QUICK FACTS
Name: Bald cypress swamp
Location: First Landing State Park, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Coordinates: 36.90671813879774, -76.02093550787815
Why it’s incredible: Under the right light in winter, the swamp becomes a giant rainbow.
Virginia’s “rainbow swamp” is a flooded forest whose waters take on a magical, multicolored sheen in the winter months. Under certain lighting conditions, the swamp turns into a giant, luminous rainbow broken up by the shadows of bald cypress trees ( Taxodium distichum ) and cypress knees — cone-shaped humps that grow vertically above the trees’ roots.
The rainbow swamp is one of many along the Bald Cypress Trail at First Landing State Park, which is located where English colonists first landed in 1607, according to the park’s website . Most days of the year, the swamp looks like any other forested wetland — rather murky and opaque. But occasionally, in late fall and winter, the stagnant pool puts on a dazzling light show.
Related: Extremely rare ‘rainbow clouds’ light up Arctic skies for 3 days in a row