The Dismal Swamp Welcome Center is ideally located on US Hwy 17N, in South Mills, NC, 3 miles from the NC/VA border. Neighboring Elizabeth City, 15 miles to the south, provides many lodging venues. Camden County enjoys some great local eateries, with home-cooking like your mama’s.
 

The Dismal Swamp Canal is an alternate route along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, connecting the Chesapeake Bay with the Albemarle Sound. The canal has a controlled depth of 6 foot and details of water levels can be viewed here.  The AIWW provides pleasure boats with a protected inland channel between Norfolk, Virginia, all the way to Miami, Florida.  The Canal is on the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic Landmark, noted as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and has received the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Designation. The Welcome Center is home to a 150’ face dock that provides a rest stop to nearly 2,000 boaters yearly.