McMurdo Station is a U.S. Antarctic research centre located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National Science Foundation. The station is the largest community in Antarctica, capable of supporting up to 1,258 residents, and serves as the United States Antarctic science facility. All personnel and cargo going to or coming from Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station first pass through McMurdo.

The Great Dismal Swamp is a marshy area in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, between Norfolk, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It is located in parts of southern Virginia cities Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina counties Gates, Pasquotank and Camden. It is a southern swamp, one of many along the Atlantic Ocean's coast, including the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp in Florida, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, the Congaree and Four Holes swamps of South Carolina, and some of the Carolina bays in the Carolinas and Georgia. Along the eastern edge runs the Dismal Swamp Canal, completed in 1805.