The Flint Now!
By Claude Terry
Editor’s Note: When Claude Terry wrote this story for Brown’s Guide to Georgia Magazine in 1973, he was a professor of microbiology at Emory University. A scientist by training and an expert outdoorsman by nature,
Claude was among a small number of pioneering Georgia environmentalists who helped Jimmy Carter and other state and federal government officials see and appreciate the Flint as well as other Georgia rivers. He was one of the original Friends of the River, the group that successfully lobbied for designation of a portion of the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta as a National Recreation Area. He founded Southeastern Expeditions, a rafting outfitter on the Chattooga River in northeast Georgia. He was one of the founders of American Rivers Conservation Council, now American Rivers, and was recently recognized by that organization for his conservation efforts on behalf of rivers. For a story on Claude and his Georgia river experience that appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on April 23, 2008, click here. The photo is Claude and his son, Mike, on the Chattooga River in 1972.
Take a river labeled “Georgia’s Number One Scenic River” by the Natural Areas Council, add the spice of three controversial dams which will drown this river valley, cap that off with the fact that this stream offers the best whitewater canoeing in middle Georgia and you can only be talking about Georgia’s Unique Flint River. Fishermen float and hike the river, canoeists drift down the easy stretches or risk boat and limb in Yellow Jacket Shoals, and hunters prowl the adjacent forests in large numbers to stalk the plentiful deer.
The landscape along the Flint is enormously varied and the visual aspect is good.
Near Highway 18 the river meanders through some of the loveliest country in middle Georgia, with rolling hills and fat cattle grazing blue-green pastures. About three miles below highway 18 the country changes, Pine Mountain throws up a barricade to the river’s passage, 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, you can see Spanish moss hanging over mountain laurel 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 shoally rapids, of no real consequence, but enough to pep up an otherwise placid run. (This is the site for the first and most controversial Flint River dam proposed by the Corps of Engineers.) A county park opposite Sprewell Bluff affords a take-out 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 highway 36 the river continues its good manners, with little gradient and no significant rapids.
Canoeist and rafters desiring an easy trip can get on the Flint at highway 18 and paddle down Sprewell Bluff Park (14 miles) or on to highway 36 (21 miles). Those desiring more adventure should read on!
At Highway 36 bridge the river appears swift but smooth, a tempting place for an easy Sunday float. Don’t you believe it! Around the first bend you 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 highway 36 gauge) these rapids can build up some 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. This spring, I paddled the river at 11 ft. and found the section from highway 18 to 36 okay for experienced open boaters, and the Yellow Jacket section okay for kayakers and rafters of moderate experience. However, we saw pieces of several flat-bottomed boats and canoes, and a local resident along the side informed me that 10 canoes and one life had been lost in the last couple of weeks on this stretch of river. To those of us with heavy water experience, the river would be class III at these high levels. However, to the area boaters who normally run flat rivers this tricky section could be hairy indeed! At lower water levels (about 8 feet) the river offers intricate maneuvering and long, steep drops down narrow chutes. Minimum levels have not been established since the gauge is new but are probably about 7 feet. Take-out for this run is at Pobiddy (Talbotton) Road. The Yellow Jacket Shoals stretch with medium flow requires about three hours running time, a comfortable afternoon run.
I doubt if there is another river in the world where tupelo trees form part of the obstacles in a rapid, where Spanish moss drips onto mountain laurel, where water and rock have combined to give such a beautiful sweep to the traveler’s vision.
To casually inundate such a treasure with the dam that the Corps of Engineers proposes would seem incomprehensible, particularly in a region where such mountain beauty is rare. Yet the proposal to build Sprewell Bluff Dam and a re-regulating dam is still pushed by the Corps, some state officials, and various economic interests. But not by those whose land will be inundated. There is much local opposition by the young landowners who will be flooded out, and by sportsmen.
It now appears that the benefits in flood control and power production are negligible, and it is apparent that recreational benefits of a lake must be weighed against lost benefits of a unique river corridor. Lakes silt out in 50 to 200 years, leaving mud flats. Rivers just keep on “rollin’ along” – at least until man in his infinite wisdom intervenes.
Georgians have a choice of a long narrow pool, which will soon (is 100 years really very long?) be a mud flat or the infinite river. See the Flint River now, and let your children and grandchildren see it.