Knox Kerr asked if I wanted to tag along for a little adventure, something he’d been trying to get a permit to do for about a decade — make it to a historical spot he’d seen on some of his old maps.
Ellicott’s Mound, America’s southern border.
No, not today’s southern border — the one between Georgia and what was Spanish Florida in the 18th century, and the mound created by Andrew Ellicott and his party in the Okefenokee Swamp on Feb. 27, 1800.
“It’s here,” Kerr said, standing in a parking lot near the southeastern edge of the swamp, pointing at a page in a small 19th-century book, Colton’s Map of the State of Florida.
The old steel-engraved map made it feel a bit like we were going on a treasure hunt — and, as Knox explained, his idea of treasure does involve maps and history.
“And this is a good combination of the two,” he said.
The stargazer who defined America
A confession: I hadn’t heard of Ellicott before this adventure. Or if I had, it was one of those names and stories that didn’t stick in my memory. But it’s a story worth retelling, particularly in America’s 250th.
Ellicott was born an English citizen in Pennsylvania in 1754. When he died in 1820 in West Point, New York, he not only was a United States citizen, he had played a key role in determining the boundaries of his new nation.
William Morton, author of “Andrew Ellicott: The Stargazer Who Defined America,” wrote of how Ellicott became the most famous astronomer-surveyor of his time — a confidante of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who helped finish the Mason-Dixon Line, survey the 10-mile square for the nation’s new capital, measure the height of Niagara Falls and perhaps most notably, following the 1795 treaty between the United States and Spain mark the international boundary.
To this day, the 31st parallel defines the border between Alabama and Florida and is known as the Elllicott Line. A sandstone marker in Alabama is called the Ellicott Stone. And to say Ellicott “put Georgia on the map” is more than a cliche.
The four-year expedition following the Spanish treaty culminated with Ellicott creating the Florida-Georgia border, starting at the Flint River in the west, eventually sailing around the peninsula (after skirmishes with Native American tribes), going up the St. Marys River and rejoining some of his party for the final physical requirement of the survey.
Find the headwaters of the St. Marys.
The river itself would be the border to the east. So this spot would mark the end of the survey work.
Ellicott continued up the river into the Okefenokee Swamp, exploring the prongs, before on Feb. 27, 1800, telling his party to mark a spot, not with another sandstone, but with a mound of sandy dirt.
This spot, Ellicott’s Mound, is where another party, led by longtime Okefenokee guide Chip Campbell, was headed on a January day more than 200 years later.
Annual trips led to ‘The Swamp Guy’
Kerr, Paul Crum and Roger Greene are anesthesiologists and longtime friends who have been doing adventures together for about 20 years, sometimes to places around the world, sometimes in their backyard.
Their connection to Campbell started years ago when Crum wanted to do a big paddling trip. They contacted Campbell, who for 20 years owned Okefenokee Adventures with his wife, Joy.
Campbell, 66, has a bushy white beard and greying ponytail, the accent of a Georgia native, a PhD in biology and expertise and stories involving seemingly all things Okefenokee. When the St. Marys Riverkeeper honored Campbell last year, it described him as a tireless advocate, affectionately known to many as “The Swamp Guy.”
The doctors enjoyed that first paddling trip with Campbell so much that they did more — and, at some point, Kerr brought up going to Ellicott’s Mound.
“I thought it’d be easy,” Kerr said. “I thought I could just drive up here one day and go do it.”
He quickly learned it’s not that simple. When the water is at normal levels, it can mean wading through thigh-deep water. Beyond that, it requires a permit to get to that corner of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. And the possibility of titanium mining near the same corner of the largest blackwater swamp in North America, with a variety of nearby land owners, only complicated things even more.
“So they finally settled the mine thing, and it’s dry and it’s cold,” Kerr said on the day we headed toward Ellicott’s Mound. “It’s like a convergence of the universe that this happened.”
The USGS marker
Campbell had secured the necessary permit, approved by refuge manager Michael Lusk. The group also included Kerr’s brother and sister-in-law, Mason and Erin, and another local and Okefenokee expert, Russell Barber.
A caravan of vehicles drove down a dirt road, past a gate and into the refuge. When we got out, Campbell said that we shouldn’t have to worry about bugs or venomous snakes.
“If we do see a cottonmouth, he’s going to be slooow,” he said.
Shortly after starting the hike, we veered onto the Swamp Edge Break, the firebreak that circles the swamp, plodding through thick sand that sometimes turned into thick muck. And while that relatively low water was good for the day’s adventure, it was the kind of sign that already was raising concerns about fires in Georgia.
Campbell was talking about the history and geology of the swamp when we reached a point where we veered left off the break road, walking a few yards to a silver sign on a rusty post.
“Witness Post. Please do not disturb nearby survey marker.”
For decades after Ellicott came to the Okefenokee, after Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821 and a state in 1845, the battles over the Florida-Georgia border continued. They were settled in the 1860s when surveyors Gustavus J. Orr and B.F. Whitner, representing Georgia and Florida, did a survey and the two states agreed on a boundary that was about 25 feet from Ellicott’s Mound.
Today, not far from the Witness Post, there is a small, round U.S. Geological Survey marker, the kind I’ve seen atop mountain summits.
This one, barely above sea level, was placed here in 1934, marking a spot that goes back to President George Washington commissioning a survey in 1796, and Andrew Ellicott and his party spending four years, covering more than 500 miles before ending up here.
“Ellicotts Mound,” it says in small lettering.
When Kerr first envisioned making it to Ellicott’s Mound, he pictured something like a giant midden, maybe surrounded by water. Not that he was disappointed to find barely a bump of land in a small clearing of the saw palmetto.
“It’s not the most difficult USGS marker I’ve ever been to,” he said, “but it probably has as much or more meaning as any of them.”
mwoods@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4212
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: A hike into the Okefenokee to find spot that put early America on the map | Opinion
Reporting by Mark Woods, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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