The Population Bomb Missed East Central Georgia

The one-turret Taliaferro County Courthouse in

Crawfordville. Second funkiest in Georgia.

Canon 5D Classic, Canon EF 24-85 f3.5-4.5 lens

 

From our campground near Toccoa I was able to retrace the two northeast Georgia tours in one long day each. Then we took a day off, and on the fourth day broke camp and headed south on GA Highway 17 to A.H. Stephens State Park, which seemed to be the best available location from which to do the four tours in east central Georgia. Hard Labor Creek State Park, somewhat farther east, might have been better, but all their RV sites had been booked.

A smallish but lovely park on the edge of Crawfordville, A.H. Stephens looked like a good place to spend a few days. However, after finding that the site we were assigned did not have 50-amp power, as we had requested, we were eventually moved to a site with full hookups.

In the process, Louise accidentally cut a bad gash on her calf. We had to drop everything and head for the nearest emergency room, which turned out to be 25 miles away. Because of the time lost they were not able to stitch the wound, but cleansed it thoroughly and drew the edges together with steri-strips. Now, almost six weeks later, it is healing, but still not completely healed.

The fact that the ER was 25 miles away illustrates something about east central Georgia -- it is very thinly populated. As I wrote in my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, the region looks as if some giant had picked it up and shaken out all the people. Taliaferro County, of which Crawfordville is the county seat, is the least populous county in Georgia -- fewer than 1900 people. It is the second least populous county east of the Mississippi. The one-turret Taliferro County courthouse is, in my opinion, the second funkiest courthouse in Georgia. I suspect they ran out of money before they could build the second turret.(By the way, Taliferro is pronounced "Tolliver." Don't ask me why.)

 Crawfordville's one-block business district.

Unchanged in more than one hundred years.

Canon 5D Classic, Canon EF 24-85 f3.5-4.5 lens

Crawfordville first caught my  interest about twelve years ago when I read an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution which stated that Crawfordville's one-block-long business district had not changed since 1908. Many of the storefronts are empty now, but they're all right there, just as they were a hundred years ago; caught in a time warp.

Anyway, A.H. Stephens is a nice park and our stay there was mostly pleasant, except as noted above. I was able to retrace the four tours in the region in five long days, which would have been four if I had not made a major error in the directions I wrote in the first edition of Backroads and Byways -- I had written "turn left" when I should have written "turn right;" consequently, I spent hours looking for things that were miles away. But that's okay, because one of the reasons to retrace the tours was to make sure all the directions were correct. My apologies to the people who drove this tour and wound up in the wrong place.

After taking a day for R&R, we were off to central Georgia and the next leg of our tour.

To be continued.

Photographs and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins. Both photos from my book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Re-Visiting The Northeast Georgia Mountains

The gristmill at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center

Fuji X-H1 camera, Fujinon XC 16-50 f3.5-5.6 OIS-II lens

In the late afternoon of July third, after a mostly uneventful trip, we pulled into Culohee Campground near Toccoa.  I say uneventful, unless you count a lot of nailbiting. There's quite a difference between pulling a 20-foot travel trailer with a half-ton pickup and pulling a 35-foot fifth-wheel with a one-ton diesel truck with a long wheelbase. It was much more intense than I had expected.

The camp is a really nice place and the owner and his wife were friendly and helpful. And the price was right. Our space backed up to a deck with a picnic table, overlooking a small, rushing creek. Very nice.

The next day I set out to revisit the two tours in northeast Georgia -- chapters 14 and 15 in Backroads and Byways. I found only a few things that needed to be changed: in Chapter 14, "To Helen Back," I found that the Healan Mill, north of Gainesville, was temporarily closed because Hall County was making it the centerpiece of a new park. And in Chapter 15, "Over the Roof of Georgia," I found that a small, electric-powered mill and a restaurant had closed.

On the other hand, for Chapter 14 I was able to add a photograph of Anna Ruby Falls, reachable at the end of an uphill, half-mile walk. I had not photographed it when I came through the area in 2016 because I was short of time.

 Mountain man Les Barnett demonstrates and sells home-made

banjos at the Foxfire Museum. He makesthem out of old tin

cans or boxes. He also makes custom guitars.

Fuji X-H1 camera, Fujinon XC 16-50 f3.5-5.6 OIS-II lens

 

And for Chapter 15, I was able to visit and make photographs at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center near Mountain City. It had been closed when I visited the area in 2016. Foxfire offers a fascinating look at the culture and daily life in the southern Appalachians in the 19th century.

As I drove over the mountain, going south from Blairsville, I was reminded again of what I wrote on the last page of my book:

". . .my most poignant memory is of the last day of my honeymoon. My wife and I had spent a week in the North Georgia mountains, the last several days in a small resort called Enotah Cottages across from Vogel State Park.

On this last day, we packed our Volkswagen and drove over the mountain to Turner's Corner. To the right, down US 19, lay home, responsibility. . . life. I can still feel, even now, the powerful urging of my heart to choose the left fork and stay in the mountains forever.

As Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

So I did. And life has been good."

And so it has. And in a way, I got to do both.

(To be continued.)

Photographs and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

 

Hello? . . .hello? Is Anyone Here?

The truck and trailer. Pristine and primed for the road.

I'm ashamed to admit that it's been a month and a half since I last posted. My only excuse is that it has been a very intensive time.

As I've written before, I have a contract with my publisher, W.W. Norton of New York, to do a second edition of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

In 2016 I traveled nearly 11,000 miles to explore the nooks and crannies of Georgia's backroads. I visited old mills, covered bridges, courthouses, old churches, and historic houses without number, and whatever else caught my fancy. And then I organized it all into fifteen driving tours, suitable for a day trip or a weekend, in various parts of the state. Each tour was carefully mapped out with precise driving directions and information about points of interest. 

In order to do a second edition, it was necessary to re-drive each tour, making sure each point of interest was still there and that my directions were accurate. (To my shame, I found a few that weren't.) In addition, I wanted to expand some of the tours, and the editor had also asked me to create one completely new tour for the new edition.

As some readers might remember (assuming I still have any) my wife and I began living in an RV full time last January. The RV dealer delivered our fifth-wheel trailer to our site at a campground near Chattanooga, we moved into it, and there it sat until July. Meanwhile, my wife had two surgeries (which had been planned for some time), and we replaced our Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck with a Ram 3500 diesel -- a truck capable of pulling just about any rig we might ever own.

We decided that the most practical way to revisit the various tours would be to pull the camper to a location that was reasonably central to several tours and set up at a campground or state park. For instance, by camping at A.H. Stevens State Park at Crawfordville, I could retrace the routes for chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9, all in east central Georgia. From a campground north of Darian I could drive the routes for chapters 11 and 12 on the southeast coast.

So, on July third, we hooked the truck (aka "The Mighty Beast") to our trailer and hit the road. (To be continued.)

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone