I’ve seen movies where houses are mounted on pilings in the middle of huge alligator-infested swamps. How many places are there like this? It would seem to be pretty cheap land, as well as an ideal place for a hermit to live. Can I “buy” an area of swamp somewhere, and build a floating house?
Any thing is possible. These places do exist… I should know I live in Louisiana. Their main purpose however is mainly used for some type of hunting camp, at least in my experience, and I have yet to meet someone who actually lives in one. The main purpose for such dwellings is to give the hunter(s) basic shelter without having to leave the swamp via boat. There are also places properly named house boats used in the same fashion. However I did know a guy who lived on one for some time, but he was going through a divorce at the time and it was the only place he could stay, and it was tied to a dock.
Janet Reno actually grew up in such a house in the Everglades (according to her, although she may have been exaggerating). I think most people who do that are actually squatting on government land.
I suspect a lot of wetlands protection laws would now outlaw the new construction of such dwellings. It’s an interesting concept, though - I live on the west coast of Florida and there’s a lot of that sort of land around here.
You can buy swampland without knowing it if you aren’t careful. Or at least you used to be able to. My father and his younger brother bought 80 acres of land, sight-unseen, in northwestern Wisconsin in 1921 or thereabouts. It was a promotion of the Northern Pacific RR in the little town of Webster.
They went up in the fall, after the first freezing and everything looked just fine. My dad was a barber so during the ensuing winter he opened a shop and at the same time taught my uncle the trade.
Come spring after the thaw they went out to their “farm.” As my uncle described it, “When I jumped out of the car onto the ground the whole farm shook.” And my dad said he picked up a 15 foot long tamarack limb and shoved it clear out of sight into the “ground.”
The property might have made a cranberry bog, but that’s about it. Dad returned to Iowa, my uncle stayed there in the barbering business until he finally became the Game Warden for the Burnett County area and retired, still in Webster.