Lake Drummond

Lake Drummond feels ancient and dreamlike. On the open water the yellow flies at last depart, and the huge cypresses form prehistoric-looking forest islands in the black, shallow water. Millions of years ago this region was at the bottom of the sea, and the sandy ridges along its western edge, the Suffolk Escarpment, was the coastline. The sea dropped 300 feet during the last ice age, and a forest grew where waves had crashed. When the glaciers melted and the sea rose to its current level, the forest became a wetland. The acidic sap and juices from its junipers, gums, and cypresses prevented fallen vegetation from decaying, and for millennia it piled up as peat, which today lies 10 feet thick. Five thousand years ago the swamp was the hunting grounds of native peoples whose trading network reached as far as the Ohio Valley. Dennis Blanton, director of the Center for Archeological Research at the College of William and Mary, has studied many bolas found there, long tethers weighted with round stones that were flung to entangle prey. European colonists found that the swamp’s tea-colored water stayed drinkable longer and used casks of it for sea voyages. It is said that Comm. Matthew Perry had barrels of it aboard when he made his trip to Japan in 1853.