Great Dismal Swamp Preserved
Alexander Calder Jr. '3B and Everett M. Woodman '39 are major figures in the preservation of 50,000 acres of Great Dismal Swamp, which lies astride the Virginia-North Carolina State line, as a natural wilderness area.
"Sox" Calder is chairman of Union Camp Corporation of Wayne, N.J., a forest products firm which has donated the acreage, appraised at $12.6 million, to the Nature Conservancy, of which Ev Woodman is president.
The Great Dismal Swamp, one of the East's last wilderness areas, has already been whittled to less than one-third of its original size by residential and agricultural development. Of con- siderable historic significance, it was once owned partially by George Washington and Patrick Henry. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about it. The Union Camp land, which lies entirely in Virginia, ten miles southwest of Norfolk, includes the "Washington Ditch," dug by the nation's first President and his associates to drain that section of the swamp for farming.
A vast wildland of forest and bog, only swampy in the ordinary sense in a few areas, the Great Dismal has been called a "unique ecosystem." It contains forms of plant and wildlife rarely seen elsewhere; for many southern species it represents the northernmost "station" to which they extend.
"The Union Camp gift is the largest and most significant land gift the Conservancy has received in its two-decade history," said Woodman, who resigned last spring as President of Colby Junior College to direct the non-profit land conservation organization. Since its founding, the Conservancy has helped preserve more than 365,000 acres in 45 states and the Virgin Islands.
Present plans, Woodman added; call for the land to be conveyed to the U.S. Department of the Interior for operation as a national wildlife refuge by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife.
"The Dismal Swamp is a natural wilderness and we're pleased that the company's gift will help to protect and preserve it in its natural state," Calder said in announcing the donation. "Our goal is to apply each of our landholdings to highest possible end-use. The historic significance of our Dismal Swamp acreage and its proximity to a rapidly growing major population center make it a vital asset to be retained for enjoyment and use by present and future citizens while providing an important addition to the national wildlife refuge system."
Conservancy officials hailed the gift as "a breakthrough and clear evidence adding to the growing testimony of the positive role that industry can play in the preservation of vast areas of natural land." A Washington Post editorial called it "a superb example for other land-owning companies."
