The development plan prepared for the Glory Hole Caverns park called for inclusion of all the natural wonders in the area, including Glory Hole, Forest Falls, Ochlocknee Falls, the historic Blowing Cave and Hawthorne Falls.
See the section on Proposed Park for details about the proposed park site and facilities.
One of the features of my development called for creation of a public association composed of representatives of county and city governments and chambers of commerce in Grady, Decatur, Mitchell and Thomas counties and the cities in these counties. I believed that what was needed to get this project on the tract to becoming a reality was the active participation of citizens from all the area that would be economically affected by such a major attraction. I said that the primary goal of the Association should be creation of a state park authority, similar to those which developed Stone Mountain Memorial Park, FDR State Park, Jekyll Island State Park and Lake Lanier Islands State Park.
Unfortunately, when I came up with the idea for the association, I literally wrote myself out of any part in the official development campaign since I proposed only elected county and city officials and representatives of chambers of commerce could be members.
By the time the association was formed and the first meeting held, I had moved back to Atlanta. I attended the first two meetings where the members were enthusiastic about the project. However, the representative of the chamber of commerce in Thomasville immediately began trying to discourage any development as a state park. He brought in the owner of Rock City, a commercial park on Lookout Mountain that has spent more money on advertising signs than it has on the park.
The mayors of several cities and a county commissioner told me that members became so frustrated and discouraged by the tactics of the chamber of commerce representative that they finally quit going to meetings. "We just couldn't get anything done because of him," the mayor of Climax said. After several months, the association became inactive and never accomplished any of its goals.
In the 1970's, I tried to get the project back on its feet. I was assistant editor of a metro Atlanta newspaper at the time and decided to use the "power of the press". I decided to try and get the state parks department off their big-city duffs and force them to take a serious look at our South Georgia "gold mine".
I began by interviewing some folks in the Planning Section of the State Department of Natural Resources and was told the reason they had "turned it down" as a state park was because they had read a report that was prepared by the University of Georgia and another one by the University of Florida. According to the planners, both of these reports said Glory Hole Cave could not be developed. WRONG! Neither of these universities have ever prepared a report on the cave nor any of these sites--that was a lie.
I asked one of them where they saw these reports and he said they hadn't ever actually seen a copy of them [then how did you read them?] but that they had been told this. [BY WHOM?] The planner who made this statement was Brit Pendergrast.
Later, I held a long personal interview with Henry ("Hank") Struble, director of the Parks and Historic Sites Division of the Department of Natural Resources. I related the conflicting info I had gotten from the planning section. Struble then called in Lonice Barrett who was in charge of approving new state park sites. He said that he went to Grady County and even crawled down into "that first hole there. I didn't go very far but I went far enough to justify in my own mind that I had been in them."
"We were concerned because of the proximity, the location and the distance [the "distance" from WHERE?] that it was away from and off of the beaten path. The study team never felt like that at any time that there should be any consideration given to developing it as a tourist attraction," Barrett said. This is a jerk who got paid with OUR tax money to tell us that since we are "off the beaten path", we have nothing to offer.
Us South Georgia folks get the drift, fellows. Because the "location" is in Southwest Georgia, that means you aren't interested. And "off the beaten path" -- does this mean our state government refuses to acquire natural wonders or develop state parks that THEY [the Atlanta city slickers] consider "off the beaten path". Does this mean that in the future we will have only state parks that are within two blocks of an interstate expressway in Atlanta? Or at least in metro Atlanta??
Just who in the devil was the jerk who decided that a natural wonder had to be practically "in downtown Atlanta" (is that "on the path"?) to qualify as a state park?
God help us if the US National Parks Department had ever used this kind of screwed up thinking. Hey fellows -- ALL of our most popular national parks are right in the "middle of nowhere" and were "off the beaten path" when they opened but they now attract millions of visitors every year. Ever heard of Yosemite boys? Ever heard of the Grand Canyon? And Yellowstone? How far off the "beaten path" can you get than Yellowstone!! Perhaps we should have a new state law barring "desk jockeys" from working for the State Parks Department! We also need to hire some GEORGIANS to work in this department. That should be the first requirement for employment in ALL state agencies! If you doubt that reasoning--witness the fact that the man who wrote the first "Outdoor Development Plan" for the State of Georgia was from up north and stated to me "I can't wait to get the hell out of Georgia." Maybe if such a law were enactged, more of Georgia's natural wonders and historic sites could be saved and opened for visitors.
For years, Southwest Georgia has been the "red-headed stepchild" of Georgia. Local folk have been trying for 40 years to get the State of Georgia to develop a major state park at this site -- without success. Only a native Georgian who knows how Southwest Georgia has been treated for decades can really understand this.
Some of Georgia's greatest natural wonders have been ignored and neglected for years by both elected representatives and the state government bureaucracy in Atlanta. These great natural wonders are a potential gold mine of tourist dollars and much-needed jobs. Yet this great potential doesn't matter -- because these natural wonders are in Southwest Georgia! Were they located near Atlanta or in the mountains of North Georgia, they would have become major state parks years ago.
If you think this is jesting, then consider the facts:
Economy: in the past, if you asked for state aid to get industrial development in Southwest Georgia, inevitably there would be howls of protest about "pork barrel" waste of tax money from Atlanta and north Georgia politicos. Witness the howls from north Georgia when a Southwest Georgia governor insisted upon development of a state port at his hometown of Bainbridge. One state legislator from Summerville (extreme north Georgia) cried "who needs a state port in the swamps of South Georgia?" Since its creation, that port has made a profit for the State and brought new industries to the area along with much-needed jobs and new income. When the State sponsors visits of industrialists looking for prospective sites for new plants, they take them on a grand tour of Atlanta. South Georgia gets "fly-overs". The State refused to establish a computer center at Columbus State University -- even though one of the largest credit card processing companies in the world had threatened to move to another state if it didn't...costing Georgia thousands of jobs.
Education: the State fought for years against establishment of any new state college in the area. Not until communities all over the state, who also wanted new state colleges, finally brought political pressure to bear upon the State was a new college established in the area. The state also fought against development of a university for the area. That didn't come about until ALL the old four-year state colleges were renamed as universities. However, the state still refuses to develop a major state university in Southwest Georgia. The only three major state universities in Georgia are all in or near Atlanta. Only one major "regional" state university exists in all of Georgia south of Atlanta: at Statesboro and it is further from Southwest Georgia than Atlanta!! It took a heck of a lot of pressure to get Georgia Southern named as a university.
Highways: Governor Jimmy Carter in the 1970's urged a limited-access highway along US Hwy. 27 from Chattanooga, Tn. to Tallahassee, Fl. that would have passed through Southwest Georgia. Such an expressway would have brought thousands of tourists and hundreds of new jobs to the region. It took years and a LOT of wrecks on the heavily trafficked federal highways in Southwest Georgia before the state finally began widening highways connecting the metropolitan areas of Columbus and Albany and another route from the Alabama line through Bainbridge to Valdosta. But look at what they built: the stretch between Colquitt and Bainbridge merely added two lanes adjoining the existing two. This type road is more suited for a downtown street than an open area like this. Nothing divides the speeding traffic...no median or barrier. Shoulders are insufficient.
And now, while billions of dollars are being planned to pave over north Georgia around Atlanta, there is talk of cutting out the proposed "Fall Line Freeway" from Columbus thru Macon to Augusta. This has been one of the most needed road projects in Georgia since the Interstate System first began and something that should have been part of that system. These are three of the five largest cities in our state but there is no decent road connecting them. No wonder all the economic development goes to Atlanta!
Little wonder then that employees of the Georgia Department of State Parks totally ignored these sites when folks in the area proposed they be developed as a major state park. No employee of the department has ever even visited all the sites. And if they did, they wouldn't be impressed. Heck, they wouldn't be impressed with Yellowstone either! They would rather be back in their skyscraper towers in Atlanta.
Nothing will ever be done with these wonderful attractions without strong political pressure. For that matter, nothing will be done by the state for anything else in the area, including a major state university, without political pressure. Trouble is, metro Atlanta now controls our state politics and many of the state legislators from there are not even native to Georgia and don't give a damn about anything regarding South Georgia. Take that back...they are now proposing to build a huge pipeline and pipe our South Georgia water to Atlanta.
to HOME page