For centuries, Liberty County has held a mystical power over explorers. The Historic Liberty Trail is a unique driving tour offering a diverse experience integrating history, culture and ecology. It covers 10 stops including: Midway Museum and Historic District, Cay Creek Wetlands, Geechee Kunda Cultural Arts Center, LeConte-Woodmanston Botanical Gardens, Dorchester Academy and Museum, Fort Stewart Museum, Melon Bluff Nature and Heritage Preserve, Seabrook Village, Fort Morris State Historic Site and Sunbury Cemetery.

Begin the Historic Liberty Trail Driving Tour

Begin your tour at Exit 76 off I-95, where an information kiosk gives a glimpse of The Historic Liberty Trail. Visitors traveling the trail explore Liberty County, home of Dr. Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett, signers of the Declaration of Independence. Your first stop is the Midway National Historic District. Leaving the kiosk, turn right (west) on US 84. Drive 2.2 miles, turn right on Martin Road. Drive 1.3 miles to arrive at the Midway National Historic District. The cemetery is straight ahead, the church and museum are on the right.

Midway National Historic District

Midway Museum, honors the community famed as Georgia’s Cradle of Liberty. Browse through the museum, built in the raised cottage-style architecture, typical of 18th Century plantation houses. Exhibits, documents and furnishings used in coastal Georgia homes from colonial days until the Civil War reanimate the love of Liberty. Tour the grounds which include a detached kitchen, salt vat and extensive nature trail. One of the best sources in the area for genealogical research. Also on the property is the Midway Church, built in 1756, was burned during the American Revolution and rebuilt in 1792. In this white-frame, New England-style church, Sherman’s cavalry set up foraging headquarters during the Civil War. Today, giant live oaks draped with Spanish moss shade about 1,200 graves in the cemetery, among them two generals of the American Revolution and Governor Nathan Brownson. During the Civil War, Sherman’s cavalry plundered county plantations and corralled animals in the walled, two-acre cemetery.

Days and Hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 10am-4pm, Sunday: 2pm-4pm
Facilities: Small gift shop with a good selection of books on local history.
Restrooms available.
Fees: Small fee required. Group rates available.
For More Information: (912) 884-5837

Cay Creek Wetlands

DIRECTIONS: Leaving Midway Museum, turn left on US 17. Drive 0.5 miles, at the traffic light turn left on US 84. Drive 2.4 miles until you reach Charlie Butler Road. Turn right on Charlie Butler Road. Travel approximately 0.2 miles until you see the Cay Creek Wetlands sign on your right.

As an excellent example of tidal, freshwater wetlands, Cay Creek Wetlands provide a unique opportunity for education and appreciation. The area is rich in diversity. Bay, Cypress and Oak trees are abundant, as are Palms, Palmettos and Magnolias. The area provides habitats for numerous species of animals, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects. The site is several different ecosystems. Each has specific traits that give it character, but the distinctions may be overlooked by the casual observer. Look closely and you may notice the differences in plant and animal life in those areas that are permanently wet when compared with areas that are intermittently wet and dry. The site has its history, too. Look for the low earthen berms that cross the landscape. In some instances, they may be the high ground on which you stand. These are the remains of dikes that were used for growing rice. Rice production was common to the area in the 19th Century. Cay Creek Wetlands has seen exciting activity recently with the completion of a boardwalk, allowing visitors to easily access the wetlands in both wet and dry seasons. An interpretive center building, designed to house exhibits and information, will soon follow.

Days and Hours: Monday-Friday: 8am-4pm
Facilities: None.
Fees: Free.
For More Information: (912) 884-3344

Geechee Kunda Cultural Arts Center

DIRECTIONS: Take a right onto Charlie Butler Road out of the drive and travel 0.7 miles, turn right onto Historic Cay Creek Road, a well-maintained, unpaved road. Only 3.8 miles from US 17. Enjoy the canopy of moss-draped oaks and the incredible marsh vistas as well as vibrant flowers and coastal wildlife on this scenic road. Once you’ve reached US 17 take a left and travel through the quaint town of Riceboro. Travel approximately 4.6 miles and turn left onto Ways Temple Road, Geechee Kunda is on the right 0.2 miles. Note: Nice picnic facilities at US 17 junction.

Geechee Kunda (a Sarakole’ word meaning compound) is indicative of the culture of Gullah Geechees. Geechee Kunda is reflective of the family compounds that exist throughout the Gullah Geechee areas of the Carolinas, Georgia and Northern Florida as well as Africa. It is a living institution dedicated to preserving the culture of a living people. Its museum is filled with African art, textiles, painting, tools, utensils, implements, craftworks and essentials used by Gullah Geechees from the 1700’s to the 1900’s. The museum houses artifacts from the period of slavery and it’s an educational facility for lectures, workshops, classes, seminars, weddings and more.

Days and Hours: Group tours and classes available, call for an appointment.
Facilities: Gift shop, meeting and classroom space.
Fees: Call for further information.
For More Information: (912) 884-4440

LeConte-Woodmanston Botanical Gardens

DIRECTIONS: Leaving Ways Temple Road turn right onto US 17 toward Riceboro. Travel approximately 0.7 miles and turn left onto Sandy Run Road. Travel 4.3 miles then turn left at stop sign onto Barrington Ferry Road. Barrington Ferry Road is unpaved, but well-maintained. Look for wood storks, ospreys, egrets and herons that feed in the wetlands. Almost one mile south of the intersection you will find a historic marker for the Bartram Trail on the left. The sign marks the entrance to LeConte-Woodmanston.

LeConte-Woodmanston, formerly the home of Dr. Louis LeConte, flourished as one of Georgia’s earliest inland swamp rice plantations and is now a nature preserve. Dr. LeConte achieved international fame in scientific circles as did his sons, John and Joseph. John was the first president of the University of California at Berkeley. Joseph and his friend, John Muir, co-founded the Sierra Club. Today, Louis LeConte’s world-famous 18th Century botanical gardens are being recreated with a myriad of antique plants. Visit the cypress forest and walk the interpretative trail along the earthen rice dikes leading through the Bulltown Swamp black-water eco-system. Take a stroll along the Avenue of Oaks or bask in an 18th Century nature experience. They are all part of the Historic Bartram Trail.

Days and Hours: Typically open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday: 10am-3pm or by appointment. Call to verify times before visiting.
Facilities: A small fee required.
Fees: Restrooms.
For More Information: (912) 884-6500

Dorchester Academy and Museum

DIRECTIONS: Leaving LeConte-Woodmanston, follow drive back to Barrington Ferry Road. Turn right and follow road until it dead ends into US 17, approximately 5 miles. Turn left and travel another 2.1 miles to the intersection of US 17 and US 84, turn left on US 84 and drive 2 miles. Dorchester Academy is on the left.

The Academy, today an active community center and museum, was founded after the Civil War as a school for freed slaves. By 1917, the fully-accredited high school had eight frame buildings and 300 students. In the 1940s, its academic program ended when a consolidated school for black youth was built in nearby Riceboro. The brick school building, an example of Georgian Revival style architecture is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. prepared for the 1963 Birmingham campaign, one of the first major victories of the Civil Rights Movement.

Days and Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 11am-2pm, Saturday: 2pm-4pm
Facilities: Free.
Fees: Pavilion with barbecue pit and restrooms.
For More Information: (912) 884-2347

Fort Stewart Museum

DIRECTIONS: Leaving Dorchester Academy, turn left (west) on US 84. Travel approximately 10 miles to General Stewart Way and take right fork. Travel 0.8 miles and turn left onto North Main Street. Travel 0.6 miles through historic Hinesville, where you will enjoy specialty shopping and excellent restaurants. Traveling another 0.9 miles take the right fork and drive 0.1 miles to General Screven Way. Take a right onto General Screven Way and drive 0.9 miles to the main entrance of Fort Stewart. Continue straight on GA 119 for 0.3 miles. From GA 119 turn left onto Bunker Road (the first left). Follow Bunker Road to a stop sign. At the stop sign make a left onto Frank Cochran Drive. The museum is on the immediate left.

Fort Stewart, the largest military post east of the Mississippi, is home to the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division (Mech) and is the summer training grounds for the National Guard. At the museum, Liberty County’s military heritage is showcased in ever-changing exhibits featuring objects from World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm and present-day military activities.

Days and Hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 10am-4pm Closed Mondays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day and Federal Holidays.
Facilities: Gift shop, snack machine, restrooms and picnic area.
Fees: Free. Group tours upon request.
For More Information: (912) 767-7885

Please Note: Due to heightened security, Fort Stewart is now a closed post and requires all visitors to stop at the main gate. At the gate visitors must provide proof of registration, insurance and drivers license to receive a visitor’s pass.

Melon Bluff Nature and Heritage Preserve

DIRECTIONS: Leaving Fort Stewart drive straight on GA 119 until it dead ends into US 84 turn left, approximately 0.5 miles. Travel approximately 15 miles to I-95, as you cross I-95 travel another 2.9 miles and you will see Melon Bluff on your right.

Nestled amongst 3,000 unspoiled acres on Georgia’s coast, Melon Bluff is set amid gorgeous, moss-hung oaks at the river’s edge. Melon Bluff offers 25 miles of grassy, forest trails for hiking, biking, picnics and riding. Birding is the prime attraction, offering 309 species, many uncommon and endangered. Visitors can find overnight accommodations ranging from a restored barn to a plantation cottage. On site, there is a delightful gift shop, a screened pool and a facility for small conferences.

Days and Hours: Saturdays: 9am-4pm from September 15th through May 15th. Public events are scheduled throughout the year.
Facilities: Overnight accommodations, full gourmet meal service, scheduled wagon rides, kayak expeditions, gift shop, pool and facility for small conferences.
Fees: Prices vary - Call for further information.

Seabrook Village

DIRECTIONS: From Melon Bluff, turn right onto Islands Highway. Travel 0.7 miles until you come to Trade Hill Road (Seabrook Village signs will be on your left). Turn left on to Trade Hill and drive 0.6 miles. Seabrook Village office will be on your left.

An award-winning living history museum, Seabrook Village features eight turn-of-the-century buildings on a developing 104-acre site. Visit the one-room Seabrook School where “reading, writing and ‘rithmetic were taught to the tune of a hick’ry stick.” Or try your hand at grinding corn into meal and grits or washing clothes on a scrub board. Planned group visits are fully interactive as costumed interpreters engage visitors in all aspects of old time village life. On-going exhibits include the grave art of Cyrus Bowens, featured in Drums and Shadows, and the Willis Hakim J. Hones Material Culture Collection of hand-made items from a peanut roaster to twig furniture.

Days and Hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 10am-4pm. Interactive tours available for groups of 15 or more. Special educational and Girl Scout programs available.
Facilities: Seabrook Village Museum Shop and Craft Gallery, meal service (by reservation), restrooms.
Fees: Small fee required.
Group Tours: Call for rates, brochure and availability.
For More Information: (912) 884-7008

Fort Morris State Historic Site

DIRECTIONS: Leaving Seabrook, turn left on Trade Hill Road. Drive 0.2 miles to the intersection of Fort Morris Road. Turn left, drive 2 miles. The entrance to Fort Morris is on the right.

Fort Morris was built to defend the former town of Sunbury, once a bustling seaport second in Georgia only to Savannah. Fort Morris was used as a coastal fortification during the Revolutionary War. The earthen works were reconstructed during the War of 1812 and were later used as a Civil War Encampment. The site’s museum features displays of civilian and military life during Georgia’s Colonial, Revolutionary and Antebellum past. During periodic special events, reenactments bring Fort Morris alive with roaring cannons and the measured tread of marching soldiers. Listen! You can almost hear the fife and drums.

Days and Hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 9am-5pm, Sunday: 2:00pm-5:30pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Mondays, except some legal holidays.
Facilities: Museum, gift shop, pioneer camping, picnic area, restrooms and nature trail.
Fees: Small fee required.
For More Information: (912) 884-5999

Sunbury Cemetery

DIRECTIONS: Leaving Fort Morris, turn right onto Fort Morris Road. Travel 0.7 miles past Sunbury Village and turn left onto Sunbury Road (dirt). Drive 0.1 miles to Dutchman Cove Road. Drive 0.1 miles to the end of the road, it will dead end into the cemetery.

From the beginning of the town’s history, public burials were performed at a community cemetery located at the southeast corner of Church Square. Sunbury Cemetery housed the remains of members from the Midway Congregational Church, Sunbury Baptist Church and others. A sense of integrity remains even though no complete interment records are known to exist for the cemetery. Most of the markers were gone by the 1870’s. Of the thirty-four remaining, the oldest is dated 1788 and the most recent, 1911. Two iron fenced family enclosures are carefully arrayed with neatly lined markers for the Dunham and Fleming-Law families. The most famous tombstone is a full-length marker for Reverend William McWhir. The graves of Josiah Powell and Samuel Law, notables of the town of Sunbury, are also marked.

The cemetery is open year-round and is free to the public.

Most people do not know the name of Mose Coleman, but a historical marker bearing his name sits on the late farmer’s property in Toombs County. Here is where Mose planted onions in 1931. But oddly, they turned out sweet, not hot like he had predicted. Nevertheless, the Toombs County farmer got a decent price for his novelty onions at the market. He managed to sell each 50-pound bag for $3.50. Over the years other farmers in the region tried their luck with the onions, which sold well in the Toombs County seat of Vidalia. Motorists traveling on nearby US 280 and Route 1 who tried the onions liked their sweet, mild taste. They bought them by the bag load and referred to them by the name of the town. Soon Vidalia onions appeared on the shelves of Piggly Wiggly and A&P grocery stores all over the East. Today, the Vidalia onion industry is worth an estimated $30 million. Each autumn and winter more than 200 farmers plant the sweet onions on about 14,000 acres. When harvested in the spring and early summer, each acre produces up to 70,000 plants.

Within site of the late Mose Coleman property are the 5,000-acre Stanley Farms and Vidalia Onion Factory. Like most Vidalia onion farms, the Stanleys run a family-owned, multi-generation business. Their onion acreage, however, is much larger than most, about 1,000 acres. Visitors can walk through the fields on either side of the factory. In early September, the Stanleys start seedbeds for the onions; and from November to February, they plant the seedlings by hand. Then come the hazards of the growing season. Too much rain can rot the stems. Too much cold can harden the centers. Too much heat can bring stifling weeds. In the spring, a straight blade behind a tractor digs up the onions. Then between one and two hundred migrant workers cut off the tops, which reach up to three feet in height, and put the onions in bags, which remain in the field for a day or two to dry in the sun. Then they are taken into the Vidalia Onion Factory for processing.

Visitors can also tour the processing plant inside the Vidalia Onion Factory, which serves as the family’s headquarters. Onions fresh from the field go into large, green metal driers, heated by gas, for a day or so of curing. Then they are moved to a conveyor belt where they roll up and down a long line of chutes, canals and tunnels as workers inspect them for soft spots or bruises. Next, the onions are sorted into peewee, medium and jumbo sizes and bagged, ready for delivery to roadside stands, grocery stores and mailboxes all over the world. Others go into controlled atmospheric storage units. Inside each of the tightly sealed rooms, where the temperature remains 34 degrees and the humidity 70 percent, is a mix of 92 percent nitrogen, 5 percent carbon dioxide and 3 percent oxygen. The combination puts onions into a deep sleep that keeps them fresh longer, dramatically lengthening the selling season. The Stanleys sell Vidalia onion products, such as jams, relishes and salad dressings in their gift shop and offer onion specialties in season in the shop’s café.

Over the years the nearby city of Glennville in Tattnall County has feuded with Vidalia over the origin of the Georgia sweet onion. It hosts a separate onion festival. And in 1979 when Vidalia conducted a test that determined its onions were sweeter than those in the Glennville area, the latter city responded with an experiment of its own that concluded its onions to be less pungent. Farmers who grow sweet onions in Tattnall County produce more than twice as many as those in Toombs. One of the largest Tattnall County Vidalia onion farms is Bland Farms, which the Bland family has owned since the 1940s. During April the farm employs 1,000 people to harvest onions on its 2,400 acres. Visitors can tour the onion fields and packing facility.

Whistle stops and mill towns along Georgia rivers were a vital part of the agricultural economy. Surrounded by farms and plantations, they were the place where the local farmers brought their cotton and grains for processing and shipping, bought their supplies and caught up on county events. All across the South, many of these towns slowly and painfully died as economics pushed people off of farms and into cities.

To visit Juliette is to visit a once-bustling place that found itself on the brink of disappearing. The best perspective from which to see how geography and man came together to produce this town is to stand on the site of the cavernous, concrete ruins of the Juliette mills, looking toward the town. At your back is the Ocmulgee River, the source of power for this gigantic rock-grinding mill. The shoaled river site was perfect to harness this power. Joe Smith built the original mills and a wooden dam, the first across the Ocmulgee River. Sherman’s Union troops spared the site on their march through Georgia. For years afterwards, Smith’s sons ran the mill, which underwent a series of improvements and enlargements. Between the mill and the town lie the railroad tracks. When the Southern Railroad built the rail line by the river in 1882, a company official by the name of McCrackin named the station after his wife, Juliette.

At the turn of the century, W. P. Glover purchased the mill and renamed it the Juliette Milling Company. Hearing of another mill in Europe with the same number of large grinding stones, he added one more set, making his the largest such mill in the world. Each stone was 48 inches in diameter. There were 20 pairs of them, lined in two rows. Each row had a separate water wheel that moved the gears, which in turn moved the stones that crushed the corn. Altogether, the mill could grind cornmeal at the rate of 300 bushels an hour. Glover replaced the original mill with a new building in 1904, but it burned to the ground in 1926. One year later, a new fireproof building went up, the concrete and steel ruins of which remain today. It was a monumental, modern complex. The building had four stories with a grain elevator section extending two more stories. In all, the storage bins and steel tank could hold 77,400 bushels of grain; in an hour it could process 5,000 bushels of corn, turning half into grits and half into meal. At the height of its production, 40 to 50 railway cars of corn were brought to the mill each month and an average of seven cars of cornmeal left each day.

Glover also built a cotton mill directly across the river in Jones County. In September when cotton season opened, country wagons from all over came loaded with cotton. The farmers shopped in Juliette, further boosting the economy. By the 1930s, the company pretty much ran the town, whose main street stretched west of the tracks, providing cottages, electricity and water free to most of the 300 citizens, the majority of whom worked at the grist or cotton mill.

Despite its technological advancements, the mill still relied on the river’s natural flow to stone-grind meal the traditional way, a fact underscored during the area’s 1954 drought. The wheels didn’t turn for two months. A year later, Martha White Mills acquired the Juliette landmark; but continued making the mainstay Mrs. Juliette Grits and Jim’s Syrup brands. Eventually, the train left town and the mills closed. After that, virtually every other business faded and died. The kudzu growing along the banks of the river threatened to take over.

Until the movie. The producers needed an old whistle stop to locate their movie based on Fannie Flagg’s novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. From a helicopter, they spotted Juliette. They transformed an antique store near the south end of McCrackin Street, one of the last businesses left in town, into the Whistle Stop Cafe, where much of the movie’s plot unfolds. Today, the café serves country food and fried green tomatoes to tourists, and about a dozen antique stores and gift shops operate from behind the movie facades and the grey wooden storefronts on both sides of McCrackin Street. Juliette breathes life again.

A Do-It-Yourself Tour of an Antebellum Georgia Rice Plantation

No one lived in more refinement than the rice planters. Nowhere is their life better documented than Hofwyl-Broadfield. No one worked under worse conditions than the rice slaves. And nowhere is their life better remembered than this plantation. Boasting the finest rice culture museum in the state and a panoramic view of the old rice fields, the plantation estate also offers a personal look into the antebellum home of a rice planting family who owned the property for almost two hundred years. Photo 1: The Hofwyl-Broadfield plantation house.

In 1806 the slaves of William Brailsford and his son-in-law James Troup carved a rice plantation out of a cypress swamp along the Altamaha River. When Troup died in 1849, the plantation had 7,300 acres, 375 slaves, and an $80,000 debt, a crushing financial obligation that ill-affected the family for generations. Troup’s daughter Ophelia and her husband George Dent inherited the estate and built the house that stands today.

The plantation steadily produced rice until the Civil War when George and his son James, 15, left to serve in the Confederate army. Ophelia and the other children moved to a refugee settlement near Waycross. The Dents gave up much of the estate after the war to pay for taxes. When James Dent took over the plantation’s management in the 1880s, the wealth had gone. He continued growing rice, but with little success. The end of slavery meant the end of cheap labor. In 1915 a new strain of rice was invented by the Japanese that could be grown inland with machinery, thereby ending the production of rice on the east coast. Photo 2: The Dent family about 1900

With the best interpretive history of coastal rice culture in the state, the visitor center has a large diorama illustrating the layout of the fields and excellent displays of the tools and technology used in rice cultivation, like handmade reed baskets and tidal powered rice mill timbers. A professional, 17-minute documentary offers a revealing look into the lives of whites and blacks on the plantation, while another documents rice cultivation. Graphic models and displays in the museum chronicle the contributions slaves made to rice culture. Many came directly from West Africa, bringing with them valuable knowledge about rice cultivation and tools, such as rice fans, flat baskets and a mortar and pestle to remove rice hulls. Some worked as engineers, boat makers and carpenters to create the impressive rice field infrastructure.

Outside the visitor center, a short nature trail to the left goes to the edge of a river marsh that once grew the Hofwyl-Broadfield rice. Shortly before it reaches the marsh, the tabby ruins of a rice mill appear on the right. Continue straight ahead onto a historic dike, made in large part with shells, which leads to a platform that overlooks the old rice fields.

Looking at the inhospitable marsh, one can easily imagine the perils faced by the slaves: malaria, mosquitoes and burning heat. Cultivating rice proved a most unhealthy occupation, much worse than picking cotton. Rampant sickness meant an extremely high turnover rate.

“A rice plantation is, in fact, a huge hydraulic machine maintained by constant warring against the rivers,” observed Edward King in The Great South in 1875.

Slaves made the technological feat possible through tedious work. They cleared 50-yard swaths, between 50 to 80 feet from the river water line, dug ditches 8-feet wide and 5-feet deep, scooping up the thick Altamaha River mud to form the dikes. They sowed the seeds in early spring, covering them with mud by hoe, followed by constant weeding and four managed floods over the summer. Astrology played a role in the planting. Careful considerations of the full moon and arrival of the spring flood tide determined when to plant. High and low tides during full and new moons, moving the Altamaha River to its highest and lowest points, also presented the best occasions to irrigate and drain the fields during the growing season. Photo 3: Rice field workers about 1900

During harvest, the workers cut the grain by hand with a rice hook, left the grain on the stubble for a day to dry and tied it in sheaves. They then loaded the sheaves aboard flat boats, transported then to the mill house or yard for curing and put them away in large stacks about 14 feet in diameter. Each contained about 300 bushels of rice when threshed. Either a threshing mill removed the seed from the harvested rice plant, or slaves threshed it manually, using hand flails like those used since Biblical times. Then the rice was winnowed, mostly by hand, which separated the grain from the hull and other chaff.

For details on visiting Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation click here.

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.