From natural beauty to well-established kitsch, a road trip refreshes one Floridian traversing Georgia's small towns and state parks.
By HERB HILLER
Published November 14, 2004
Georgia Department of Economic Development
Helen is the capital of Georgia kitsch, where Main Street looks like a scene straight out of Bavaria. Visitors will find weathervane-topped turrets and steep, sloping roofs, German food and an annual celebration Helen calls “the nation’s longest Oktoberfest.”
Georgia Department of Economic Development
Among the highlights at General Coffee State Park are old farm buildings filled with historic implements and a restored 19th century house known as Burnham Cottage.
Georgia Department of Economic Development
The change of season is evident at Unicoi State Park, which sits maestrolike at its regional podium in the Appalachian foothills.
Early last spring I drove for a week just to get away, traveling around Georgia state parks. I began from where I live, in North Florida. I returned to where I live, with south Georgia on my mind.
Different from Florida, most Georgia parks contain lodges or cottages, or both. Many boast golf courses and fishing streams.
But what caught my interest happened in south-central Douglas, where I was stopping my first night heading north.
In the pretty and renewed downtown, I entered the library and found fresh, hardcover books for sale - $2 copies of works by John Dufresne, William Kennedy and Annie Proulx.
When I returned to General Coffee State Park, where I was spending the night, I was too late to look inside the old farm buildings full of historic implements. So I hiked the woods along Seventeen-Mile River. I watched twigs flow beneath a wooden bridge in the quick, silent water.
Georgia began settling in.
It turned cold the next afternoon when I started late for the 280-mile drive that would lead me by dusk to Richard B. Russell State Park northwest of Augusta. The park surrounds a ragged-edge lake backed up by a river dam.
In my cottage, I carried my dinner to an easy chair beside a wood fire and indulged in Proulx. The next morning, the sun climbed low hills to silhouette teams from Canada training on the lake in their racing sculls.
The following day near Elberton, I stopped to look at a massive granite monument known as the Georgia Guidestones, a Stonehengelike summons to principled living. It is not clear who had the stones put up in 1980, but in 12 languages, including Babylonian, cuneiform, classical Greek and hieroglyphics, the monuments call for humanity to maintain its numbers under 500-million in balance with nature, for nations to resolve external disputes through a world court and to "Avoid petty laws and useless officials."
Back roads ran through country too poor to attract billboards. Valleys fell away and peaks rose for the first time. Riding stables appeared, as did places with Indian names. Foothills turned gray.
Unicoi State Park sits maestrolike at its regional podium in Appalachian foothills. Snow-dusted winter roads and wind howled between sections of the hillside lodge.
Ex-Floridians there, the same as others I met later, told me how they wished they could combine the best of Florida (the fun of water everywhere) with the best of Georgia (its changing seasons). I knew the Florida part. I learned more about the Georgia part at a table beside a mammoth dining room fireplace.
The parks and adjacent national forests encompass a fair amount of north Georgia in public ownership. The region starts less than a two-hour drive north of Atlanta. People flock in to fish and hunt, to drive back roads hunting for crafts and antiques, and to get in touch with a hardscrabble heritage. In summer they enjoy lakeside beaches.
Visitors have made Amicalola Falls State Park, 45 miles west, a hiking mecca. The park, which claims the highest falls east of the Mississippi, connects by an 8-mile approach trail to Springer Mountain at the southern end of the Appalachian Trail.
Unicoi overlooks two of the region's remarkable places, which are quite different yet both threatened by development.
One is the pseudo Alpine town of Helen, the capital of Georgia kitsch. The other is the Sautee Nacoochee Valleys, where much remains unchanged from 100 years ago.
Helen is Florida's Chalet Suzanne on steroids. Its Main Street is a half-mile of Bavarian whimsy, with its weathervane-topped turrets and steep, sloping roofs, its grape-cluster stenciling on half-timbered walls. Willkommen shingles flap in the breeze; oom-pah-pah band music wafts along the valley for the 50 days of what's billed as "the nation's longest Oktoberfest."
Among the Alpenhof Motel, Edelweiss German Country Inn and Alt Heidelberg German restaurant, my favorite was Das Bagel Haus. Outside the Hansel & Gretel Candy Kitchen, the handmade chocolates include a white variety molded to resemble beer steins.
It's easy to make fun of Helen, but kitsch saved the town. After logging in the area ended in the 1930s, the village declined. By the 1960s, Helen was a short strip of mostly vacant factory sheds. An ex-GI who had served in Bavaria sketched some fixup ideas that property owners soon turned into the first facades.
"The original concept was to revitalize a dead place," says former Mayor Hue Rainey, who showed up in 1970 to run a golf and tennis club. "Now we create a lot of jobs and revenue without smokestacks."
But exploitation threatens the playful character of Helen, where nonconforming motels go up on the town's south side.
Similar development troubles the nearby Sautee Nacoochee Valleys, as encroaching hilltop vacation houses threaten the natural character. Valley residents have always chosen to hide their homes from sight.
"Houses have been in the same families for as long as anybody can remember," longtime resident Lewis King said as we drove around. "It's all pretty harmonious without any master plan."
Views look north across a valley to mountains that rise 4,400 feet. Dirt roads pass along board fences that border bare fields in winter. Stone stairs rise to houses; those that can be seen from the road most often are painted white with green shutters.
Like the nearby developer-built houses, many of the old homes are seasonal, too. King looks after one built by his great-grandfather and used by descendants ever since.
"It's the only thing that still keeps the family together," King says.
Working together, about 500 valley residents have built an impressive row of community buildings: a museum and art gallery, a performance hall, a gym, a playground, ball fields and a banquet hall. The community association also has built a volunteer firehouse and a structure leased to the Postal Service.
"We're way overloaded with facilities," King says proudly. "There's a huge commitment to community and conservation."
Heritage hangs rich in this region, which stretches north into higher and more remote sections. This was Cherokee land at first, then was logged but reforested. This region is where the first American gold rush took place, preceding California's by 20 years.
Duke's Creek flows into the Chattahoochee River through Nacoochee Valley. On its way it tumbles through the 5,555 acres of Smithgall Woods Conservation Area.
Conservationist Charles A. Smithgall Jr. gave part and sold part of his foothills retreat to the state, which now runs the five cottages and main house there as an executive getaway and lodge. Its 14 rooms are rustic, built of logs but luxuriously furnished. Porches overlook catch-and-release trout streams. It's 10 miles west of Unicoi and is an outstanding place to stay.
Wilderness trails end at a major waterfall that tumbles in multiple braids.
Days had passed since that drive up from north Florida through south Georgia. I missed those nondescript, flatland towns.
I loved their relic railroads running down soured main streets, their paint-faded houses. Yet Florida or Georgia, pines are pines, boiled peanuts boiled peanuts.
U.S. 441 through this Georgia region was the equal of Highway 100 near my home south of Lake City - straight, flat and where, for miles along either road, you can forget about cell phone service. In Georgia I passed Homerville and Fargo; I live near Clintonville and Lulu.
It was raining on both sides when I finally recrossed the state line, with Georgia on my mind.
- Freelance writer Herb Hiller lives in Georgetown, Fla. His "Highway A1A; Florida At the Edge," about tourism, development and renewal of east coast downtowns, will be published early next year by University Press of Florida.
IF YOU GO
GEORGIA PARK ROOMS AND FOOD: You have to love lodges that capture something as bold as the mountains and make accommodations comfortably accessible.
At Unicoi, quilts hang displayed beneath soaring ceilings. Guest rooms are knotty-pine northern with trout prints on walls. At Amicalola Falls' dramatic hilltop lodge, some rooms are rustic and have loft beds for kids, while others disappoint with furnishings unimaginably tired. Most of the parks' cottages have stone fireplaces.
Except at Smithgall Woods, with its chef in charge, lodge food is hopelessly fried, mashed and overcooked. Bring your own and book a cottage with a kitchen.
The best cottage I found was at General Coffee State Park: Burnham Cottage is a restored two-story, 19th century house, with Queen Anne furniture, stained glass windows and complete kitchen.
A billboard that declares "Faith makes things possible, not easy" sums up the questionable utility of Georgia road signs.
Roads can dead-end without notice. A single sign can say "To Highway 79," then leave you wondering which way at a T-junction.
You appreciate the long learning curve mastered by tourism in Florida.
FLOWER BED FERTILIZER: Though folks who live near the Georgia Guidestones don't quite know what to make of the monument, they do like that it's made of locally quarried Elbert County granite.
The county seat of Elberton calls itself the "Granite Capital of the World." It's the site of the Elberton Granite Association (at #1 Granite Plaza), the Elberton Granite Museum and Exhibit and a high school stadium called the Granite Bowl (seating 20,000, which is more than the population of the county). You can collect free granite dust from many of the 45 quarries within 25 miles of town. Locals claim the dust is a good flower bed fertilizer.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade & Tourism, 285 Peachtree Center Ave. NE, Marquis Two Tower, Suites 1000 & 1100, Atlanta, GA 30303-1230; 404 962-4000; www.georgia.org
Georgia Department of Economic Development