Editing Okefenokee Swamp (section)

== History ==
[[File:Canal_Run_shadows_(5179305812).jpg|thumb|250px|One of the canals in the Okefenokee Swamp]]

The earliest known inhabitants of the Okefenokee Swamp were the [[Timucua]]-speaking [[Oconi]], who dwelt in or on the margin of the swamp. The Spanish friars built the mission of Santiago de Oconi in order to convert them to Christianity. The Oconi's boating skills, developed in the hazardous swamps, likely contributed to their later employment by the Spanish as ferrymen across the [[St. Johns River]], near the riverside terminus of North Florida's ''camino real.''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Milanich |first=Jerald T. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gLN7Y7XFFU8C&q=timucua+milanich+oconi&pg=PA43 |title=Timucua |date=August 14, 1996 |publisher=VNR AG |isbn=9781557864888 |pages=50, 202|quote=Anthropologist John Worth has suggested the Oconi, a group unrelated to the Oconee Indians of later times who spoke a Muskhogean language, were inland on the eastern edge of the Okefenokee Swamp.}}</ref>

Modern-day longtime residents of the Okefenokee Swamp, referred to as "Swampers", are of overwhelmingly [[English Americans|English ancestry]]. Due to relative isolation, the inhabitants of the Okefenokee used Elizabethan phrases and syntax, preserved since the early colonial period when such speech was common in England, well into the 20th century.<ref>{{cite book |first= Cecile Hulse |last= Matschat |title= Suwannee River: Strange Green Land |publisher= University of Georgia Press |year= 1938 |page= 7}}</ref> The [[Suwannee Canal]] was dug across the swamp in the late 19th century in a failed attempt to drain the Okefenokee. After the Suwannee Canal Company's bankruptcy, most of the swamp was purchased by the Hebard family of Philadelphia, who conducted extensive cypress logging operations from 1909 to 1927. Several other logging companies ran railroad lines into the swamp until 1942; some remnants remain visible crossing swamp waterways. On the west side of the swamp, at Billy's Island, logging equipment and other artifacts remain of a 1920s logging town of 600 residents. Most of the Okefenokee Swamp is included in the {{convert|403000|acre|ha|adj=on}} [[Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge]].

The largest [[wildfire]] in the swamp's history began with a lightning strike near the center of the refuge on May 5, 2007, eventually merging with another wildfire that began near [[Waycross, Georgia]], on April 16 when a tree fell on a power line. Named the [[Bugaboo Scrub Fire]], by May 31, it had burned more than {{convert|600000|acre|ha}}, or more than 935 square miles, and remains the largest wildfire in both Georgia and Florida history.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gatrees.org/ |title=Georgia Forestry Commission Home Page |publisher=Gatrees.org |access-date= April 6, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.news4jax.com/news4georgia/13390665/detail.html |title=Massive Blaze in S.E. Georgia Jumps Fire Lines |publisher=WJXT-TV |location=Jacksonville, Florida |date=May 25, 2007 |access-date=April 6, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110524085018/http://www.news4jax.com/news4georgia/13390665/detail.html |archive-date=May 24, 2011 }}</ref>

In 2011, the [[Honey Prairie Fire]] consumed {{convert| 309,200|acres|ha}} of land in the swamp.<ref>{{cite web|title=InciWeb: Honey Prairie Complex|url=http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/2214/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111015022133/http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/2214/|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 15, 2011|website=[[InciWeb]]|access-date=October 14, 2016}}</ref>