By Sherri Smith Brown

When I was twelve, my Aunt Madeleine gave me a copy of Gone With the Wind for Christmas. I had seen the movie the previous summer, and when she told me that there was a book—that I could actually curl up in my own room and read to my heart’s content about Scarlett, Rhett, the Civil War and Tara—I was beside myself with amazement and anticipation. And then I got it and saw that there were hundreds of pages that I could pour over—passages describing the red clay countryside, the march from Resaca to Atlanta, Rhett and Scarlett fleeing Atlanta’s flames and the billowy, green-flowered muslin dress Scarlett wore to the barbeque.

During all my teenage summers, my family headed out of Indiana for Daytona Beach, Florida, each time passing through Atlanta, where I would peer from the car window at the skyline, dominated by the blue Hyatt dome, as we maneuvered our way through the construction and detours of the new interstate highway. Was there a trace of the railroad depot or Aunt Pittypat’s house? Would I catch a glimpse of a sign with an arrow pointing to Tara? (more…)

Thirty points of interest on a self-guided map

By James Edgar Coleman

Fort Gaines, Georgia, sits on the southern end of Lake Walter F. George, high on a bluff overlooking the Chattahoochee River. This prominent position on the river has contributed to the interesting history of the town.

Artifacts place a large prehistoric Indian village on the site between 900 and 1400 AD, and more than two centuries ago the Creek Indians had a town of some size here. After the first Creek War in 1814, General Edmund Pendleton Gaines established a frontier fort on the site. Gaines was later noted for arguing against Indian removal. Built in 1816, the 100-square-foot fort was enclosed by a stockade eight feet high and garrisoned by Federal troops under General John Dill, who would later build a large home in the town. In 1836 a second fort was constructed to provide settlers with protection from Indian attacks. (A third fort, built in 1863, was intended to keep Union troops from going upriver to Columbus, an important city to the Confederacy for its shipbuilding, iron works and textile plants).

In the 1830s, Fort Gaines was chartered as a town and its real heyday began. One historical marker calls the town “Queen City of the Chattahoochee.” And so it was. A shipping point for cotton planters for many miles on both sides of the river, it was one of the most important points between Apalachicola and Columbus until the railroads arrived in 1858. Huge warehouses along the river held thousands of bales of cotton for shipping on large steamboats. Traces of the old cotton slide, leading down to the river warehouses still can be seen down the bluff. Boom times came again after the Civil War, as merchants came from Alabama and all around to sell their cotton. The town boasted several hotels, two newspapers and saloons everywhere. The decline set in with the ominous boll weevil depression of the 1910s.

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The Euharlee or Lowery Bridge spanning Euharlee Creek in Bartow County was built in 1886 and named after Daniel Lowery, a prominent miller in the area. An earlier bridge, built on the same spot was swept downstream during a flood. Lowery helped the community rebuild the bridge by quarrying the fieldstone for the piers from his farmlands. Until the bridge was completed, he operated a ferry across the stream for travelers and farmers who needed the services of his corn mill and cotton gin on the creek bank.

The style of the bridge is Town Lattice, a design patented in 1820 by Ithiel Town of Connecticut. Town promoted his design throughout the Carolinas, and soon after that, Georgia bridge builders began using it. Because of its simplicity and strength, a Town Lattice Bridge could be “built by the mile and cut off by the yard.”

Deep-set stone piers and concrete abutments, added later yield the first clue to the bridge’s rugged, well-planned design. Measuring from pier to pier, the bridge is one span of 116 feet. Sides are roughly weatherboarded. The lower curtain extends below the roadbed level. Tin sheeting has replaced the original wood shingles on the gable roof. (more…)