Ohoopee Dunes Wildlife Management Area

Geology

Pleistocene

~30,000 to 15,000 years ago Late Pleistocene eolian quartz sand, deposited as parabolic dunes reworked by wind from Ohoopee River braid-plain sediments during repeated Wisconsin-glaciation flood cycles

Epoch

Late Pleistocene (Wisconsin Glaciation)

Native lands

Yuchi (Tsoyaha, "Children of the Sun"), whose towns anchored the nearby Ogeechee River country before their westward displacement in the early 1700s under Creek and Carolina pressure; Lower Creek (Muscogee) towns then hunted, fished, and held Green Corn ceremonies along the Ohoopee, Ogeechee, and Canoochee rivers, leaving arrowheads and other artifacts across the dune fields that looters still disturb today

Displacement & Tenure

Cession: Treaty of Augusta (1773), the "New Purchase" extending Creek and Cherokee cession lines in Georgia to relieve traders' debts; Cession: Treaty of Augusta (November 1, 1783), in which Creek negotiators ceded the land between the Ogeechee and Oconee rivers, including the Ohoopee River dune country, over the strong public objection of the wider Creek Nation, which repudiated the sale as unauthorized. Georgia distributed the ceded land to settlers through its land lottery system beginning in 1805, and organized Emanuel County from Bulloch and Montgomery counties in 1812.

Ecology

Desert-like sandhill scrub built around Georgia plume (Elliottia racemosa), the state's only endemic tree, alongside stunted turkey oak, wiregrass, and aromatic shrubs adapted to the deep, fast-draining dune sand, with isolated longleaf pine and gopher tortoise burrows on the driest ridges. The dune system is the only place on Earth for the Ohoopee geometer moth (Fernaldella georgiana, tied to its host plant woody goldenrod), Donaldson's lined june beetle (Polyphylla donaldsoni), and the Ohoopee Dunes scarab beetle (Geopsammodius ohoopee), plus a grasshopper (Melanoplus stegocercus) found only here and at one outlying population at Yuchi WMA. Prescribed fire holds back woody encroachment.

Hydrology

The Ohoopee River, a tributary of the Altamaha River, and its tributary the Little Ohoopee River run along the dune fields' western edge; the Altamaha ultimately reaches the Atlantic near Darien.

Acreage

9,271

GPS

32.5989° N, 82.4179° W

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