Andersonville Trail
Quiet country roads, earthy farm smells, abandoned peanut mills and rusting old-fashioned hay balers are all part of this leisurely drive that offers a scenic history of Georgia agriculture. Roadside signs mark the entire Andersonville Trail, which runs 75 miles from Byron to Cordele, primarily on GA 49. It can be accessed in several locations, but to drive the entire length from north to south, access from I-75’s Exit 46 (GA 49) at Byron, in Peach County, where a giant peach looms on the east side of the highway.
Byron, in Peach County, was originally a whistle stop known as Number One and One Half Station. To reach the old railroad depot, turn right off of GA 49 onto GA 42 and go 0.25 mile to the railroad tracks. Built in 1870, the Byron Depot is located in the exact center of town. According to local reports, more peaches were shipped from here each day in the 1920s and 30s than from anywhere else in the world. Along with a caboose parked to the side, the restored depot serves as a museum with pictures and displays that chronicle the town’s past.
From Byron, GA 49 begins winding through countless pecan and peach orchards as it makes its way south. Roadside stands selling in-season fruits and vegetables reflect the county’s agricultural base—617,000 peach trees, 73,000 pecan trees and annual harvests of over 1 million pounds of peanuts. The Andersonville Trail intersects with the Peach Blossom Trail in Fort Valley. On the left, heading south out of Fort Valley is the state’s agricultural school, Fort Valley State University. More than one hundred years old, the school has more acres than all but one other institution in the University System of Georgia. Between Fort Valley and Marshallville is the Massee Lane Gardens, home of the American Camellia Society. Of the total 160 acres, 10 are devoted to a landscaped camellia garden. Additional acres include a Japanese garden, a rose garden, a greenhouse, a peach orchard and a pecan grove.
Three miles further south in Monroe County is perhaps the most important city in Georgia’s peach history. Marshallville, a small town whose two-block downtown has mostly closed red brick storefronts, a fading, unreadable logo on its water tower and one four-way traffic stop, has changed little in the last century. Most of its growth took place in the 1800s. The U.S. Indian Agency, led by Benjamin Hawkins from a post a short distance to the north, convinced the Creeks to leave their lands through treaties and other means during the 1820s. In one generation, cotton covered the land. Two generations later, peach orchards had replaced most of the cotton, primarily due to the contributions of resident Samuel Rumph. Heeding the advice of contemporary agricultural journals, Rumph diversified from cotton, tinkering with peaches at his Willow Lake nursery three miles east of town. After ten years, he unveiled the bigger, tastier, more colorful Elberta, a major success with local customers. Rumph thought if he could figure out a way to prevent them from spoiling or bruising, he could market them across the nation. He came up with a way, inventing a shipping refrigerator and rigid packing crate specifically designed for peaches.
Marshallville exploded into a national distribution center for Elbertas and Georgia Belles, the second invented by his Uncle Lewis. For decades the peaches rode the rails, beginning their trip from the Marshallville depot, one block east of GA 49 on Main Street (GA 127) where the current Central of Georgia deport now stands. Also on Main Street next to City Hall is the Vegetable Basket, owned by longtime resident Robert Barr. Inside the restaurant, the walls are plastered with business correspondences from Samuel Rumph’s Willow Lake Nursery. Referring to subjects like the sale of apple cider or the purchase of fruit trees, the old documents give an interesting look into agricultural commerce one hundred years ago.
Continue south on GA 49 to Montezuma in Macon County on the banks of the Flint River. Noah Yoder led the first Mennonites to Georgia from Norfolk, Virginia, in 1953. An ad in a dairy trade magazine for a farm near Vienna had caught his eye. The deal fell through, but while on the steps of the local courthouse, they happened to learn of a farmer selling near Montezuma. The pacifist, bearded and bonnet-wearing Mennonites made quite a stir in Montezuma at first, but today they are an integral part of the community, having grown to more than two hundred families, three churches and numerous schools and businesses, all within a five-square mile area of rolling pasture in Macon County. Unwavering from a strict Christian code that prohibits many modern conveniences, the Mennonites have created one of the most successful and efficient dairy farming communities in Georgia. Despite their differences, their lives resemble those of their modern farmer counterparts in many ways. They drive modern combines and air-conditioned harvesters.
Twelve miles south of Montezuma is Andersonville. On the northern outskirts of town, on the left, is the Andersonville National Historic Site, where once stood the most notorious war prison in the Confederacy, Camp Sumter. Across GA 49 from the park is Andersonville, a small historic village town that sold supplies to the prison. Andersonville became a living history museum in the 1970s through the efforts of its 300 citizens, organized as the private, non-profit Andersonville Guild. Some of its 19th-century structures were moved from other locations, such as the restored railroad depot on Church Street that serves as a visitor center and museum. The town has a six-acre pioneer farm complete with mostly authentic structures—including a blacksmith shop, grist mill, liquor still, smokehouse, barn, petting zoo, mule-powered sugar cane mill and syrup kettle and log cabins.
Nine miles south of Andersonville, GA 49 reaches Americus, a town with a number of impressive Victorian homes and other historically significant structures, like the elegant circa 1891 Windsor Hotel, downtown at the intersection of Jackson Street and Forsyth Street, the same road as GA 49. From Americus, an optional side trip to President Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains can be taken. From downtown Americus at its intersection with GA 49, take GA 280 east. Eleven miles east of Americus, a sign for DeRiso Farms, buyer of pecans, dominates the skyline of Leslie, an old whistle stop town changed only by time and the elements. Take a right onto GA 195 south to the Georgia Rural Telephone Museum where Tommy Smith has remodeled an old cotton warehouse and installed his remarkable personal collection of telephone memorabilia, one of the largest collections in the state. Continue one more block to the main intersection to see a common site in the downtowns of old South Georgia settlements: the ruins of a large agricultural processing complex. In this case, on the edge of the Leslie business district stands a sprawling nut processing facility, littered with rusting warehouses, drooping chutes and countless red trailers like those still used in feed and nut mills across the South.
Further east one mile on GA 280, is DeSoto and the DeSoto Confectionery and Nut Company, the source of much of the fudge, peanut crickle and other candies using peanuts and pecans sold in retail outlets along I-75. The candy is handmade in the kitchen, then cooled and cut on granite slabs.
Heading east from DeSoto on GA 280 toward Cordele, where the Anderson Trail finishes at I-75, are some of the largest pecan orchards in the state. One visible from GA 280 to the west of the Flint River covers more than 1,000 acres. Cordele, which has been declared the official Watermelon Capital of the World, was the subject of a 1993 Washington Post feature story about the pleasures of eating out. The story described the glories of South Georgia dishes, such as peach cobbler, catfish, barbecue, cheese grits, fried chicken, ham, turnip greens, squash casserole, cornbread, sweet potatoes, rutabagas, butter peas and dozens of other dishes.