Hidden Treasures

Renowned photographers Clyde Butcher and Allen Rokach capture the primordial beauty of Gulf County’s Dead Lakes.

by Todd Keith
black-and-white photography by Clyde Butcher
color photography by Allen Rokach

SweetTea Journal (Summer/Winter 2007) – Twelve miles above the confluence of the Chipola and Apalachicola rivers, near the town of Wewahitchka, the Dead Lakes begin. A revitalized sixty-seven-acre Dead Lakes Park offers locals and visitors alike an improved entrée into this lost world. Surrounded by longleaf pines on higher ground, then giving way to magnolias and, finally, stately cypresses in lowland areas near the water, it is a landscape familiar yet also somehow alien, a quiet backwater expanse with otherworldly pretensions—otherworldly, perhaps because of the stillness. When alone on a canoe or small fishing skiff, one is surrounded by the skeletal outlines of trees devoid of leaves and, often, life. But the Dead Lakes are by no means dead, despite first impressions.

Filled by the Chipola River’s flow, the Dead Lakes are a haven for wildlife of all kinds, from deer, foxes, hawks, and alligators to bream, bass, flathead catfish, and redear sunfish, called “shellcrackers” because of their fondness for snails. For every dead tree there is a multitude of healthy, vibrant cypresses and sweet bays towering above their verdant reflections in the mirrorlike water. That this rich environment exists at all is because of nature’s caprice. Over the course of many years, the sediment-laden Apalachicola River deposited its silty sands over its banks, causing a slow-motion jam that eventually created a natural dam on the Chipola. The ensuing high water from the Apalachicola in the floodplain killed thousands of trees, thus the name Dead Lakes, somewhat misleading as that is.

Into this magical landscape we sent Clyde Butcher and Allen Rokach. Butcher’s stark black-and-white photography of the Dead Lakes rates among the best of his oeuvre and shows his deep affinity for the great undisturbed natural places remaining in this region—as well as his commitment to their preservation. In Rokach’s images, the rich hues of golden sunrises, the shockingly blue tones of sunny skies, and the brown striations of receding waterlines traced on the trunks of the many majestic cypress trees provide a glance back into primordial time itself. Together, the photographers’ reflections of this special place are more revealing than any description could attempt. Both artists have an ethic to their work that allows the natural grandeur of the land to speak for itself, be it in brilliant color or eloquent black and white.

And the land is speaking. Almost twenty years ago, an artificial dam was removed after Gulf County officials realized that it was harming rather than helping the Dead Lakes by causing excessive vegetation to choke out much of the life there. Today, the number of fish species found in the Dead Lakes has doubled since the dam’s removal, a clear sign of recovery. Also of note, a number of cypress trees were harvested when that dam originally was constructed in 1960. Today, many of those same cypresses are sprouting to life again from their stumps, just another reminder that all that appears dead is not lost.