Background
Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides) swamps along the eastern US coast are a threatened ecosystem, having lost over 98% of their original area since Euro-American settlement began in the seventeenth century (Foster et al. 2015). In Pennsylvania, Atlantic white cedar has been completely extirpated (Hnatkovich and Yorks 2009). This loss resulted from human-driven landscape changes and saltwater intrusion, caused by dredging and ditching, as well as storm-driven seawater and climate-induced sea level rise (Doyle et al. 2021; Stotts et al. 2021). Over thousands of years, these swamps have accumulated large amounts of carbon in their thick peat soils. For example, between 1985 and 2015, the Great Dismal Swamp sequestered 0.36 tonnes of carbon year−1 ha−1 (Sleeter et al. 2017), while mature Atlantic white cedar forests also sequester considerable amounts of carbon in their aboveground biomass (Duberstein et al. 2016). Throughout the Holocene, it is estimated that peatlands globally have stored over 600 gigatons of carbon, accounting for approximately 25% of the Earth's total soil organic carbon (Yu et al. 2010; Beillouin et al. 2023). Human activities, as well as climate change, induce drying in forested peatlands by lowering the water table, leading to more frequent and widespread fires (Turetsky et al. 2015).
The Great Cypress Swamp, also known as the Pocomoke Swamp and the Burnt Swamp, is located on the Delmarva Peninsula, spanning the border between Delaware and Maryland. It is the northernmost coastal swamp containing both Atlantic White Cedar and baldcypress (Taxodium distichum) in the USA (Fig. 1)
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Fig. 1
A portion of the Delmarva Peninsula showing the Great Cypress Swamp (red arrow), straddling the border between Sussex Co., Delaware and Worcester Co., Maryland. From Martin et al. (1796), retrieved from the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3840.ct004152/ (Public Domain)
Thursday the 13th of September [1764]; went to see Pocomoke Swamp; It’s about 30 Miles in Length and 14 in breadth. (The West Line from the Sea to the Middle Point, passes thro’ it). Here is the greatest quantity of Timber I ever saw. Above the Tallest Oak, Beech, Poplar, Hickory, Holly and Fir. Toward the lofty Cedar (without a branch) till its ever green conical top; seem to reach the clouds.—Charles Mason (1763–1768)
Morse (1796) described the Great Cypress Swamp as extending “six miles [10 km] from east to west and nearly twelve [19 km] from north to south, including an area of nearly fifty thousand acres [20,234 ha] of land,” drained by the Pocomoke, Indian, and St. Martin’s Rivers, with the swamp continuing along the borders of the Pocomoke River (Beaven and Oosting 1939).
The soil in the swamp was described as a “black mold, three feet deep” containing a “large portion of the vegetative principle or pabulum1” with an enormous growth of timber upon it, including Atlantic white cedar and baldcypress (Anonymous 1797). Constantine Rafinesque (1836), who botanized the swamp in 1804, also noted that Atlantic white cedar and baldcypress were “the chief trees found in it.” The Great Cypress Swamp began forming around 22,000 years ago with the deposition of organic matter (Andres and Howard 2000). However, it remains unclear when the swamp developed into the forested wetland that Euro-Americans encountered. In nearby Virginia and North Carolina, the Great Dismal Swamp was a forested wetland with Similar vegetation about 3700years ago, according to Willard et al. (2023), who conducted a palynological study using sediment cores. The arboreal flora of the Great Cypress Swamp today is quite different from that of the 18th and early nineteenth centuries, with Atlantic white cedar and baldcypress now being relatively rare, replaced by red maple (Acer rubrum) and sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) (Bennett et al. 1999).
Delaware exported “large quantities of lumber” from the Great Cypress Swamp (Morse 1796). Shingles from both the Atlantic white cedar and baldcypress, along with huckleberries or highbush blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum), were the primary commodities obtained from this swamp both in Delaware and Maryland. In a 1759 advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, merchant Stephen West wanted “about 16 to 20,000 good Cyprus Shingles, to be delivered at Rock Creek on Patowmack and about 10,000 at Pig-Point on Patuxent.” Michaux (1819) reported that in Baltimore and Philadelphia, the shingles of the Atlantic white cedar were preferred over those of the baldcypress. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was reported that “immense quantities of Cypress shingles and staves are annually shipped down the Pocomoke and up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore and other ports” (American Medical Association 1856). This was a valuable industry, as a large cypress tree “measuring 6 feet in diameter and over 60 feet to the first limb,” felled near the swamp yielded 20,000 shingles worth over $220 or approximately $4258 today (The Union 1865). Boyd (1874) noted “a large cypress shingle manufactory” in Gumboro, a town of about 200 people, near the Great Cypress Swamp. Once the standing trees were exhausted, shingle makers turned to logs buried in the swamp and began mining them:
For many years quantities of oak and fallen timber have been embedded in the low loose soil of the swamp, so that the sap of the timber had many years ago decayed leaving the heart of the cypress timber several feet below the surface. This timber is dug out by the shingle makers of the swamps in the summer and fall seasons and made into shingles, proving a very profitable business to the owners of the timber and laborers engaged in the work.” – Delaware Gazette and State Journal (1892)
In the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the Great Cypress Swamp was often referred to as the Burnt Swamp due to its long history of fires (Delaware Tribune 1868; The Morning News 1883, The Evening Journal 1892; Democratic Messenger 1908; Milford Chronicle 1930). The history of forest fires has generally been reconstructed using dendrochronology and basal fire scars (Speer 2012) as well as sediment cores to analyze charcoal and pollen (Abrams and Nowacki 2015; Cole 2019; Couillard 2019). Fire history dendrochronology studies typically use tree core samples to estimate fire return intervals in low-frequency, high-severity fire regime ecosystems. In the absence of suitable trees to core (both standing and buried trees removed for shingle production), this paper will chronicle the fire history of the Great Cypress Swamp between 1782 and 1941 using written accounts, primarily from newspapers and periodicals. Newspapers serve as a valuable and readily accessible resource for environmental history and have been effective in reconstructing fire history (Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz 2012; Camarero et al. 2021; Howard et al. 2021; Jeffers 2021); Keeley and Syphard 2021; Reilly et al. 2022).
This research aims to demonstrate how the Great Cypress Swamp was almost destroyed after Euro-American settlement by timber harvesting, agricultural drainage, and fire. This work enhances our understanding of the destructive effects of Euro-American settlement on cypress swamps, illustrating how human activities have contributed to shaping the current landscape. It is the first study to reconstruct the fire history of a coastal Atlantic white cedar swamp after Euro-American settlement.
Methods
Written accounts of fires, ditching, and shingle production in the Great Cypress Swamp were obtained from Delaware and Maryland newspapers available on Newspapers™.com, as well as the Library of Congress, Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/). The main search terms were “cypress swamp and fire,” “cypress swamp and ditching,” and “cypress swamp and shingles.” Material was also sourced from the Hathi Trust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/).
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), both instrumentally derived and reconstructed, was obtained from the North American Drought Atlas (Burnett 2021; Cook et al. 2010). PDSI, both measured directly and reconstructed, was sourced from the North American Drought Atlas (Burnette 2021; Cook et al. 2010). Instrumentally derived PDSI is a standard drought indicator based on weather station data, capturing both temperature and precipitation, whereas reconstructed PDSI is based on tree-ring records. The relationship between PDSI and the likelihood of fire was determined using logistic regression. Misclassification Simulation Extrapolation (MC-SIMEX) was used to correct for a 30% false‐negative rate (classifying fire as no fire, as newspaper reports of fires may be missing or unreported), followed by Firth’s logistic regression, which removes small‐sample bias (Lederer and Küchenhoff 2006). All analyses were performed using R Statistical Software (R Core Team 2024) and GraphPad Prism 10.
Results
The 18th century
The earliest recorded fire in the Great Cypress Swamp began in June 1782. The Critical Review (1786) postulated that this fire resulted from a lightning strike. This was not the first fire noted in the Great Cypress Swamp. Anonymous (1797) remarked, “the many fires we have had-here, have very much lessened the number of the green, as well as of the bald cypresses.” The same Anonymous author described the 1782 swamp fire as follows:
the most terrible conflagration happened in June 1782; the swamp being at that time exceedingly dry, by some means took fire and burnt for many weeks before much notice was taken of it. The drought continuing and the fire constantly spreading, it was on the 20th of August, about two hours before sun-set, driven by a strong southwest wind, with such inconceivable fury, that it mowed or otherwise destroyed, at least three thousand acres [1,214 ha] of these venerable cedars in less than twelve hours
Currie (1792) reported that the drought reduced “the rivers and creeks far below their ancient marks.” A reconstruction of drought severity in the Mid-Atlantic using dendrochronology (Burnette 2021) supports that 1782 was an especially dry year (Fig. 2). Estimated PDSI values for the Delmarva Peninsula in the swamp area in 1782 ranged from −1.81 to −1.97, suggesting a mild drought. A PDSI of −3 or less indicates a severe to extreme drought (Ai 2012). Fires also erupted that year within the Atlantic white cedar-dominated swamps of New Jersey (Marquis de Chastellux 1787; Webster 1800). The Marquis remarked: “Philadelphia was sometimes blanketed in smoke from a vast morass that had caught fire in the Jerseys and was burning to a great depth beneath the surface, extending for many miles around for several months.” The arrival of autumn rains ultimately extinguished these fires.
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Fig. 2
Map of the reconstructed Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for 1782. Data from the North American Drought Atlas, http://drought.memphis.edu/NADA/Default.aspx
The 19th century
Several fires of varying intensities were reported in the Great Cypress Swamp during the nineteenth century. In June 1856, a fire in the cypress swamp on the Potomac River (likely the Pocomoke River), “did a great deal of damage to the standing timber, and also burnt up a quantity of shingles, cypress rails and posts. The loss is estimated at about $15,000” (The Baltimore Sun 1856).
In 1869, a major fire in the Great Cypress Swamp burned for over a month during late summer and early fall, resulting in significant loss of cypress timber. The first report came from the Middletown Transcript (1869) on September 11, stating, “The extensive tract of land, known as the ‘Burnt Swamp’ a few miles north of here, has been on fire for two weeks. Everything that can burn is being consumed.” On September 15, the Smyrna Times (1869a) reported that, due to dry weather, the fire spread through the organic-rich soil, “extending about six miles in width,” and that “ditching has been resorted to in some places to save houses and barns.” The fire was still burning on September 27 (Smyrna Times 1869b); however, by October 6, the Smyrna Times (1869c) reported, “The fire in the Cypress Swamp is over. The damage has been great.” The loss from the fire was estimated at $100,000 by the Delaware Tribune,and the Delaware State Journal (1869).
Between 1879 and 1884, four fires were reported in the Great Cypress Swamp. In July 1879, a relatively small fire broke out in this swamp and “burned for several days, destroying more than a hundred acres [40 ha] of valuable timber” (The Daily Gazette 1879b). The following year, a much more destructive fire broke out in July. Wilmington’s The Daily Gazette (1880) reported, “A disastrous fire has been burning in [the] cypress swamp this week which for miles around has enveloped the country in smoke. The flames spread over a tract of timber land 7 miles long by 3 wide,” and the “turf for eighteen inches below the surface” was on fire, burning thousands of acres. Along with standing timber, numerous cattle and hogs were killed, and ca. 50,000 cedar rails were destroyed. On July 19th, the Morning News (1880) wrote, “More than a hundred people are fighting against the progress of the flames, but labor under great difficulty, as the atmosphere is so dense with smoke it is almost impossible to see their way.” On September 12th, 1881, The Morning News reported, “A large fire is raging in the Cypress Swamp in the lower part of this State,” and the “long dry spell has converted it into a huge tinder box.” Nearly a month later, on October 10th, The Morning News reported that “fires are still raging in the Cypress Swamps.” Finally, on October 28th, The Morning News reported, “Nearly all swamp fires have been put out, and the atmosphere is once more clear of smoke” (The Morning News 1881a,b,c). Two years later, much of the swamp was purchased to raise cattle and hogs (The Morning News 1883). On October 11th, 1884, The Morning News reported that fires were burning in the forests and swamps of Wicomico Co., and by October 17th, the same paper wrote, “The ‘old’ Burnt Swamp in Gumboro hundred is on fire.” Drought conditions prevailed on the peninsula, with many farmers hesitant to plant winter wheat. The Morning News of November 25th said, “The smoke from the fire in the “Old Burnt” swamp, Gumboro hundred, was so dense and hung on so long that several of the families who lived on the border of the swamp had to move” (The Morning News 1884a, b, d).
The 1890s saw at least three fires in the Great Cypress Swamp. On October 17th, 1892, The Baltimore Sun reported, “One of the most destructive fires for years is now raging in the cypress swamp” near Frankford, Delaware. The fire, which started on July 13th during an “unusual drought,” originated with shingle makers burning off the turf, allowing them to access the buried cypress logs. Without rain, the fire burned out of control for five months, finally extinguished by a heavy rainstorm on November 19th. The turf burned to a depth of three to six feet, and “large tracts of live and growing timber were burned over, completely killing the trees” as well as “hundreds of acres of huckleberry bushes” (Delaware Gazette and State Journal 1892). Cypress shingles and eight houses were also destroyed (Baltimore Sun 1892a,b). A fire broke out in the swamp once more in 1895, destroying even more precious standing timber. Rain again put out this fire sometime before November 6th (Smyrna Times 1895). The final fire of the nineteenth century in the spring of 1896 “burned over more than two hundred acres [81 ha] of ground, doing much damage and at one time threatening the destruction of” Dagsboro (The Evening Journal 1896).
The 20th century
The first fire of the twentieth century ignited in the autumn of 1901 in what was known as the Devil’s Swamp in Worcester County, Maryland. This blaze destroyed “thousands of dollars worth of property” (The Morning News 1901). In July 1908, the Democratic Messenger reported that the Old Burnt Swamp in Delaware was again on fire. July 1912 saw yet another fire in the Great Cypress Swamp. The Evening Journal (1912b) wrote, “Nearly every year fire through some unknown cause breaks out in this swamp.” By July 26, this fire was extinguished by heavy rain, with the loss of two barns. The Evening Journal (1912c) reported, “In many cases, the flames catch in the dead wood which has fallen years ago and there have been times when the very ground of the swamp was on fire with shooting tunnels of fire and smoke under ground.”
The next fire to be reported occurred in 1925. The July 23rd edition of The Evening Journal in Wilmington reported, “The great cypress swamp, often referred to as the Everglades of Delaware, is on fire and in some sections is burning furiously.” The fire was spotted on the 19th and later jumped from the swamp to other tracts of land, destroying “many acres of valuable timber land” and at least one house. The annual nature of these fires was also commented upon. In October 1929, over 5000 acres (2023 ha) of woodland were destroyed by a fire originating in the Great Cypress Swamp on Oct 12th. Efforts to control the fire were unsuccessful. The fire was finally checked by heavy rain on Oct 22nd. The Oct 23rd edition of The News Journal reported that this fire was “the most destructive fire that has originated in that area within the past half century” (The News Journal 1929a,b; The Evening Journal 1929b).
The following year, on August 15th, the Milford Chronicle (1930) wrote, “The old Cypress Swamp has been burning fiercely for several days – owing to the dry condition of the woods and the strong winds it is impossible to put it out and only by backfiring and plowing can some of the nearby farmers hope to save their buildings.” By October 3rd, The Evening Journal (1930a) wrote, “the fire burned over 10,000 acres [4,047 ha] of forest land, burning over some of the same area that was burned last fall.” The paper also reported that the firemen fighting the fire were having great difficulty due to the “exceedingly dry weather still prevailing in Sussex county.” On October 7th, The Evening Journal (1930b) reported that the fire was “burning to a depth of four to five feet” and the “fire is burning all the roots loose from the trees and all the timber lacking support tumbles over.” By October 28th, the fire was still smoldering and there was a “heavy loss of holly, and huckleberries” (The Evening Journal 1930c) (Fig. 3). Holly was used locally for the production of Christmas wreaths. The Smyrna Times (1899) reported, “three hundred Milford women and girls are employed in making holly and cedar wreaths.”
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Fig. 3
Charred remains of the Great Cypress Swamp (State of Delaware 1930). In the public domain
Another major fire broke out in the Great Cypress Swamp on July 31, 1932. The history of this fire is well documented, as Delaware had just launched a significant effort to control forest fires by employing fire observation towers and a paid firefighting force. By August 2, “after cutting, swamping, and digging a trail through the log-strewn, tangled mass left by previous fires,” the progress of the flames was halted. On August 14, the fire breached the containment lines but was finally brought under control with a large crew of men and a newly purchased fire line plow (State of Delaware 1933).
The last significant fire in the Cypress Swamp occurred in 1941. The November 21 st edition of The Morning News reported that 300 men, including “forest fire wardens, volunteer firefighters, and farmers,” were fighting a 3000-acre (1214 ha) blaze in the Delaware section of the Great Cypress Swamp. However, “owing to the dry weather of the past summer, the timber and turf in the swamp were burning like tinder,” and the fire “was spreading rapidly.” A tractor-drawn fire plow proved ineffective, with the fire reportedly crossing several Lines dug by the plow. Concurrently, a separate fire was blazing on the Maryland side of the swamp. On November 22nd, The Morning News stated, “A four-mile wall of flame swept relentlessly toward the Maryland state line through Sussex County’s expansive cypress swamps last midnight.” To make matters worse, a crown fire had spread through pine trees in the previously drained area of the swamp, burning “a half-mile ahead of the forest floor.” Rain was reported to have finally extinguished the blaze on November 23rd. This wildfire destroyed over 4,000 acres [1,619 ha] of timber, and losses were estimated at $60,000. The NewsJournal (1941) reported that on December 1st, “Three separate fires were still burning in the Cypress Swamp […] along the Maryland-Delaware line [however] all were under control.”
Fire season
The fire season in the Great Cypress Swamp typically lasted from June to November, with 50% of the fires occurring during meteorological summer and 44% in meteorological autumn. Fires were most prevalent in July, accounting for one-third of the total number of fires.
Fire return interval
From 1782 to 1941, the mean fire return interval (MFRI) was 9.63 ± 17.67 years (mean ± SD). The high variability resulted from the 74-year gap between the first reported fire in 1782 and the second in 1856. For 1856–1941, MFRI was 5.33 ± 4.34 years. MFRI did not differ significantly between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (T = 0.310, p = 0.762).
PDSI and fire occurrence 1895–1941
From 1895 to 1941, there were ten fires in the Great Cypress Swamp (Fig. 4). The only spring fire, which occurred in May 1896, also took place during a dry period, with a meteorological spring PDSI of −0.776, with the drought increasing in intensity from March to May (PDSI = −0.165 to −1.135). The naive logistic model shows a highly significant intercept (), indicating a low baseline fire probability, and a significant negative PDSI effect (). The AUC/ROC score = 0.795 ( = 0.005), indicating acceptable discrimination (Hosmer et al. 2013). Correcting for a 30% false‐negative rate via MC-SIMEX yields very similar coefficients with only modest widening of confidence bounds, demonstrating robustness to outcome misclassification. Firth’s penalized likelihood removes small‐sample bias and confirms that both the intercept ( and slope ( remain significant and unbiased. These results are supported by newspaper reports of dry or drought conditions in the area during fire years (Smyrna Times 1895; Smyrna Times 1896; The Morning News 1901; Middletown Transcript 1908; The Evening Journal 1912a; The Morning News 1925; The Evening Journal 1929a; Milford Chronicle 1930; The Evening Journal 1932; The Morning News 1941a).
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Fig. 4
Instrumentally derived Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for the region encompassing the Great Cypress Swamp (38–39° N, 76–75° W) during meteorological summer and autumn (Jun–Nov). Positive values indicate wetter-than-normal conditions, while negative values indicate drier-than-normal conditions. Red symbols indicate years with fires; data obtained from the North American Drought Atlas, http://drought.memphis.edu/NADA/Default.aspx
PDSI and fire occurrence 1782–1894
Between 1782 and 1894, eight fires occurred in the Great Cypress Swamp (Fig. 4). Here, reconstructed PDSI is utilized. The intercept of the naive logistic model is again highly significant (), reflecting an even lower baseline fire odds, while PDSI’s coefficient () remains non-significant (). SimEX adjustment for the same 30% misclassification leaves the slope essentially unchanged, indicating that measurement error does not mask any true PDSI–fire relationship. The penalized (Firth) estimates provide unbiased inference for the intercept () and reinforce that PDSI is not a predictor during this period. Journal and newspaper reports, however, indicate that these fires did occur during periods of drought (Anonymous 1797; Smyrna Times 1856; Delaware Tribune, and the Delaware State Journal 1869; The Daily Gazette 1879a; Smyrna Times 1880; The Morning News 1881a, b, 1884c; Delaware Gazette and State Journal 1892). For example, on July 23rd, 1856, the Smyrna Times wrote: “The present season has been one of almost constant drought.”
Discussion
The aim of this research was to reconstruct the fire history of the mid-Atlantic’s Great Cypress Swamp. For a summary, see Table 1. Eighteen fires were recorded between 1782 and 1941, killing trees and burning deeply into peat soils that had taken thousands of years to develop. Fires typically occurred between June and November, with July alone accounting for one-third of all fires. Excluding the 74-year gap between the first fire (1782) and the next (1856), the mean fire return interval (MFRI) from 1856 to 1941 was 5.33 years. There was no significant difference in fire frequency between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drought, as measured by the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), significantly predicted fire occurrence from 1895 to 1941, but not from the earlier period from 1782 to 1894. PDSI (1895–1941) was derived from weather records, while PDSI (1782–1894) was derived from tree-ring widths. Qualitative evidence from newspapers and journals, however, repeatedly Linked the fires to drought conditions. The fire history of the Great Cypress Swamp reflects the interaction of natural drought cycles with anthropogenically driven drying, resulting from the removal of tree cover for shingle production and the lowering of the water table through ditching and drainage to produce arable farmland. By the time that fire suppression by firefighters using backfires and fire Line plows began to succeed in the 1930s, most of the Great Cypress Swamp had been destroyed.
Table 1. Summary of the fire history of the Great Cypress Swamp on the Delmarva Peninsula from journals and newspapers
Year | Month | Drought | Extent of Fire (ha) | Source of Ignition | Extinguished by |
|---|
1782 | Jun-Aug | Yes | ~ 1214 | Lightning? | -- |
1856 | Jun | Yes | -- | -- | -- |
1869 | Sep-Oct | Yes | -- | -- | -- |
1879 | Jul | Yes | > 40 | Discarded match | -- |
1880 | Jul | Yes | ~ 5439 | -- | -- |
1881 | Sep-Oct | Yes | -- | -- | -- |
1884 | Oct-Nov | Yes | -- | -- | -- |
1892 | Jul-Nov | Yes | -- | Burning of peat to expose buried logs | Rain |
1895 | ?-Nov | Yes | -- | -- | Rain |
1896 | May | Yes | > 81 | -- | -- |
1901 | Nov | Yes | -- | -- | Farmers |
1908 | Jul | Yes | -- | -- | -- |
1912 | Jul | Yes | -- | -- | Rain |
1925 | Jul | Yes | -- | Unknown | -- |
1929 | Oct | Yes | > 2023 | Unknown, Discarded match? | Rain |
1930 | Aug-Oct | Yes | > 4047 | -- | -- |
1932 | Jul-Aug | Yes | -- | Discarded match or cigarette | Firefighters |
1941 | Nov | Yes | > 1619 | Unknown | Rain |
The Atlantic white cedar swamps along the eastern coast of the United States are a threatened ecosystem, having lost over 98% of their original area since the beginning of Euro-American settlement in the seventeenth century (Foster et al. 2015). Since settlement, the Great Cypress Swamp has been cut over for shingle production and extensively drained to expand productive agricultural land:
Twenty-five years ago, we learn that this swamp was entirely surrounded by water, with only a few acres of arable land. Now there are many dwellings, with roads passing through in various directions, and there is an area of twelve or fifteen hundred acres [486-607 ha] of arable land, well adapted to the production of the cereals.2 (Smyrna Times 1858).
In 1935, an effort began to convert 16,000 acres (6475 ha) of the Great Cypress Swamp into arable land. Construction started on a 20-mile-long ditch, 70 feet wide, beginning in the center of the swamp and draining into the Pocomoke River. This project was funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Sussex County Levy Court (The New Journal 1935).
Before Euro-American settlement, the upland oak-pine forests in the eastern United States were maintained by low-intensity fires set by Indigenous Americans to clear brush and encourage the growth of useful plants. Furthermore, outside the extreme southeast coastal plain, Indigenous Americans, rather than lightning, were the leading cause of fire (Abrams and Nowacki 2008; Abrams 2021; Abrams et al. 2021; Tulowiecki et al. 2020, 2023). Although historic lightning strike data is unavailable, current data indicates that Delaware, where the majority of the Great Cypress Swamp lies, only receives a moderate number of lightning strikes (16.6 strikes km2), ranking 23rd out of 51 states and the District of Columbia (Vaisala Xweather 2025). It is therefore unlikely that wetlands such as the Great Cypress Swamp would have been subjected to frequent fire before Euro-American settlement. This is supported by the analysis of carbon within a sediment core from St. Jones Creek, in northeast Delaware. Between 1000 years ago and the present, charcoal levels were relatively low, indicating wet conditions and a scarcity of fires (Brush 1994). To gain a better understanding of the historic fire regime of the Great Cypress Swamp before Euro-American settlement, charcoal analysis of sediment should be conducted in the watershed of the swamp.
Historical evidence also suggests that swamp fires caused by lightning strikes were rare. In 1937, The NewsJournal noted that in the previous 10 years, “about 90 percent [of fires] can be directly attributed to some one’s carelessness,” with only 0.6% caused by lightning. Only a single fire in the Great Cypress Swamp was linked definitively with a lightning strike (The Democratic Messenger 1882). The suggestion that the 1782 conflagration was caused by lightning is strongly suspect, as the report was published 4 years later in an English journal (The Critical Review 1786).
The primary cause of most fires in the Great Cypress Swamp remains unknown (The Evening Journal 1912b), but they were likely anthropogenic in origin. In 1879, The Daily Gazette reported that the fire that year “was started by some huckleberry hunter who carelessly lit his pipe and threw the match among dry leaves and underbrush.” The 1892 swamp fire was attributed to the practice of burning off the peat to expose buried logs and “in consequence of the unusual drought prevailing the rains which generally come did not materialize and so the fire could not be controlled” (Delaware Gazette and State Journal 1892). The extensive fire of 1932 was “believed to have originated from a lighted cigarette or match discarded by one of the many huckleberry pickers in the area at the time” (State of Delaware 1933).
The drying of peat soils through drainage has been shown to increase the frequency and severity of peat fires (Sim et al. 2023). Removing the canopy for shingle production would have worsened this situation by increasing exposure to solar radiation, decreasing relative humidity, and lowering the fuel moisture of the peat (Kettridge et al. 2019). Over the period from 1782 to 1894 (113 years), only eight fires were documented, and no relationship was detected between reconstructed PDSI and fire occurrence. Reconstructed PDSI is a less sensitive estimate of past climatic conditions, as it is based on proxy measures, such as tree-ring width, rather than direct measurements of temperature and precipitation. However, from 1895 to 1941 (47 years), ten fires were documented, and fire occurrence was strongly linked to negative instrumental PDSI. Several news reports indicated that fires in the Great Cypress Swamp occurred annually during the twentieth century (The Evening Journal 1912b, 1925; The News Journal 1929). This annual occurrence is likely the result of more intensive timber removal and drainage for farming during this period (1895–1941), which dried the peat soil, making it more susceptible to ignition.
The pre-settlement fire return interval ranges from 80 to 300 years in the interior and 25 to 100 years on the edges of cypress swamps. Shorter intervals at the edges result from fires in nearby uplands (Frost 1998; Motzkin et al. 1993). A typical pre-settlement fire regime in the Great Cypress Swamp is shown by the 74-year gap between the first two reported fires, 1782 and 1856. The significantly shorter return interval of 1 to 13 years, observed from 1856 to 1941, coincides with the period of intense Euro-American activity; tree removal for shingles and drainage to increase the area of productive farmland. These conclusions, as well as those from the previous discussion of PDSI, should be viewed with some caution, as fires may not have always been reported in local newspapers.
Peat fires are not unique to the Great Cypress Swamp. Treed peatland fires occur in various locations along the Atlantic seaboard (Gagnon et al. 2021; Kendall et al. 2022; Sim et al. 2023; Jones et al. 2024) and on a global scale (Ryan et al. 2020; Nelson et al. 2021; Feurdean et al. 2022; Pelletier et al. 2023). Numerous fires have also been reported in Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp as far back as the eighteenth century: “There was some years ago, one fire in the Great Dismal, particularly horrid and terrible, it happened on an extraordinarily dry summer, and burnt with irresistible fury for many weeks, spreading terror and destruction all round” (Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser 1790). Other fires occurred there during the study period in 1839, 1923–1926, 1930, 1941, and 1942. The 1923–1926 fire burned through > 9600 acres (3885 ha), while two fires in 1930 consumed > 10,000 acres (4047 ha) (Simpson 1990). Globally, peat fires have proven challenging to control, with firefighting efforts often ineffective as peat fires require extremely large amounts of water and rewetting of the peat to extinguish (Lin et al. 2020; Rein and Huang 2021; Santoso et al. 2022). Like the Great Cypress Swamp, the harvesting of timber for shingle production and the ditching and draining of the Great Dismal Swamp also increased fire risk (Speiran and Wurster 2021).
The destruction of the Great Cypress Swamp must be viewed in the context of the prevailing views of nature during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Early descriptions depict pre-colonial America as a demonic wilderness, filled with dangerous animals and Indigenous peoples portrayed in dehumanizing terms. The writings of William Bradford (1630–1650, 1898), Jared Eliot (1748), John Adams (1756, 1794), Benjamin Franklin (1784), and Samuel Deane (1790) reveal a dominant colonial narrative of transformation, improvement, and control over the American landscape. William Bradford (1630–1650, 1898), Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, described America as a “hideous & desolate wildernes, full of wild beasts & willd men.” He went on to write that “experience teacheth that ye more ye land is tilled, and ye woods cut downe, the fewer ther will be [Native Americans], and in the end scarce any at all.” Religious writers like Michael Wigglesworth (1662, 1871) and Cotton Mather (1701) intensified this view, portraying New England before colonization as a demonic, “howling wilderness” inhabited by “hellish fiends” and “brutish men,” aligning the wilderness and native people with spiritual darkness. These portrayals reflect Puritan fear and religious justification for land clearance and the displacement of Indigenous peoples, as the wilderness symbolized chaos and spiritual danger that had to be subdued. The transformation of the wilderness is best summed up by Adams (1756): “Consider, for one minute, the Changes produced in this Country, within the Space of 200 years. Then, the whole Continent was one continued dismall Wilderness, the haunt of Wolves and Bears and more savage men. Now, the Forests are removed, the Land coverd with fields of Corn, orchards bending with fruit, and the magnificent Habitations of rational and civilized People.” With regards to the Native Americans, Adams wrote: “The narrow Hutts of the Indians have been removed and in their room have arisen fair and lofty Edifices, large and well compacted Cities.” Over time, a more utilitarian view of the forest emerged, viewing it as a source of resources such as timber, firewood, pitch and turpentine, plus medicinal plants like sassafras (Sassafras albidum) and snakeroot (Aristolochia serpentaria) which could be used locally or exported to Britain and her colonies in the Americas (The British Spy 1727; The Virginia Gazette 1737). This utilitarian, profit-driven mindset continued throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, as Americans spread west, with the destruction of nut pine (Pinus monophylla) forests in Nevada to produce charcoal for metal smelting (Gold Hill Daily News 1864), and the extensive logging of redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) in California (San Franciso Chronicle 1876). The conservation movement, however, also began in the nineteenth century and can be traced back to works of Henry David Thoreau, such as Walking (1862): “Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.”
Swamps were initially viewed as “hideous” (Bradford 1630–1650) and “offensive” (Adams 1756). Adams (1794) wrote that “putrid deleterious vapours” arose from “uncultivated forests and undrained Marshes,” linking wilderness and swamps with disease. However, swamps, once seen as useless, were re-evaluated as valuable land if properly drained. This reflects the rise of agricultural science, where nature was something to be controlled and re-engineered. In a letter to Jared Eliot, Franklin (1751) discussed the “Improvement of Swamps and Meadows.” Eliot (1748) had written: “Swamps that are full of Wood and Brush and covered with Moss, if they are deep Soil and can be well Dreined, Cleared & Ditched, will make good Land for Corn & Grass.” Deane (1790) wrote: “Drains are of the highest importance in agriculture: For by means of them, lands that are so wet and fenny as to be entirely useless, may oftentimes become by far the most valuable part of a farm.” Swamps became a resource for both timber extraction and new farmland. This mindset continued into the nineteenth century, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture encouraging the reclamation of swampland: “Not all swamp land is suited for agriculture, but from the data collected and analyzed by this Office, it is certain that there are in the eastern portion of the United States 77,000,000 acres [31,160,794 hectares] that can be reclaimed and made fit for cultivation by the building of simple engineering structures” (Wright 1907). The drainage of swamps and other wetlands continued in the twentieth century, with approximately 11 million acres (4,451,542 hectares) of wetlands lost between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s. Approximately 80% of these wetlands were converted into farmland (U.S. Department of Commerce 1984). Attitudes towards wetlands began to change in the 1970s, and by 1986, the Federal Government introduced the Emergency Wetlands Resources Act. For a more comprehensive review of the history of changing wetland policies, see Dahl and Allord (1996).
Restoring degraded peatlands has become a priority in the effort to mitigate climate change (Loisel and Gallego-Sala 2022). During the Holocene, peatlands worldwide are estimated to have sequestered over 600 gigatons of carbon, representing approximately 25% of the global soil organic carbon stock (Yu et al. 2010; Beillouin et al. 2023). In 1961, Delaware Wild Lands acquired an 80-acre tract of the Great Cypress Swamp to preserve the northernmost stand of baldcypress in the USA (The News Journal, 1961). Since then, Delaware Wild Lands has acquired over 10,000 acres (4047 ha) of former swamp land and has initiated a restoration process. Since peat fires have destroyed the seed refugium and mature seed-bearing trees were cut down for shingle production, natural regeneration of trees is not possible. Delaware Wildlands has planted over 100,000 Atlantic white cedar and baldcypress trees and has worked to restore the natural hydrology of the swamp (Martin 2024). The natural community and its peat soils can be restored over time, enhancing water quality and boosting carbon sequestration in both trees and soil. The Great Cypress Swamp has lost between three and six feet (91 to 183 cm) of peat due to fires, making restoration a long-term challenge. In the nearby Dismal Swamp, peat accumulation has been measured at an average rate of 0.311 mm per year (Willard et al. 2023). While specific data for the Great Cypress Swamp is unavailable, applying this rate suggests that the amount of peat lost would have taken approximately 2939 to 5879 years to accumulate. Therefore, restoring that volume of peat could require a similarly extensive timespan. Although prescribed burning serves as a tool for restoring eastern upland forests (Abrams 2005; Izbicki et al. 2020), its use should be avoided in the restoration of cypress swamps. Atlantic white cedar is fire-sensitive due to its thin bark, and mature stands are susceptible to destructive crown fires, while seedlings and small trees are killed by low-intensity fires (Little 1946).
Conclusion
The history of the Great Cypress Swamp illustrates the profound and lasting impacts of colonial and post-colonial land-use practices on fragile wetland ecosystems. Once a large and ecologically rich treed peatland, the swamp was systematically drained and logged in the pursuit of agricultural productivity and resource extraction, driven by a prevailing ideology that viewed the wilderness as something to be feared, controlled, and transformed. These attitudes, deeply rooted in early settler narratives, rationalized the destruction of wetlands and the displacement of Indigenous peoples. The resulting degradation of the swamp’s hydrology and vegetation dramatically increased the frequency and severity of fires, many of which were human-caused and intensified by drying peat soils.
Scientific understanding has evolved to recognize the critical role of peatlands in carbon sequestration and biodiversity. Efforts by organizations like Delaware Wild Lands to replant trees and restore hydrology represent a meaningful shift in values, moving from exploitation toward ecological repair. However, the slow pace of peat accumulation underscores the long-term nature of restoration and the irreplaceable value of these ecosystems once lost. As climate change accelerates and global carbon stores become increasingly precious, protecting and restoring Atlantic white cedar swamps, such as the Great Cypress Swamp, is not only an act of ecological stewardship but also an essential strategy for climate resilience.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are extended to Dr. Judith Stribling (Professor Emeritus), Department of Biological Sciences, Salisbury University, and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, as well as to Drs. Deepak Bastola and Veera Holdai, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Salisbury University, for their assistance with logistic regression.
Authors’ contributions
C.H.B. wrote the manuscript text and prepared figures 1-4.
Funding
The author received no funding for this work.
Data availability
Data available upon request.
Declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
1“Anything taken in by a living organism or tissue to maintain life and growth; food, nutrient material, nutriment.” OED.com.
2In 1860, maize was the primary cereal crop in Sussex County, with 1,396,127 bushels produced (U.S. Census Office 1864).
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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