Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation

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Here are a few more old scanned photos from the Georgia coast, this time of the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation, a state park near the small coastal city of Brunswick. This area was once a rice plantation, cut into a coastal salt marsh, and prior to the Civil War it operated on slave labor. I've read was one of the harshest slavery-based industries, largely due to disease and working conditions. The rice fields have long since gone back to salt marsh, but the (relatively modest) plantation house survives. The state delicately mentions that the plantation declined after the Civil War; apparently the economic model didn't pencil out so well without slave labor.

These photos are from the mid-1990s, during the brief "New South" era, back when the media kept telling us the South had finally gotten over its ugly past and was ready to join the 20th Century. We were just there to look at the salt marsh and didn't visit the house, but the exhibits we saw tried to play up the environmental education angle, and avoided talking about how the work got done, if they could avoid it. The only good thing I can say about denial, in this case, is that it probably replaced something else that was worse. I assume there would have been the usual cliches about how happy the slaves were, how benevolent the owners were, and how it was all one big happy Gone With the Wind antebellum family, full of cotillions and hoop skirts and genteel high society doings and whatever. This was almost 20 years ago and there's been a lot of backsliding since then; I'm still not sure they're ready to join the 20th Century. Under the current political climate, I suspect the signage will revert to the themes of the bad old days sooner or later, since there's a huge market -- ok, a huge Caucasian market -- for misty-eyed Old South nostalgia.

As far as I'm concerned, there's only one right way to deal with old plantation houses in the 21st Century. You bulldoze them -- yes, even the historic, extra-genteel ones; especially those ones -- and put up memorials to the victims of slavery and segregation, and you make sure every school kid in the region sees at least one memorial on a field trip, and you don't sugar coat it. You take away the space for people to wax nostalgic about those days, you make sure that isn't a respectable opinion anymore, and you try to prevent the bad old days from returning.

Savannah Rapids Park, Augusta GA

Here are a few old photos of Savannah Rapids Park on the Savannah River, in suburban Augusta, GA. This is the point where the river crosses the Fall Line, and the headgates for the historic Augusta Canal are here. These photos were taken around the headgates area, although it's a fairly large park and there's more to it than this. The website mentions something about a waterfall, although I don't recall ever seeing it. If I had, I'm fairly certain I would have taken a photo or two.

The main thing I do remember is looking around for alligators. I'd heard they showed up here now and then, and there were signs warning people to please leave the alligators alone, dammit. Ok, the signs didn't say "dammit", this being the South and all, but the point was conveyed. I didn't see any gators, though, and I was both relieved and disappointed. I'd seen alligators before, during a family vacation to Florida in the mid-80s. They were swimming around in a canal at Cape Canaveral, in fact. Somehow that didn't really count because it happened in Florida, though. Anyway, I finally saw a wild non-Floridian alligator at Hunting Island, on the South Carolina coast, and somehow managed not to get any photos of it. I told coworkers about it later and they weren't that impressed. I think the best analogy is with bears in the western US: Not something you see every day, and a real nuisance when they do show up.

Going back through these old photos, I'm struck by how few photos I have of the Augusta area, despite having lived there for several years. I'm not sure why not; the old historic downtown was quite photogenic, at least if you ignored all the empty storefronts. The Augusta Canal took a very scenic route from the headgates into downtown, past historic cotton mills and under historic bridges, before petering out in weeds and neglect in a bad part of town. I haven't been back in the last decade and maybe it's changed since then, but it wasn't exactly the most economically vibrant city, other than the one week every year when it became the center of the golf universe, and the locals all left town for the duration. Savannah and Charleston had it beat in the tourism department, it was too close to Atlanta to be much of a business hub on its own, and any business that didn't gravitate to Atlanta likely ended up in Columbia or Greenville-Spartanburg, SC instead. Locals seemed to regard this with a mix of puzzlement and resignation. Grand development schemes came and went without rousing the city from its economic doldrums -- a riverfront condo tower in a city that shunned condos and avoided downtown after dark; big new history and science museums the local government couldn't afford to actually operate or maintain; minor league baseball and even hockey(!) teams that came and went; even a riverfront "Georgia Golf Hall of Fame" full of cheesy (and often vandalized) statues of famous golfers. Nothing ever seemed to pan out, and nobody could figure out why. Augusta would make a lot more sense if there was some sort of centuries-old curse on the place, a curse where nothing really terrible ever happens, but the city's forever doomed to watch enviously as nearby cities get all the goodies and it doesn't. But, as usual, Savannah and Charleston ended up with all the cool ghost stories.

Jekyll Island, GA

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Here are a few old photos from Jekyll Island, Georgia, a barrier island on the Atlantic coast near the town of Brunswick. The island was developed in the late 1880s as a resort for northern robber barons -- J.P Morgan, various Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Goulds, and their ilk. The island's fortunes waned (so to speak) after the stock market crash of 1929, and the state of Georgia has owned and operated it since 1947. A number of the original "cottages" (i.e. vacation mansions) still survive, as does the central clubhouse building, now a hotel.

You may have gathered this is not a comprehensive photoset about the place; I took these in the late 90s, and I had no idea at the time that I might need a bunch of photos for the internet someday. In any case, I could never muster a lot of enthusiasm for the extravagant lifestyles of ultra-rich oligarchs, so if I did have a bunch of interior photos I'd probably just snark about them anyway. The island's beaches were beautiful, though. It's worth a visit just for the beaches.

Bulloch County Courthouse

Here's an old photo, snapped from a moving car, of the historic Bulloch County Courthouse, in Statesboro, Georgia. Or most of it; I had an old point & shoot 35mm camera back then and my aim wasn't that great, as you can probably tell here. A few years after I took this, the courthouse was restored and the exterior white plaster was either removed or painted over, so it's mostly a red brick building now. I think I liked it better before the restoration, to be honest. I thought it was kind of an interesting building, though not quite interesting enough for us to stop and look around the town. I know it's a college town and supposedly is a bit more culturally lively than your average county seat in rural Georgia. Which admittedly isn't saying a lot.

If the name of the town sounds familiar at all, it might be due to the classic blues song "Statesboro Blues" by Blind Willie McTell. If you aren't familiar with it, his original version and the famous Allman Brothers cover are out there on the youtubes. Though I admit that after listening carefully to both, I'm still not sure if it's good or bad when somebody has a case of the Statesboro Blues, or maybe if it's a little of both.

Pics: Brunswick, GA

Here's another slideshow of old 1990s travel photos, this time from Brunswick, GA. That Wikipedia article makes the place sound practically bustling, which is not really how I remember it. We sort of stopped and wandered around a bit, and it was weirdly quiet and nothing was open. It might have been a Sunday, come to think of it. Plus I'm trying to remember a period of about hour or two from close to 15 years ago. And I may be misremembering it, because I remember a weird dreamlike place of enormous live oak trees and Spanish moss and tumbledown gothic buildings and 300% humidity and ghosts and pirates and time not quite flowing in a straight line, exactly. If I hadn't taken any photos, I'm not sure I'd believe the place was real. Even with photos I'm still not 100% sure.

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Pics: Savannah, GA

I recently dug out and scanned a batch of old travel photos, so here's a slideshow from historic Savannah, GA, taken sometime in the late 1990s. It was a brief visit and I haven't been back since then. (The visit wasn't motivated by Midnight-in-the-Garden mania, I hasten to add; I've never even read the book.) Much of the city is a protected historic district, and Google Street View confirms it hasn't changed a lot in the last 15 years or so.

And yes, there is a photo of the Talmadge Memorial Bridge in the slideshow. I only had dialup internet back then and blogs didn't even exist yet, but it's almost like I knew, somehow.

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Tallulah Gorge

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Some old photos from Tallulah Gorge in the scenic North Georgia mountains. There are a series of waterfalls in the area, but I don't recall whether we saw any of them or not. I know I don't have any waterfall photos, but I could simply have been out of film at the time or something. I'd be willing to go back and try again if I find myself in Georgia at some point and have a few hours to spare for the drive. It's quite a beautiful spot, even if you think you're jaded by western scenery.

Despite what you may have heard, if you visit here you will most likely not be killed and eaten by the natives, or made to squeal like a pig, or any of the other vicious rumors that have filtered out of the area over the years. It turns out all that stuff only happens in the next county over, or maybe it was two counties away, the one where everyone has the same last name and there are entire towns populated by sixteen fingered cyclopses. Man, those guys are savages.