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
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