By James Sullivan

Sitting on the rock outcrop along the trail to the Tray Mountain Appalachian Trail shelter, a spectacular view of a steep, wild watershed unfolds to the east. This is the headwaters of the left fork of the Soquee River, which is a 29-mile long major tributary of the Chattahoochee River in the headwaters area. Most of the left fork of the Soquee is in the Tray Mountain Wilderness Area, providing a wonderful opportunity for adventurous folks to explore a wild headwaters area. The area has no marked or maintained trails, but there are many trails and old roadbeds to use. You will feel more confident with a USGS topographical map and compass to find your way to the waterfalls and beautiful campsites on the North and South Prongs of the Soquee and Wolfpen Branch. There are only two reasonable ways to access the Soquee headwaters area. Hiking from FSR 79 north of Chimney Mountain Road, you can climb over the ridge to the South Prong. Chimney Mountain Road does a loop north of GA 356 in White County northeast of Unicoi State Park. Hiking from the end of FSR 166 gets you into Woldpen Branch and the North Prong. Take GA 197 0.1 mile north from GA 356, turn left onto Goshen Creek Road, go 1.2 miles then left on Goshen Mountain Road, go 0.5 mile to end of pavement, bear right on gravel 2 miles to FSR 166 on left, another 0.5 mile brings you to a parking area. Following the trail to the southwest from the parking area will take you into Tray Mountain Wilderness Area and the headwaters of the Soquee River. The Lake Burton and Tray Mountain USGS maps are a necessity.

Access to the river for fishing downstream of the wilderness area is limited by private ownership of the river. There are two access areas on national forest land for fishing. These are at 3.5 and 3.8 miles south of GA 255 on GA 197. There is no canoeing access and landowners are unfriendly to paddlers.

Stops at several local businesses are very worthwhile. At Batesville (GA 197/GA 255), the Wood Duck Gallery has a variety of local art, especially wildlife carvings. Nearby is the famous Batesville Store, featuring wonderful food from the grill and oven as well as basic groceries. Traveling south down GA 197, 1 mile from Batesville is the Serendipity Shop featuring stained glass. Mark of the Potter occupies an old mill on the Soquee River on GA 197, 2 miles south of Batesville. Mark of the Potter features a remarkable selection of local arts and crafts and a back porch above the river from which you can view and feed the giant trout in the pool below.

After being told by the Tarleton twins that Ashley Wilkes was to marry his cousin Melanie Hamilton, Scarlett O’Hara stood on the road to Tara awaiting her father, Gerald O’Hara’s, return from Twelve Oaks, the plantation across the Flint River where Ashley lived.

“Her eyes followed the winding road, blood-red now after the morning rain. In her thought she traced its course as it ran down the hill to the sluggish Flint River, through the tangled swampy bottoms and up the next hill to Twelve Oaks where Ashley lived. That was all the road meant now—a road to Ashley and the beautiful white-columned house that crowned the hill like a Greek temple.”

The Flint is only a 20-foot wide, winding stream between Fayette and Clayton counties, but this portion of it has played an integral part in literary history. Here, is where it flows along the western edge of Tara, the fictional home of Scarlett O’Hara—and perhaps the most famous home in all of American literature.

In reality, these Flint River bottomlands were part of a 2,527-acre cotton plantation owned by author Margaret Mitchell’s Irish great-grandfather, Phillip Fitzgerald. Margaret roamed the land as a child, and when she sat down to write Gone With the Wind, the Flint and her grandfather’s plantation, named Rural Home, evolved into Tara.

By Jimmy Carter

As a boy growing up in Archery, I worked fields that drained into Choctahatchee (or as we called it, Chock-li-hatchet) Creek. Choctahatchee Creek joins Kinchafoonee Creek, which merges with Muckalee Creek and flows into the Flint River just above Albany. The Choctahatchee was where I fished. It was where I learned about the out-of-doors, where I learned to explore, and where I learned how not to get lost. It’s where my playmates and I, and occasionally my father, had many hours and days together. We had an immersion in the natural world that has marked my whole existence. The Choctahatchee drainage is really the origin of my life. I still feel more at home and more in a natural element and closer to God when I’m out in the woods by myself, or just with Rosalyn, than at any other time.

During those childhood years on the Choctahatchee, I developed an appreciation for the protection of at least part of the world the way God made it. It affected my life when, as a state senator, I had to deal with natural resources. It was a part of my attitude when I became governor. I was one of the founders of the Georgia Conservancy; I advocated the protection of the Chattahoochee River, particularly in the Atlanta area, and, as governor, I created the Georgia Heritage Trust, which had a budget of $11 million the first year.

While I was governor, I had two major altercations involving the environment and natural resources. One was the designation of wetlands to be drained. This was a standard program that had never been challenged before I went into office. There were 535 projects for draining wetlands in the process of being approved when I took office as governor. During the four years I was in office, none of those projects was approved.

The other altercation concerned the Flint River.

There was a period of time during the economic evolution of our state’s and our nation’s history, when it was inevitable that many of our dams would be built and naturally free-flowing streams would be obstructed. The primary reason for these dams was power production, and in some areas, flood control. Later, to some degree, recreation became a justification.

At that time there was a system in Washington that aligned U. S Congressmen and the U. S. Corps of Engineers in a process that led inexorably to the construction of more and more dams. It worked for all congressmen but particularly for southern congressmen, most of whom were democrats and almost none of whom were challenged once they became an incumbent. One of a congressman’s highest goals in life was to have built in his district a notable dam at federal government expense that would create a lake that could be named for him. There was a standard procedure. The process began when a newly-elected legislator went in as a junior member of congress. He would put his name on the list to get a dam built in his district. That dam might be at the bottom of 500 dams to be constructed in America. But as the congressman got re-elected time after time, eventually his particular project would move up to the top of the list.

As a result of this system, the Corps of Engineers, part of the United States Army, was subverted in its basic integrity. The motivation for the Corps was not to make an objective analysis of costs of a project versus its benefits, but to make sure that it pleased the members of Congress by guaranteeing that the computed benefits of each dam was always far in excess of the costs. At least on paper. The Corps of Engineers abandoned its basic integrity, uniformly over the whole country, in order to justify those projects; to please the congressmen who supervised the operations of the Corps and who also appropriated funds for its operation; and to justify its own existence. So there were hundreds and hundreds of dams being built around the country over a 10-year period. Almost all of them were unnecessary, yet, at the same time, they were quite attractive to the local communities involved as presented in the economic benefits analysis prepared by the Corps.

The Flint River dam at Sprewell Bluff fell into this Washington pork barrel pattern. In the case of the Flint, the major factor considered by the Corps in assessing the value of the proposed dam at Sprewell Bluff was recreation potential. The Flint is the longest-remaining free-flowing major river in Georgia. It is free flowing until it gets down to Lake Blackshear in Crisp County some 200 miles from its headwaters. Congressman Jack Flint, a good man so far as I know, wanted to dam up the Flint River near Thomaston, which was in his district.

When I became governor, I became aware of this. As an environmentalist, I was interested in the identification and preservation of natural areas. I was becoming more and more involved with people who enjoyed the streams and the out-of-doors in its natural state. I became an avid canoeist. I learned how to kayak. I learned how to roll a kayak in the Georgia State University swimming pool. I began to go down the Chattooga River, which was the setting for the movie Deliverance.

At the time, the Flint River was basically ignored. But when the idea of the dam came along, I was urged by a few outdoorsmen, fishermen and environmentalists to take a critical look at the project to see if it was justified. I personally canoed down the river twice. I went fishing on the river for shoal bass, a species indigenous to the Flint. I began to see what would change about the upper Flint if the dam at Sprewell Bluff was built.

I started a commitment—which was quite time-consuming but not unpleasant—of meeting with groups who were interested in the Flint River. I met with 50 different groups in the governor’s office. I met with concrete manufacturers and salesmen. I met with people who anticipated building a big recreation center in the neighborhood of Griffin and Thomaston. I met with chamber of commerce people who pointed out that during the dam construction period, which might last two or three years, there were going to be as many as 200 jobs created. These were people I had worked with in the past. I understood their point of view. I had been a businessman in a rural community myself.

On the other side there were environmental groups and sportsmen groups who raised contrasting issues. It used to be that canoeists and fishermen, who wanted to wade down a river to catch some fish with a fly rod, were a small group and quite often not vocal. Those times have changed, and I think they have changed for the better.

Jack Flint was furious that any investigation or question was raised. But I was impervious to that displeasure.

My next step was to ascertain the accuracy of the facts and figures of the Corps of Engineers, which I didn’t have any reason to doubt. I considered the Corps an element of the military. I presumed that the officers of the Corps of Engineers were telling me the truth. But, as I investigated their figures, I found that sometimes—if there was a question about economic benefits of the Sprewell Bluff project—they would triple the alleged benefits with no substantiating data to back up the change. They kept emphasizing the need for another broadwater lake in the vicinity, despite the fact that within 50 miles of the Sprewell Bluff site there were already a half dozen or more lakes. None of those lakes had realized the Corps of Engineers projections for economic benefits of tourism or for surface use. If anybody wanted to go back and look at the Corps of Engineers analysis of benefits that would accrue in tourism, they would find that those benefits are just a complete passel of lies and exaggerations to justify a project the Corps wanted to construct and that a member of congress wanted to have constructed. It would give the Corps work to do and justify its existence, and they thought nobody would question it.

The Corps brought up flood control. They said that the dam would prevent flooding in the lower reaches of the Flint River. This proved to be totally unfounded. The only way you can control flooding with a dam of this kind, I learned at the time, is to reduce the water level in the lake by 10 feet in anticipation of heavy rains so that when the rains fall, instead of running downstream, the rain would fill up the lake. Well you can’t anticipate that. By the Corps’ own estimates, Sprewell Bluff dam would have had little effect in flood control below Lakes Blackshear and Chehaw. For instance, had the project been built prior to the 1925 Albany flood, damages of $2,000,000 would have been reduced by only $35,700. (A similar marginal difference in flood impact would have been the case in the 1994 flood.) In Bainbridge, a 10-year flood interval would have been increased to 12 years with river depth being lowered from 33.5 feet to 32.5 feet.

I finally decided to call a press conference on October 1, 1974, and announce that my final judgment was that this dam should be vetoed. There was a furor raised—primarily by the chambers of commerce and the folks dedicated to Congressman Flint.

When I became President of the United States, the Sprewell Bluff dam event was a very important memory for me, an experience that was instructive. I began to look on all the Corps of Engineers projects in the other 49 states that were moving inexorably toward final approval and that were not being questioned. I began to question those dams. As President, I had the prerogative to veto them, and I began to do that. I wasn’t a dictator, and I have to admit that some of the ill-advised projects were approved. But, overwhelmingly, they were disapproved. It created one of the most difficult confrontations between me and members of Congress of anything I did while I was in office. I was also instrumental in helping get the law changed so that for a project, such as the one the Corps proposed at Sprewell Bluff, local people would have to put up 25 percent of the money; before, it was 100 percent Washington financing.

So, it’s likely that my experience at Sprewell Bluff has basically changed the U.S. national attitude toward dams and their ill-advised nature in many cases. Nowadays, the big altercation is how many of these enormous dams should be removed. The Corps of Engineers is now devoting part of its time to analyzing how it can take some of these dams out. Not only have many dams served their original purposes, but they are now becoming filled with sediment. Instead of the water being 90 feet deep at the dam, it is now only 20 feet deep; in 50 more years, it’s going to be 2 feet deep.

Sometimes Rosalyn and I stop in Thomaston on our way from Atlanta to Plains. I have had many people come up to me and confess that they cursed me profoundly when I vetoed the dam. But now they are thankful for my having done it. They are glad that the river was saved. I think it has been worth all the confrontations and the debates and sometimes disharmonies that have resulted from what is still an ongoing process in America of preserving things instead of trying to modify them in an unnecessary fashion.

Those people have—we all have—a precious possession along that river. It is not adequately used now. But anyone who wants to experience the way Georgia was when God made it or the way it was when it was first settled by white people can go to the upper parts of the Flint River and see how beautiful it is. It is breathtaking in its beauty. And the wildlife that exist in that river corridor: otter, fox, muskrat, beaver, bobcat… You cannot describe it. It is a treasure. A treasure that is appreciated by an increasing number of people as the generations pass. Lakes and dams are everywhere. But to experience something that is undisturbed and has its natural beauty? You hope and pray that it will be there a thousand years in the future, still just as beautiful and undisturbed.

By Sherri Smith Brown

America
From the Flint River to the Chattahoochee River is a land that is tightly intertwined with the history of Georgia and America. Within this region sprang events with national scope. What was occurring in America was reflected in what was happening in the region, and events that occurred in the region greatly effected the policies of an emerging nation.

Some of the first European explorers to come to America made their way up the Flint River and found a society of people who had been inhabiting this land for thousands of years—cutting paths through the forests, canoeing the rivers and planting the fields. George Washington sent Benjamin Hawkins to serve as Indian Agent when the clash of the two cultures seemed imminent, but Hawkins could not ward off the inevitable. This part of the country was necessary to the manifest destiny of Thomas Jefferson, and was the proving ground for the fierce nationalism of Andrew Jackson.

The stories here are woven into an intricate tapestry: a story of the American frontier and a general, Jackson, who brutally and methodically moved a nation out so that another nation might survive. A story of the antebellum South where cotton was king. Here was one of the largest slave-holding regions of the country, and the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement. A story of rivers, and water power and of mills and industry. And here is the story of three Presidents—Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter. As president Jackson would deliver the final blow to Southeast Indians with his Indian Removal Act, which appropriated funds for negotiating treaties and relocating Indians to the West—thus securing Georgia lands for white settlement. Witnessing the struggle of this area during the 1920s and ‘30s, Roosevelt was inspired to formulate his New Deal policies that brought the country out of its greatest depression. Carter, who grew up loving this land, was enlightened enough to see the harm in harnessing the wild river that ran through it.

The Native Americans

Prehistoric Indians
It is estimated that at the time of first European contact, more than 90 million people inhabited North America and South America. Anthropologists have grouped these Native American societies, or American Indians as they are known, into several culture areas. The Indian societies occupying land from the Atlantic coast west to central Texas were dubbed the Southeastern culture and included the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Creek people—the Creeks being the Indians who lived in the valleys and river bottoms of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers.

The Creeks, like all other Native Americans, appear to have descended from Asian peoples who migrated across the Bering Strait, a 50-mile long land bridge between Asia and Alaska, created during the Ice Age about 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. Those who made the crossing were not explorers or settlers or adventurers. They were simply hungry men and women following the game on which their livelihood depended. Over the centuries, their descendants spread out over the two continents, from Alaska to the tip of South America from the Arctic Circle to the subtropics. People had to learn to live in frozen tundra, in forests, on grassy plains and in arid deserts, in high mountains and in deep canyons, along rugged coastlines and lakeshores and in fertile river valleys.

Some of them ended up in the fertile valleys of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers about 10,000 years ago. Known as the Paleo Indians, they were nomadic hunters of large mammals who roamed the region looking for food in a time when ice still covered much of the earth. Their daily routine centered around hunting. They traveled in small bands, or families, searching for the large animals of their day—mastodon, the giant bison, the mammoth. These animals provided them with meat and fat for food, skins for clothing and bones for tools. The Indians stayed in one place for only a few days, eating the animals and plants in the area and moving on. They built shelters only if they found enough food in an area to last a few weeks or months.

By the Archaic Period, from 8000 B.C. to 1000 B.C., the ice had retreated, the climate had gradually warmed and the large animals roaming the region had disappeared. White-tailed deer, boars, black bear and many small animals, which can still be found today, appeared. These Indians were hunters and gatherers who utilized the new foods as well as shellfish and seasonal plants. Rivers and their rich food sources became available. Nut-bearing trees, extending from the Fall Line to the upper Coastal Plain, were probably of great importance to these people, providing them with needed protein and fatty acids. The large stands of hickory and oak trees growing in the region were probably as important in bringing these Indians into the area as the large amounts of game.

The first steps to farming were taken when hunters began to understand more and more about the plants and animals they used for food. They possibly noticed that a plant would grow where seeds had fallen on the ground, or learned how to raise animals by taking care of young animals whose mothers they had killed. In the region, it is known that during the Woodland period, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 900, people planted sunflower, marsh elder and goosefeet—plants considered weeds today. Eventually, squash and gourds and later corn and beans were cultivated. The Indians also learned to make pottery, which was a monumental step, as it was used to cook and store food and transport water. People began to live in villages at least part of the year. After thousands of years as hunters, these Woodland people no longer had to roam to obtain food. Farmers settled in one area for several years at a time and built villages near their cropland, living there as long as the crops grew well and the firewood lasted. Once the land became unproductive, the Indians moved to a new area.

During the Mississippian Period, A.D. 900 to European contact in the mid-1500s, the Indians built large villages, usually on rivers or streams, using the rich bottomlands for farming and the rivers and streams for transportation. Village areas surrounded huge, flat-topped temple mounds where social and religious ceremonies took place. The Mississippian Indians still hunted and gathered, but this culture discovered that the bottomland soils produced better crops and the periodic flooding that occurred restored the nutrients in the soil. They cultivated seed plants, pumpkins, beans and squash, probably tobacco and especially corn. So important was the staple corn that the Mississippians gave it religious significance, connecting it to the king-gods who led them. The great mounds they built, full of burial plots and artifacts, still stand, some protected as public property.

There are two big Mississippian sites just south of the Fall Line. Rood Creek Indiana Mounds on the Chattahoochee River in Stewart County was one of the largest in prehistoric Georgia. At its peak, the population of Rood’s Landing was an estimated 3,500 people. Another important mound site from where great corn cultures sprang is the Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Site near Blakely.

The decade that followed their contact with Europeans brought cultural devastation to the native people of the southeast. The earliest known meeting between southeastern Indians and Europeans occurred in 1513 when a Spaniard named Juan Ponce de Leon landed with his ship on the coast of Florida. Other Europeans followed. Hernando de Soto and his band of Spanish explorers first stepped foot into the Flint River Valley in 1540. These explorers were surprised to find an established culture of people. But with these explorers came measles, tuberculosis, typhus, smallpox and other old world diseases, far exceeding anything that could have been inflicted upon the Indians with mere weapons or military force. Despite the tragic consequences of disease, the survivors persevered and so began a 300-year-era of Indian, black and white interactions in the region.

The Creeks
The Creek people are believed to be the Southeastern descendants of the Moundbuilders of the Mississippian Period. These indigenous people of composite origin spoke a family of related languages referred to as Muskogean. They called themselves the Muskogee Nation—Muskogees or Muscogulges (The word Muskogee, or Muscogee, signifies land that is wet or prone to flooding; “ulge” designates a nation or people). But English-speaking white men called them Creeks because they lived and roamed the many rivers, streams and swamps that ran through their territory—a territory that extended from the Atlantic to the Tombigbee River, through parts of Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.

By the 18th century the Creeks were the dominant tribe in a confederacy with a membership of about 30,000. The confederacy occupied most of what are now the states of Georgia and Alabama. After the Cherokee, the Creeks were the most powerful grouping of Native Americans south of New York.

The Creek Nation included approximately 60 towns and was divided into two geopolitical divisions, which the Europeans called the Upper and Lower towns. Forty Upper Towns lay along the Tallapoosa-Coosa-Alabama River System and twenty Lower Towns were scattered on the Ocmulgee, Flint and Chattahoochee rivers of Georgia. This division predated trading relations between the Creeks and the British Colonies, but originated with the relative position of the two main trading paths that linked the Creeks with South Carolina: the Upper Creek Trading path and the Lower Creek Trading Path. These two divisions differed not only geographically, but also politically. They respected their kinship with each other but held separate councils, claimed separate territories and very often pursued different foreign policy—a difference that would ultimately affect their survival. Besides that, Creeks also divided their towns into two types—red, or war towns, and white, or peace towns.

The Creek town, or tulwa, was the center of political, social and economic life. Each town contained a public square, which was its governmental and ceremonial center, and 25 to 100 log houses. Creek temples were impressive dome-shaped structures made of thatch. The town was governed by a mico, or town king, who was so associated with his town that his given name was forsaken and he became known as Coweta Mico or Cussita Mico. The Creek were an agricultural tribe: Creek women cultivated corn, squash, beans, and other crops. The men hunted and fished.

Long before the Europeans disrupted Native American life, trade took place amongst the different tribes. Well-traveled trading paths linked villages. Furs, flint, copper, silver, clay pipes, salt, conch shells, feathers—all were common goods for trade. But once the first Carolina traders entered the Indian town of Coweta in 1685, carrying glass beads, bells and brightly colored cloth, as well as steel knives and muskets, the focus changed. The Creeks soon established strong trading links with Charles Town (Charleston) in the Colony of Carolina: Indian deerskins and other produce for flintlock muskets, metal tools and European textiles. This trade was certainly a lucrative proposition for the Carolina colony as hides and furs from the interior Indian tribes became its major export.

After the American Revolution (1775-1783), the Creeks, who had supported the British, were faced with land-hungry American settlers eager to push into Creek territory and an American government somewhat intent on manifest destiny. In 1796, President George Washington appointed Colonel Benjamin Hawkins as Indian Agent on the Flint River. Hawkins’s philosophy to integrate the Indians into the white culture by teaching them the skills of modern farming and industry was noble but difficult to implement. Some Creeks, mostly in the Lower Towns, realized the advantages of cooperating with the Americans, but other, younger Creeks, mostly living in the Upper Towns, rejected contact with whites and the consequent abandonment of their own Indian culture.

All Creeks resented the relentless encroachment on their land. Encouraged by the Spanish in Florida and the British in Canada, who promised to provide arms and supplies, many Creeks prepared for war against the United States, which was now building roads from Georgia into the Alabama settlements. Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian chieftain from the northern tribes, conceived a plan to organize all tribes from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and force out the white man. In 1811, he visited the Creeks, including Red Eagle, leader of the militant Red Sticks (named as such because they painted their war sticks a bright red) to recruit warriors and gain support for his campaign. As Tecumseh stirred their fears and hatreds, the Creek Nation became more and more divided and the threat of Civil War loomed between the Upper and Lower tribes.

Desultory raids on white settlements along the American border by the Upper tribes widened the split within the Creek Nation. Finally, on August 30, 1813, Red Eagle and 1,000 Creek followers of Tecumseh descended upon Fort Mims, a white stronghold located about 40 miles from Mobile, butchering about 500 men, women and children.

So began the Creek War of 1813-1814. In the long history of Indians in North America, the Creek War was the turning point in their ultimate destruction. The irreversible step toward obliterating tribes as sovereign entities within the United States now commenced. The Creek Nation would be irreparably shattered. All other tribes would soon experience the same melancholy fate.

Georgia

Great Britain’s 13th colony became one of the first 13 states after the Revolution, and for several decades was part of America’s vast Indian territory and frontier. As Georgia’s boundaries were pushed further and further west with the Indian land cessions and removal from their land, the Georgia frontier quickly became settled with people moving from Virginia, the Carolinas and the Georgia coast looking for fertile farmlands. Three Indian land cessions, created by three different treaties, opened up land for white settlement in the Flint and Chattahoochee River Valley: the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson ceded land for the 1820 Land Lottery; the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs ceded land for the 1821 Land Lottery; and the 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs ceded land for the 1827 Land Lottery. The only state in the country to use a lottery to distribute public domain, Georgia rushed in settlers in order to push out Indians and secure the land. The lottery was a logical system that gave every qualified Georgian equal chance to obtain new land, with surveyors marking off a rectangular plot before actual distribution. Between 1820 and the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, numerous counties were carved out of the “Land between the Rivers.” After the war, counties continued to be created until the last new county in Georgia, Peach County, was formed in 1924.

Transportation

Indian Trails
When de Soto came to explore the interior of America, there was already a vast network of trails. Indian Trails sprawled across the region just as they did throughout America. Some trails connected vast stretches of county, just as interstates do today. Other trails went to the nearest village or cut through the woods to the best river crossing. Many of these trails, especially the ones that went to the shallow fords across rivers and streams, were first trod by the mastodon and other prehistoric animals on their relentless search for water and food. The paths, which connected longer distances, were part of a great trading system where many items were traded from one area to another.

Paths began to evolve into roads as more Europeans and later Americans entered the Indian Territory. By nature, the paths were narrow, allowing only single-file traveling by the Indians or traders; but as time progressed, and permanent white settlers began crossing the Indian lands in wagons carrying their goods, trails had to be widened. Trees had to be cut and stumps removed. It was a laborious process. Sometimes a road would diverge from the original path for some reason, but for the most part, the newer, wider roads followed the existing footpaths.

Generally, Georgia’s main Indian trails ran from east to west with a few connecting to other areas north and south. Today’s Augusta was the main east-west gateway into Georgia with many major trails branching out across the state from there because it was a good place to cross the Savannah River. From August the path led to the coastal town of Charles Town (Charleston, South Carolina), a major colonial trading port.

Probably the best-known and most-heavily traveled Indian Trail in Georgia was the Lower Creek Trading Path. From the trading center of Augusta, it ran westward across the state, following the geographical Fall Line, which millions of years ago was the seacoast. The Fall Line, which cuts directly through the Flint and Chattahoochee River Valleys, crosses every major river at its lowest good crossing point. The route was formed thousands of years ago by herds of the large animal migrating across the region and crossing the rivers at the shallows. It was only natural that the Indians following those animals would use the same crossing points. The trading path crossed the Flint River where Col. Hawkins would establish his Creek Indian Agency around 1800 and continued westward to Columbus and then onward into Alabama.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson recognized the importance of the most-direct route possible between Washington and New Orleans. In 1805 Congress passed an act to establish a post road from “Washington City by Athens, Georgia, to New Orleans.” Later that year, as part of the Treaty of Washington with the Creek Indian Nation, the Federal government secured the right of way for a wagon road through the Creek Territory, which would closely follow the route of the Lower Creek Trading Path:

“that the government of the United States shall forever hereafter have a right to a horse path, through the Creek country, from the Ocmulgee to Mobile, in such direction as shall, by the President of the United States, be considered most convenient, and to clear out the same, and lay logs over the creeks; and the citizens of said State shall at all times have a right to pass peaceably on said path, under such regulations and restrictions as the government of the United States shall from time to time direct; and the Creek chiefs will have boats kept at the several rivers for the conveyance of men and horses, and the houses of entertainment established at suitable places on said path for the accommodation of travelers; and the respective ferriages and prices of entertainment for men and horses shall be regulated by the present agent, Col. Hawkins, or by his successor in office, or as usual among white people.”

As much as anything, this agreement, signed by such Creek leaders as William McIntosh, ultimately would lead to the downfall of the Creek Nation.

By 1809, faced with the threat of war with Britain, the U.S. government determined that the Old Horse Path, as the wagon road had become known, would have to be upgraded to a military road for the purpose of moving supply wagons, cannons and men on horse and foot. Over the protests of the Indians, the U.S. military began widening the Old Horse Path for that purpose. Completed in 1812, the Federal Road, as it was now called, was built in anticipation of conflict with the British, but sparked the Creek War of 1813-14.

The Upper Creek Trading Path, or Oakfuskee Trail as it was more commonly called, was one of the oldest, longest and most important trails, economically speaking, in Georgia. It paralleled the path of the Lower Creek Trading Path, connecting with it at both its eastern and western terminus, but diverged in between to the north where it connected many of the Upper Creek Indian villages. The path crossed the Flint at Flat Shoals and the Chattahoochee just below the mouth of Wehadke Creek. In time, the Oakfuskee Trail became a pioneer’s trace and some segments of it eventually grew into noted stagecoach roads, but it never gained the significance of its lower counterpart.

Numerous paths in the Flint and Chattahoochee River Valleys diverged from the main trails, sometimes looping back and sometimes going off into a new direction. A number of old paths were known as Barnard’s Trails, named because they ran to or past the residence of Timothy Barnard, a Creek Indian of mixed ancestry who lived on the Flint River at today’s Montezuma. He was, for a number of years, assistant to Creek Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins. McIntosh Road was a road built by Indian Chief William McIntosh to connect his plantations across Georgia and Alabama. From his plantation at Indian Springs, the road ran northwestward near today’s Griffin, Brooks and Peachtree City, across Whitewater and Line creeks onward to his home, the McIntosh Reserve, near today’s Newnan. Herod’s Trail was one of a large network of old Indian paths that intersected at Leesburg and then eventually went through the old community of Herod and on into Ft. Gaines, when it was a Creek Indian War fort that protected Georgia’s western frontier.

Not to be confused with the Federal Road was the Federal Trail, which ran southward from today’s Albany on the east side and parallel to the Flint River. United States troops used the path during the Creek Indian War of 1813-1814. Although there was little fighting in Georgia during that war, troops moved up and down the road between Fort Early and other military stations. Later, in 1816, Fort Scott was constructed and Gen. Andrew Jackson moved his troops from Fort Scott down the trail into Florida to fight the Seminoles in 1818. Another Indian path that paralleled the Federal Trail on the opposite or west side of the Flint was also used by Jackson during the Seminole War and became known as Jackson’s Trail.

Ferries
Trails that led to the Flint always found their way to the shallowest point possible in order for travelers to ford the river. Initially, travelers crossed by walking or riding horses over the rocky shoals. The first ferries built were usually just logs tied together to form a raft-like vehicle that was often pulled by horses. Later most ferries were large wooden barges operated by a system of cables and pulleys and powered mainly by the river’s current, with additional encouragement from a long wooden pole in the hands of a muscular ferryman. Horses were sometimes used.

How many ferries crossed the Flint is hard to determine, but there were plenty. In Macon County alone there were at least four ferries, at one time or another, crossing the Flint. The real heyday of ferries was in the 19th century, although some continued to operate well into the 20th century. In 1920, the Georgia Highway Department took over the state road system and the ferries on those roads were purchased from private individuals who had been operating them. Toll charges were abolished at state-owned ferries. One by on though, bridges replaced the ferries.

The last ferry crossing in Georgia was on the Flint near Marshallville. At first, a wooden barge was used at the ferry, which was known over the years by various names, including the Miona Ferry, the Marshallville Ferry, Underwood’s Ferry and the Flint River Ferry. Later the craft in use was a 55-foot metal barge with a plank floor, powered by a six-cylinder 1954 Chevrolet engine rigged up to cables. The crossing was safe, smooth and only took a couple of minutes. Unless the river was extremely high or there were problems with snags and floating logs, 24-hour service was available until 1988 when the ferry discontinued service.

Steamboats
Transportation improvements throughout Georgia were almost always aimed at aiding agriculture. By 1820 steam navigation on Georgia’s rivers was just beginning. The first steamboat to travel the Apalachicola-Flint-Chattahoochee River System appeared in 1828. Steamboats regularly traveled the Chattahoochee as far as Columbus, the head of navigation on that river, and served more than a 100-mile stretch of the lower Flint. By 1860 more than 26 steamboat landings dotted the Flint between its junction with the Chattahoochee and Bainbridge—all loaded with cotton waiting for a trip down the river to the port of Apalachicola and northern markets. Navigation above Bainbridge was more difficult, but smaller boats and barges traveled the water from Bainbridge to Albany. In fact, Nelson Tift founded Albany as a purely financial venture to ship cotton to market on the Flint. Steamboats continued to thrive in the 1850s despite the competition of railroads, and remained in operation until about 1928.

Railroads
The area’s future, as well as that of the rest of the state’s, lay not with steamboats but with railroads. Georgians throughout the Land Between the Rivers were eager to lay the twin ribbons of iron that would bind together the state and the markets for their agricultural products. Like the riverboats preceding them, railroad’s primarily linked established commercial areas. In 1857, the first train of cars over the Georgia and Florida Railroad arrived at Albany and the Upson County Railroad—built, financed and operated by Upson County citizens—was completed. By the end of the Civil War, much of the rail lines in southwest Georgia were twisted into Sherman’s bow ties, like most of the track in Georgia. But the railroads bounced back as large amounts of money for repairs came from northern businesses and banks desiring to get the South’s industry and railroads back on their feet. Manchester and Americus were two of the many towns that grew up along a repaired and extended rail system.

Presidents

Andrew Jackson
As the Creek warriors descended upon Fort Mims, little did they know that this would be the death knell of the entire Creek Confederacy, for it set U.S. General Andrew Jackson on his course to enlarge the territory of his newly founded nation while annihilating that of the Creek Indians.

Jackson was a child of the American Revolution. Born in 1767, he was a veteran of the war and the victim of intense personal suffering by the time he reached the age of fifteen. He grew up with a loathing of the British, a determination that America would prosper, a hatred of the Spanish and a paternalistic attitude towards the Indians.

With the massacre at Fort Mims, Jackson recognized that his long-awaited opportunity for military glory had arrived. With 2,500 volunteers and militia authorized by Governor William Blount of Tennessee, Jackson set out from Nashville, one of four armies that would enter the Creek Nation. The strategy was to kill the Red Sticks, burn their villages and destroy their crops. As they marched south, the army would build forts about one day’s march apart in order to divide the Creek Nation.

Although plagued by desertions, lack of food and supplies and demands from Governor Blount to abandon the expedition, Jackson drove forward. By the close of 1813, he had battled twice with the Creeks. On March 27, 1814, on the Tallapoosa, where the winding river sweeps in a great loop at Horseshoe Bend, he struck them with fury. By Jackson’s side were Indian fighter Davy Crockett and a young officer named Sam Houston. When the battle ended, U.S. troops had slain more than 700 warriors, breaking the spirit of Creek resistance. Creek prophets had said they could never be driven from the ground at Horseshoe Bend. But most of the defenders were dead and the homeplace lay in ruins.

After Horseshoe Bend, the Creek War was all but over.

Although the Federal government sent army general Thomas Pinckney and Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins to arrange a peace treaty with the Creeks, Jackson dictated the terms at the negotiations. From them, he demanded the equivalent of all expenses incurred by the United States in prosecuting the war. By Jackson’s calculation this came to 23 million acres of land—more than half of the old Creek domain, and roughly three-fifths of the present state of Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia.

By this treaty, the entire Creek Nation, even the Indians who had fought on Jackson’s side, had to pay the enormous indemnity. All were required to remove themselves from their land and become wards of the Federal government. The treaty removed the threat of attack from the borders of Tennessee and Georgia and confined the Creeks to a manageable area where they could be watched and guarded and where they were separated geographically from the evil influence of the Spanish in Florida and Indians who had fled.

At Jackson’s urging, the boundaries were drawn and the land sold to settlers as quickly as possible—a measure that would insure the security of the frontier.

Horseshoe Bend was not the end of Jackson’s conflict with the Indians, for now he would go after the Seminoles. But the Creek War and the Treaty of Fort Jackson set up a pattern of land seizure and removal that insured the ultimate destruction of not only the Creek Nation, but of all Indians throughout the South and Southwest. And the man responsible was Andrew Jackson.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
A little more than 100 years after Andrew Jackson stepped foot into Georgia, Franklin D. Roosevelt did as well. A wealthy aristocrat and nationally known Democratic political leader at the time, he was looking for a way to fight the polio that was crippling his body. He sought relief at the warm springs in Meriwether County. Between therapeutic sessions in the warm springs pools, Roosevelt would fish the waters of the Flint River, drive the countryside between Manchester, Greenville and Gay, visit the Cove for bootlegged whiskey and fiddle playing and spend hours on Dowdell’s Knob just thinking as he looked out over the great river valley below him. He would see an impoverished land where people lived as sharecroppers on unmechanized farms, where planting, harvesting and maintenance were done with the aid of mules and black field hands, who worked for a dollar and a half a day. The roads were unpaved, there was no electricity, radio reception was poor and staticky, electricity was available on a very erratic basis and most farms had no electrical appliances.

Those years were years when the entire country would be plunged into the greatest depression it had ever known and then into the greatest world war ever known. During those years, Roosevelt bought farmland and woodland in Harris and Meriwether counties expressly to demonstrate to other farmers that a farm could be profitable—that they could grow something other than cotton. Roosevelt experimented with cattle and goat raising, timbering, peach and apple orchards, various vegetables and grapes. During those years, Roosevelt would serve an unprecedented three terms as President of the United States and many of the New Deal policies that he would formulate to lead the country out of the Depression and financial ruin would stem from what he saw and learned from the rural people who touched his life in Warm Springs.

Jimmy Carter
In 1924, the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt first visited Warm Springs, Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia. Carter grew up during the Great Depression on his family’s 360-acre farm just west of Plains. Carter’s family turned to some of the very practices that President Roosevelt was espousing concerning farming. They shifted away from the growing of cotton, and turned to peanuts, cattle and sheep, geese, wheat, oats, rye and some sugar cane. Life was hard on the unmechanized farm. As a boy, Carter and his family plowed, cultivated and harvested the fields with only the help of mules. FDR’s Rural Electrification Administration brought electricity to the area and the Carter farm in 1938 when Carter was 14.

Carter learned an appreciation for protecting the world that had been given to him. He said the stewardship of nature—of preserving the quality of the land, the beauty of the woodland and the abundance of wildlife—was immediately and dramatically tied in with his belief in God. As governor of Georgia, he demonstrated those beliefs when he vetoed the building of a dam at Sprewell Bluff on the Flint River. As president, he continued to fight the unnecessary building of dams on rivers across the United States.

Towns

Settlements sprang up as the first traders began to enter the Indian Territory between the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers. Most grew up along the banks of the river where river crossings were easier, or at an intersection where major Indian paths converged.

With the land sessions and subsequent removal of the Creeks, settlers rushed in, many times establishing a white settlement around what had been a frontier fort or on or near the location of what was once an Indian town. No matter what the culture or purpose, people tend to look for the same traits in settling a village or town: land near water; land on high ground for protection; land with good fertile soil for growing crops. The Indian town of Chehaw became Albany. Pucknawhitla became Burgess Town, which became Fort Hughes, which became Bainbridge. Chemocheechobee became Fort Gaines the fort, which later became Fort Gaines the town.

But white settlers were more industrial minded than the Creeks. Towns grew up around the gristmills that were built on rocky streams. Towns grew up around river landings where area farmers brought their cotton for shipment to Apalachicola. Towns grew up wherever the tracks of a railroad terminated.

Agriculture

When de Soto arrived in what would become Georgia, he did not find the nomadic savages he perhaps expected, but rather villages of Indians who had been farming the rich bottomland of the river valley, cultivating corn, squash, beans and other crops. In many cases, villages had already relocated several times because years of planting crops around the village had eroded and depleted the soil of nutrients.

But the destiny of much of the Flint and Chattahoochee River Valley was bound in cotton. King Cotton. In fact, cotton was one of the first crops specified to be grown in the Georgia colony when James Oglethorpe and the colonists first arrived at Yamacraw Bluff in 1733. And cotton was the reason planters and farmers flocked to the Flint River Valley as soon as the Indian threat lessened. Cotton had sorely depleted the soils in the eastern part of the state and beyond in the Carolinas. The Flint River Valley was land that had never been touched by cotton. At first, cotton, which was labor intensive, was only profitable for the very large planters who owned hundreds of slaves supplying the labor needed to plant, pick and hand remove the seeds from the short staple fiber. But after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1893, the economics changed. The gin cleaned cotton as fast as 50 persons. Cotton became profitable to produce on small farms, using only family labor, as well as large slaveholding plantations. Both types of farmers grabbed up the Land Between the Rivers, and by 1860 Georgia was the world’s largest producer of cotton, with much of that production coming from the Flint River Valley.

But the Civil War did much to change the agricultural economy of the region. Plantations were divided into tenant farms. Farmers were growing corn, tobacco and peanuts, but cotton still ruled. Farmers ignored agrarian leaders across the South who warned of cotton’s effect on the soil and of the farmer’s dependency on cash crops.

By the 1920’s, however, severe erosion, soil depletion, the boll weevil menace and the Depression wrecked havoc on the state’s agriculture. Between 1920 and 1925, 3.5 million acres of cotton land were abandoned throughout Georgia and the number of farms fell from 310,132 to 249,095. It would take new ways of farming, new farm programs resulting from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Programs and a world war to turn the agricultural economy around in this region, as well as the rest of the South. The rule of cotton in Georgia would be over. Peanuts, peaches and soybeans would become some of the crops that would replace King Cotton in the Land Between the Rivers.

By the time Plains peanut farmer Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States in 1976, peanuts and soybeans—combined with traditional row crops, such as corn, cotton, wheat and vegetables—were important crops grown in Southwest Georgia. Dairying as well as cattle, hogs and pigs also became important to the area’s agricultural economy.

Industry

All along the Flint River and its tributaries settlers to the area built gristmills, the first real industries of the area. Until the early 20th century, most mills used water from nearby streams to power gears and machinery. The hilly Piedmont or the Fall Line section of the river, where the water rushes over rock outcroppings and shoals, were ideal locations for mills.

Today, many times only place names, such as Lee’s Mill, Terrell Mill and Mundy’s Mill in Clayton County, remain. In some places, such as Flat Shoals, ruins can be spotted. At a few sites, a structure may still loom, such as Starr’s Mill in Fayette County. At one time all of these mills were important community centers. Farmers traveled for miles to the nearest mill to grind grain, saw timber, hull rice or gin cotton. They fished the pond, swapped news and stories or picked up some supplies as they waited their turn to grind their corn. Many times a town grew up around the mill itself.

With cotton such an all-important crop in the area, it was only natural that textile mills would spring up where there was water power and logical to bring cotton mills to the cotton fields. A number of settlers came to Upson County from northern states for the express purpose of establishing textile mills. The first cotton mill in Upson County, Franklin Factory, was built on Tobler Creek in 1833. A total of four textile mills, all water-powered, were built before the Civil War, making Upson the center of the textile industry in Middle Georgia.

The textile mills in Thomaston, as well as the mills in Columbus on the Chattahoochee, were extremely important to the Confederacy during the Civil War, making such items as gray uniform tweed, osnaburg cloth, cotton duck for tents and cotton jeans. One of the goals of the Union Army as it swept through Georgia in the waning days of the Civil War was to destroy as many mill sites as possible. On April 16,1865, in one of the last major land battles of the war, 13,000 Federal cavalry troops invaded Columbus from Alabama and burned all of the war-related mills, warehouses and foundries. They then moved across the land between the two rivers—burning plantations and destroying railroads—to the Flint, crossed it via the old Double Bridges and completely destroyed all four textile plants and several gristmills in Upson County.

The textile industry, however, was one of the few industries in the South to rebound quickly after the war. New mills were built in both Columbus and Thomaston. As the technology of mill building changed—turbines connected to electrical generators, instead of paddle wheels connected to mechanical gears—the mills no longer had to be close to the rivers to receive their energy supply.

The Flint River

More than 300 hundred years ago a Creek Indian village existed near what is now Albany. It was called Thronateeska. The word in the Creek language means “flint picking up place” and, over time, the name came to be applied to the river that ran by the village.

The Flint River flows southerly across Georgia in a wide eastward arc from its headwaters at the southeastern edge of Atlanta for 350 miles to its junction with the Chattahoochee River at Lake Seminole.

It is part of the Apalachicola-Flint-Chattahoochee river system, which drains a total area of 19,600 square miles into the Gulf of Mexico. Eight thousand seven hundred and seventy square miles lie along the Chattahoochee River arm and 8,460 square miles lie along the Flint River arm. The remaining 2,370 square miles of the watershed lies along the Apalachicola River below the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint.

A major continental divide between the Flint and the Ocmulgee River to its east separates the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean drainage.

The upper reaches of the Flint flow through a plateau characterized by rolling red hills known as the Piedmont. At the Fall Line, the river drops about 400 feet over a distance of 50 miles. The Yellow Jacket Shoals area, between GA 36 and Po Biddy Road Bridge, has slopes of 50 feet per mile. The lower Flint flows through the soft, sandy sediments and limestone that make up the Coastal Plain.

For more than 200 miles, the Flint is a wild and free-flowing river. It is one of only 40 U.S. rivers with 125 miles or more of unimpeded flow. The Crisp County power dam on Lake Blackshear, approximately 220 miles from the headwaters, is the first dam on the Flint and one of only three dams on the river—the others being the Georgia Power Dam at Lake Chehaw and the Jim Woodruff Dam at Lake Seminole.

This river, its watershed, its physical alliance with the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers and its history—all combine to tell a fascinating story with universal themes—a story of people, of Georgia and of America.

About 200 yards south of I-285 below Hartsfield International Airport is a small brick structure that bears the name: “Flint River Pumping Station.” This is where the feeder streams and rain culverts from College Park, Forest Park and the airport come together to form a stream. It’s a drainage ditch around Riverdale, but by the time this stream flows east of Fayetteville, it’s a river, on its way to becoming one of Georgia’s most prominent, the Flint.

It was the river that ran between Tara and Twelve Oaks in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Scarlett could look out “across the endless acres of Gerald O’Hara’s newly plowed cotton fields toward the red horizon” where the sun set “in a welter of crimson behind the hills across the Flint River.”

As the Flint passes west of Griffin, it is a major river. When it enters Upson County and runs head on into the tail-end of Pine Mountain, it is one of Georgia’s most scenic rivers and the reason all ages of outdoorsmen and women flock to it.

It is canoeable above GA 18 west of Thomaston. But be ready to do a lot of portaging and bushwhacking through deadfalls, dams and other obstructions. Below GA 18, the scenery changes dramatically, and the Flint becomes a mountain river full of Class I and Class II rapids. This kind of terrain continues for 20 miles or so and climaxes just below the GA 36 Bridge with “Yellow Jacket Shoals,” a boat-busting rapid that can easily jump to Class IV in high water. Fortunately, the GA 36 bridge just before the shoals is the usual takeout.

After the rapids and the Fall Line, the Flint becomes a big, strong, flat water river, flowing south to create Lake Blackshear near Cordele, and finally, into Lake Seminole where it joins the Chattahoochee to form the Apalachicola in southwest Georgia.

Canoeing GA 18 Bridge to Pobiddy (Talboton) Road—About three miles below GA 18 the country changes; Pine Mountain throws up a barricade to the river’s edge, and resulting conflict between river and rock provides some of the most exciting scenic vistas along any Georgia river. The plants and animals of the mountains occur along this river valley, intermingled with coastal vegetation. As a result, Spanish moss hangs over mountain laurels and rhododendron, a strange but beautiful combination. The river has walled off, or more properly, carved off a sweeping bend in the Pine Mountain escarpment, leaving a cove protected on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by river. This river cove has provided isolation for plants, animals and people for thousands of years. Today, it offers the best recreation potential in the middle of the state if properly used. Just above Sprewell Bluff, a large ridge on the southwest side of the river, the Flint offers a series of shoaly rapids of no real consequence, but enough to pep up an otherwise placid run. A county park opposite Sprewell Bluff affords a takeout point for the upper trip, a place to enter the river for the lower stretch, or a picnicking and viewing point for the auto traveler. From Sprewell Bluff to GA 36, the river continues its good manners, with little gradient and no significant rapids.

At the GA 36 Bridge, the river appears swift but smooth, a tempting place for an easy Sunday float. But don’t believe it. Around the first bend, the canoeist will begin to encounter a building series of rapids, climaxing in the twisting drop at the bottom of Yellow Jacket Shoals.

At high water (10 feet or greater on the GA 36 gauge), these rapids can build up some very heavy water, with large waves, big holes and a better than even chance to swamp an open canoe. At about 10 to 11 feet, the river can be run by decked boats and rafts manned by competent, experienced paddlers. At high levels, even these paddlers would probably be endangered. At lower levels (eight feet), the river offers intricate maneuvering and long step drops down narrow chutes. Minimum levels are around seven feet. Take out for this run is at Pobiddy (Talboton) Road. The Yellow Jacket Shoals stretch with medium flow requires about three hours running time, a comfortable afternoon run.

There are few other rivers in the world where tupelo trees form part of the obstacles in the rapid, where Spanish moss drips onto mountain laurel, where water and rock have combined to give such a beautiful sweep to the travelers vision.

Put-Ins/Take-Outs: This section of the river naturally divides itself into several different trips. From GA 18 to Sprewell Bluff (about 14 miles; 6 hours) is an easy trip with no significant rapids. From Sprewell Bluff to GA 36 (7 miles; 3 hours) is more of the same. From GA 36 to Pobiddy (Talboton) Road, it’s a different story. Just around the bend is Yellow Jacket Shoals. Beginning boaters should remember that different water levels completely change the personality of a river. At 11 feet the sections above GA 36 will require more skill.

More Information: For up-to-date information, maps, water levels, over-night camping, shuttle, history and the latest river conditions, stop at Jim McDaniel’s Flint River Outdoor Center at the GA 36 Bridge, eight miles southwest of Thomaston. Born and reared near the river, Jim and his wife Margie have run this outpost since 1978. 706/647-2633.