at other parts of the Suwannee. When environmentalists mobilized many Floridians, including newspaper editors, to oppose the efforts of Oxy, the company relented and dropped its challenge to the OFW status, which the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation then extended to the whole river. Around that time, Governor Bob Graham established a Suwannee River Resource Planning and Management Committee to study the problems of the river basin and to suggest solutions to those problems.
After boating or canoeing in relatively unspoiled territory for several hours, we began to hear a growing roar, so loud that it could startle the unsuspecting. We realized we had come upon Big or White Shoals on the Upper Suwannee, the only such white-water rapids in all of Florida and a distinct challenge to boaters. Those in aluminum canoes will usually fare better than those in wooden canoes, which can be battered and torn in half in a collision with a submerged rock. If the river is high from heavy rains or a hurricane, i.e. between fifty-nine and sixty-one feet above mean sea level, boaters can glide over the Class–III rapids and barely be aware of what lurks beneath the surface. If the river is low during drought or at certain times of the year, the sharp rocks cannot be crossed by most boats. Boaters should never attempt the rapids in the evening or in the dark because of the difficulties and dangers they can encounter.
Because water flows from the Okefenokee Swamp and from the springs and rivers that join the Suwannee along its length, it never completely dries up. Song composer Jack Mahoney may have been thinking of that when he wrote the following words in his 1919 composition, “Till the Swanee River Runs Dry”: “I will love you, love you till the Swanee River runs dry.”
Big Shoals are part of a conservation area consisting of over three thousand acres, five miles up from White Springs. The area has three miles of river frontage and more than thirty miles of multi-use trails that follow the river and wind among some very pristine parts of the area. The tall limestone bluffs along this part of the Suwannee may surprise visitors who think of Florida as a very flat peninsula.
The impassable nature of Big Shoals is one reason nineteenth-century steamboats did not open up the Suwannee River and Valley to settlers the way that the unobstructed St. Johns River on the east coast of the state opened up central Florida to thousands of settlers, many of whom were invalids escaping the cold of the North for the warmth of the Sunshine State. As their health improved and their families grew in number, settlements sprouted up along the St. Johns, something that did not happen along the Suwannee, and thus even today the Suwannee is relatively unsettled compared to the St. Johns. Still, not all are deterred by the difficulties associated with crossing Big Shoals or settling in the area; even when the area becomes dif-ficult for boaters to navigate, well-prepared hikers can actually walk across the river from exposed rock to exposed rock.
Running the rapids of Big Shoals is dangerous. Florida State Archives
We knew we were passing through and near parts of Florida that have seen settlers, both Indians and whites, for thousands of years. Modern archaeologists call the Native Americans who lived in this area at the time of Hernando de Soto’s 1539 expedition the northern Utina, who were a branch of the Timucuan Indians. Separate villages dotted the area, and their chiefs seemed to have alliances with each other. The Indians lived there because of the good agricultural lands on which they were able to cultivate corn and other plants. Although the Indians had basically lived in peace with each other, the coming of the Spaniards changed their lives irrevocably. The Spanish soldiers killed many of the Indians, including their chiefs, as the Europeans passed through the area on their way to Tallahassee. The Spaniards were dogged by frequent Indian attacks and much bad luck as they marched north. For example, when they were fording the Suwannee, its swift current swept one of them away along with his horse, and both drowned. The Spaniards retrieved the horse, butchered it, and ate it.
Not all Spaniards brought trouble for the Indians. Missionaries, for example, established missions in northern Florida—including along the Suwannee, and one at the mouth of the Suwannee—and oftentimes helped the Indians at these missions. At least two rivers in the area, the Santa Fe and the Aucilla, take their names from nearby Spanish missions.
Pamela Jekel’s fictional work River Without End: A Novel of the Suwannee is about Native Americans who lived along the Suwannee in the nineteenth century and how they interacted and intermarried with runaway slaves. Osceola, the great Seminole leader, played an important part in the novel.
In an excellent documentary, “Seven Ways to Kill the Suwannee,” Stephen Robitaille, a professor of English at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, noted that the first way to kill/damage the river is to dam the headwaters. Although such a dam would raise the water level in the Okefenokee Swamp and aid in fire protection, it would change the nature of the river just as it was forming. Fortunately, the Suwannee does not have any dams on it today, though there were some in the past in the Okefenokee. Vigilance is necessary, however, since occasionally people suggest dams to help the fishing.
Other ways to “kill” the river include mining the wetlands for phosphate and cutting down the forests on each side; destroying the tradition that surrounds the river; dumping wastes, even legally approved detritus, into the water along its length; building extensively in the floodplain; and siphoning the water and sending it to the parched southerly part of Florida. As we passed from the headwaters of the river and boated its Florida length, we would see ill-fated attempts by newcomers to damage the waterway, if not intentionally, then at least by their shortsighted works.
by land from the Okefenokee Refuge to Big Shoals
No highways on either side of the river follow its winding path completely, but highways/dirt roads parallel it for much of its way and allow one to reach fish camps, boat landings, and trailer parks. Keep in mind that the northern part of the river is the most isolated as it winds from Georgia’s Charlton County through the counties of Ware, Clinch, and Echols into Florida, forming the border between Hamilton and Columbia counties. Georgia’s Highway 177 is a paved road that parallels the river from Stephen C. Foster State Park in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge to Edith, Georgia, just southeast of Fargo. At that point it joins U.S. 441/Ga. 89 south.
Fargo, in Clinch County, Georgia, is a small town, having only 380 residents in the 2000 census. Its location near the Okefenokee Swamp makes it the western gateway to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and a neighbor of the Stephen C. Foster State Park. Its proximity to such large tracts of forest has made it very susceptible to fires, including the spring 2007 fire, the largest in Georgia’s recorded history. The surrounding Clinch County takes its name from General Duncan Clinch, who fought in the War of 1812 and in the Seminole Indian Wars in Florida; he later served in the U.S. Congress. The name of Fargo itself originated with the local railroad line, but exactly how is unclear.
The Welcome Center at Fargo has displays about the river.
Highway 94 heads west out of Fargo. About four miles from the town a road cuts off south and parallels the Suwannee, but it is a dirt road much of the way. When that road enters Hamilton County, Florida, it becomes C.R. 135 or Woodpecker Road/N.E. 180th Boulevard. Small roads veer off that road to boat ramps on the Suwannee before ending in White Springs. Among the wildlife one can see there are deer, gopher tortoises, raccoons, squirrels, wading birds, and wild hogs. The types of forest communities include bottomland, floodplain, mixed hardwood, and swamps. Recreational activities in the area include bicycling, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, and wildlife viewing. Hunting is allowed in parts of the Cypress Creek Wildlife Management Area; for information contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at its regional office in Lake City (386-758-0525).
On the east side of the Suwannee, when U.S. 441/Ga. 89 enters Florida, it becomes U.S. 441/FL
