The Okefenokee sits in a shallow depression that was once part of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Over thousands of years, peat accumulated to depths of fifteen feet or more, creating a landscape that is neither solid land nor open water but something in between. Floating peat islands called "batteries" drift across prairies of lily pads and bladderwort. Bald cypress trees draped in Spanish moss rise from the dark water on buttressed roots. Sandhill cranes, wood storks, and red-cockaded woodpeckers inhabit the canopy, while below the surface, bowfin and chain pickerel navigate the tannin-rich channels. The swamp drains slowly southward, feeding the Suwannee and St. Marys Rivers on their journeys to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.

The park owes its existence to the Okefenokee Association, a nonprofit granted a sublease from the U.S. Department of Interior in 1945. The Association built on foundations already laid: Indian waterways dating back centuries, structures erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937, a game corral from 1938, and boardwalks from 1940 that led to an original 75-foot wooden observation tower. In 1965, a 90-foot steel tower replaced it, pushing the view even higher over the swamp canopy. The park's most distinctive feature arrived in 1999 -- the only railroad permitted to operate within the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The 1.5-mile train route carries visitors through dense swamp forest, echoing a time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when loggers, turpentine workers, and track layers harvested the Okefenokee's timber and resin for distant markets.

A stop on the railroad route brings visitors to Pioneer Island, where a recreated swamp homestead is centered around the authentic Highsmith Cabin. Outbuildings cluster around it in the manner of families who once carved a living from this sodden landscape. The Country Store and Museum chronicles the human history of the swamp through photographs and artifacts. But one structure on Pioneer Island carries a heavier weight: a replica of the Wildes Cabin, dedicated in 1988 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Wildes Massacre. In 1838, Seminole warriors killed Maximillian Wildes and his companions here -- the last Indian massacre recorded in the state of Georgia. The cabin stands as a reminder that this swamp, for all its beauty, has always been contested ground.

Skull Lake lies within the park's 1,200-acre property, its name hinting at stories long submerged. Alligators are the swamp's most famous residents, and the park once had its own celebrity: Oscar, an alligator who made the park his home until his death in 2007. His reconstructed skeleton now presides over the gift shop. Live animal exhibits, wildlife shows under the name "Eye on Nature," and the Serpentarium offer closer encounters with the swamp's inhabitants. Boat tours push through the dark waterways, where the silence is broken only by the splash of a turtle sliding off a log or the deep bellow of a bull alligator echoing across the prairie. Overhead, ospreys circle -- the namesake of the Osprey Society, the park's volunteer supporters who donate time and money to keep the gates open and the boardwalks sound.