Swamp.

Its four rivers each tell a different story. Native guides led Hernando de Soto across the Cove of the Withlacoochee in 1539 and the Seminoles waged war there three hundred years later; today, the river remains remarkably well preserved. Poet Sidney Lanier called the Ocklawaha the "sweetest water-lane in the world" in 1876, and paddlers can still lose themselves in the braids below Rodman Dam. Limpkins nosh and gators bask along the Hillsborough just outside Tampa. And foam from the Peace's rich phosphate stores tells a painful story of exploitation and vulnerability.

Explore these rivers by clicking the appropriate map. SWFWMD's Interactive Green Swamp covers the swamp itself. Students in the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida- St. Petersburg have assembled the rest.