Thomas County Courthouse, built in 1858 and remodeled in 1888, is the beginning point for this 4.3 mile walking tour of Thomasville. A Confederate monument, erected in 1879, is on the courthouse square.

Thomasville is a unique town full of historic homes and buildings, many of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The self-guided walking tour available in the Thomasvile Visitors Guide will guide you through Thomasville’s historic districts where you will see a variety of architectural styles dating from the 1800s. You will notice historic markers on buildings and homes that tell you the year of construction and the original business or family that occupied the structure. Many of the homes you will see are private residences and are not open to the public. While visitors are asked to respect the owner’s privacy, feel free to admire the outside structure. The tour length is approximately 4.3 miles and depending on your stamina, you may wish to break down the tour into smaller, shorter segments. Enjoy your walk through the past in this walking tour through Historic Thomasville.

Links

• Download a copy of the Thomasville Visitors Guide that contains the self-guided walking tour of Thomasville’s downtown.

Turner Field tours are conducted year-round and include a visit to the Atlanta Braves club house and the broadcast booth. Individuals and groups of 20 or less need no reservations.

Guided tours of Turner Field are offered year-round and begin in the Braves Museum & Hall of Fame. Tours start on the top of the hour, last approximately one hour, and take visitors to:

• Braves Museum & Hall of Fame
• Coca-Cola Sky Field
• Scouts Alley
• Broadcast Booth
• Luxury Suite
• Press Box
• Clubhouse
• The Plaza
• Dugout
• Museum Store

Tours for Individuals
No reservations are necessary for individuals or groups of less than 20 people. Walk-up tickets can be purchased on the day of your tour at the Braves ticket window at Turner Field and free parking is available in the Green Lot. (more…)

Maj. Gen. William Tecumshe Sherman reviews the troops in Savannah after the city surrendered to the Union Army in December of 1864. The events of the Civil War in Savannah are the subject of a walking tour of the city by Savannah Walks expert tour guides.

On this walking tour visitors get an overview of the strategies of the Union and Confederate armies as they waged the Savannah Campaign, which included Maj. Gen. William Tecumshe Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea that started on November 15, 1864, and ended on December 21.

Tours are conducted by Savannah Walks, which bills itself as providing “tours for the educated traveler.” The company specializes in providing walking tours of Savannah’s National Landmark Historic District to a wide range of customers. Since its founding in 1996, Savannah Walks has provided tours to an estimated 200,000 visitors, many of them referred by local businesses.

Other Savannah Walks walking tours include:

• Savannah Stroll
• Savannah Ghosts
• Historic Homes
• Gates and Gardens
• A Walk Through Midnight, being a walking tour based on John Berent’s best selling book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Savannah Walks provides group tours, school tours and customized tours.

Atlanta’s Fox Theater, originally the Yaarab Temple Shrine Mosque, was designed in the late 1920s as headquarters for the 5,000 member Shriners organization. It is one of the popular tours given by the Atlanta Preservation Center.

See Atlanta’s history firsthand on the Atlanta Preservation Center’s Guided Walking Tours:

• The Fox Theatre
• Historic Downtown
• Sweet Auburn/Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District
• Inman Park
• Frederick Law Olmsted’s Druid Hills
• Grant Park
• Ansley Park
• Historic Midtown

These Guided Walking Tours are an informative and fun way to learn about Atlanta’s remarkable history and the people who led the city to prominence as the capital of the New South. The historic neighborhood tours illustrate why Atlanta’s quality of life has been sought after for generations.

Tour Schedules
Atlanta Preservation Center (APC) Guided Walking Tours are scheduled on a regular basis. They last about 1½ hours. The schedules for the eight tours are included in the following description of each tour.

All tours except the Fox Theatre are offered from March 1 through November 30. The Fox tour is given year round. Tours are not conducted on legal Holidays, Christmas and Easter.

The Atlanta Preservation Center is the agency for coordination, knowledge, research and advocacy for preservation in the city. Founded in 1980, it has worked tirelessly with government, business and community leaders to preserve more than 175 endangered residential and commercial structures, neighborhoods and landscapes. Its advocacy and education programs have made preservation come alive for thousands of area students, residents and visitors. 

The University of Georgia campus is one of the most beautiful in the United States. Stately, noble trees provide human scale, a sense of place, cooling shade, and tranquility for students, faculty, staff and visitors. To walk this hallowed campus is to sense the pride in its heritage and hope for the future. The designation of the campus as an arboretum not only insures sustained, energetic tree planting and maintenance, but also presents opportunities for studying trees. This “Tree Walk” is the first project of the University of Georgia Campus Arboretum initiative.

The online Tree Tour Brochure arranges campus into three sections: North, Central and South. A tree identification plaque is attached either directly to the tree or on a stake near the tree. Each plaque identifies the tree by name and has a number to correspond to the map. Those who are not familiar with campus may want to obtain a map from the Visitor’s Center or Tate Center. (more…)

Roswell Ghost Tours conducted by author and lecturer Dianna Avena explore the paranormal dimension of historic Roswell, a Metro Atlanta city deeply involved in the Civil War and the events leading up to it.

Tour guide Dianna Avena (thumnail photo) has been a Roswell resident since 1989 and is a proud mom to three active boys. She continues to enjoy her long career as an actress/model/body and stunt double in film, TV and print media.

The future tour guide of Roswell Ghost Tours attended the tour herself in 2000 and immediately fell in love with it, attending many more times.  She feels very fortunate to have the opportunity to represent Roswell Ghost Tours as she has for over seven years now. She enjoys introducing others to Roswell through its haunting tales, and feels that it’s a walk back in time each time she does so. Long-time Roswell residents usually find that they learn much about their city’s rich history through this informative and entertaining ghost tour. Residents and local businesses in Roswell continue to share their stories and experiences with her, so that keeps the Roswell Ghost Tour constantly changing and exciting.

Dianna’s book, Roswell: History, Haunts and Legends, was released in October of 2007. She is an avid paranormal investigator having worked with many of the most respected paranormal investigators and teams. In September 2007, she decided the best way to achieve her goals of adding to the general knowledge in the paranormal community was to found and lead her own investigative team. Hence, came the formation of Roswell Georgia Paranormal Investigations. Dianna is a frequent guest on radio programs and public speaking engagements.

Enjoy and explore the flowers, plants and trees of Savannah’s downtown historic district. Roy Heizer (pictured in the thumbnail photo at right), takes you on a stroll through the squares, sharing with you history, folklore, fun and informative facts, ID and genealogy of the plants, flowers and trees. In all four seasons, come experience a perfect blend of science, story telling and the natural beauty of the Coastal Empire with Greenfeet Walkabouts.

Roy Heizer is your licensed tour guide. Roy is a Certified Plant Professional in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, gardening lecturer, and member of the International Palm Society.

Architectural Tours of Savannah informs visitors, locals and anyone else interested in Savannah’s story about this beautiful city’s built environment. Oglethorpe’s original plan, today’s desire to balance preservation with a living city and almost 300 years in between are discussed while walking through what is sometimes labeled an urban jungle.

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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Layering and ripples are the two most common beach structures that the beach walker will observe. Ripples are formed in the near-shore area by both waves and currents. They mark the path of water from the beach back into the ocean. The size of ripples varies widely, but their crests are usually parallel to the beach slope. Layering is the wavy patterns of lighter and darker sand or sand of different textures. It looks something like chocolate swirl ice cream. It’s caused by concentration of heavy minerals or by variations in the size of sand grains. Geologists identify layering and ripples in ancient sandstones to develop new clues to the history of the earth.

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