2020 Georgia - part 2: General Coffee State Park, then and now - Travel With Us

Wanting to stay in the southern part of Georgia where it’s a little warmer, we drove a couple of hours east toward Douglas in the center of state to General Coffee State Park. Wonder if they provide coffee each morning?

The park was donated to the state by a group of Coffee County citizens in 1970 and is named after General John E. Coffee, who in the first 30 years of 1800 was a planter, military leader, and a U.S. Congressman for the state of Georgia.

then

One of southern Georgia’s “best kept secrets,” this park is known for agricultural history shown at Heritage Farm, with log cabins, a corn crib, tobacco barn, cane mill, and other exhibits. Farm animals usually include goats, sheep, chickens, pigs, and donkeys. (I’ll include pictures of this farm later on in the post.)

now

The Seventeen-Mile River and a boardwalk wind through cypress swamp where rare and endangered plants grow. Pitcher plants, shy indigo snakes and gopher tortoises make their homes in this wiregrass community.

We weren’t sure what pitcher plants are so looked them up on Wikipedia: “Pitcher plants are several different carnivorous plants which have modified leaves known as pitfall traps—a prey-trapping mechanism featuring a deep cavity filled with digestive liquid. The traps of what are considered to be “true” pitcher plants are formed by specialized leaves.”

Wonder if we’ll see either the gopher tortoise or the indigo snake?

Birding and nature photography are exceptional. For horse lovers, the park offers 13.4 miles of equestrian trails and primitive ride-in campsites.

campground

This campground is beautiful and so empty! Here are pictures of what we lived with for a few days.

We loved seeing the sun shining through the trees. So few neighbors.

In the early evening, Barney made campfires for us so I could roast my marshmallows. Yum.

Finally the mornings warmed up some so I could enjoy my morning coffee in front of the fire. It’s hard for me to just sit, so I’m watching my favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, on my cell phone.

One of my big problems with summer is mosquitoes. Since we love to sit outside, Barney started investigating how we could be protected while traveling. On FaceBook we saw this product advertised.

gopher tortoise

Since this park features this tortoise, we started wondering what the difference is between a tortoise and a turtle. Do you know? Well, tortoises live on land, while turtles lives mainly in the water. Now we both know.

On our first hike around the park, we saw this burrow in the ground and wondered what it was for.

We read that tortoises dig out these burrows that can go down 6 feet and out 30 feet. More than 300 other animals and insects also live in these burrows, making it a keystone species. The tortoise’s name comes from the deep burrows it digs, like a gopher. This large tortoise, which can weigh up to 15 pounds, has scaly, shovel-like front legs that are specialized for digging. It lives in the southeastern United States and is the only land tortoise native to the area.

The soft ground outside of the opening from the tortoise burrowing into the ground is where the babies (in eggs) are buried. Notes from the state park warned us not to step on this area or on the top of the opening because it can cave in. Oops, glad we didn’t do that.

One day a tortoise came to visit us at our campsite.

Whenever I said something to Barney or moved at all, the tortoise quickly lowered itself into its shell and “hid” from us.

At the campground’s bathroom, Barney saw this gopher tortoise coming up to sun itself.

coming out of its burrow underneath the handicapped parking spot

We didn’t see any snakes as we walked around. Phew.

hikes along the river

We saw this map of the Seventeen Mile River running through the park while we were on one of our walks. We were able to start on the hike just outside of our campsite. The 2 long hikes were on the east and west sides of the river.

This river is called an ephemeral (short-lived) fed by runoff water from rainfall and fresh-water springs. The deepest areas can hold enough water to be called a lake. During dry years, the ephemeral rivers may completely dry up so that the river bottom will be green with moss, ferns, grasses, and wildflowers.

The river is also known as a blackwater river because of its darkly stained acidic water coming from tannins leaching into the water as vegetation decays.

area history

About 13,000 years ago, Paleoindians began to live in Georgia. These hunter-gathers camped here seasonally as early as 8000 years ago. By the mid-1800s, subsistence farms dotted the area. The railroad to a nearby town brought people and industries to the area.

For over 100 years, such industries as turpentining, sand quarrying, timbering, moonshine production, and farming prospered here.

The walk to the Heritage Farm was lovely, but we really had to watch where we were stepping because of the tree roots.

The river dries up during the summer to show us the cypress trees.

Here’s some of what we learned as we were walking.

Habitats in the park range from blackwater river swamp to upland sandhills (where the tortoises live). In between are several forest types, including the longleaf pine forest that’s one of the most endangered natural ecological units in North America.

In the longleaf pine forest, controlled fires have cleared out the trees that keep the longleaf pine from growing so it’s making a comeback. So why is this tree so important? Turpentine.

These pine trees have the longest life span of any pine tree in the Southeast—about 400 years. Turpentine is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin harvested from living trees, mainly pines.

Along with this long life span, the tree’s natural response to injury (oozing of sticky sap) made the tree important for the turpentine industry. Workers would cut the bark off of the trees to collect the pine sap that would then be taken to a turpentine still to be processed into various products. Much of the upland area of the park was used in turpentine production until the land was sold in 1970 to become a state park. Most of turpentine today is synthetically produced.

uses: Turpentine has been used primarily as a solvent and for fuel. A residue from the distilling process was rosin that was used to reduce the harshness of lye soap. In the 1700s, turpentine was used for lamp oil and in the manufacturing of medicines, paints, and rubber goods.

Heritage Farm

As we came to the end of the trail, we came upon the park’s lake that is used by visitors for canoeing and kayaking. You can see the stored boats in this picture.

Ducks and horses greeted us as we walked to the farm.

This farm area shows how people lived during the time of General Coffee (1782 to 1836).

Meeks log cabin

Our first stop while walking around the farm is the Meeks log cabin. Charles Meeks settled 2 miles from here in 1830 and had a hired hand named Thomas build this cabin the next year, and he became the first person to live in the cabin. This cabin is probably the oldest log cabin in south Georgia.

In 1872 Rev. Malcolm Meeks and his wife moved in and enlarged the cabin as the family grew to 13 children.

Finally in 1893 this structure was separated from what had become the main house and was moved into a field on the farm. It was moved a couple of more times until it found its final home here in 1978.

The cabin is furnished as it may have been in 1872 when the Rev. and his wife moved in. The rope bed, simple table and chairs, and a storage chest take up most of the space in the main room. The loft would have been used for extra storage space and as a sleeping area for the children old enough to climb the ladder to the second floor.

This small room attached to the cabin looks like it was used for storage, but in other cabins from this time frame we saw that this extra room was for traveling preachers who provided spiritual encouragement and local gossip from other parts of the state.

Outside of the cabin is a view of some of the other buildings on the farm.

outhouse

smokehouse

My grandpa also had a smokehouse on his farm that was located just outside of the farmhouse. By the time I started visiting the farm, the smokehouse was no longer used since he had refrigeration. But we could always smell the smoke as we walked by on the way to the outhouse. Dad remembered using the smokehouse when he was a child growing on the farm in the early 1900s.

Outside and inside of the smokehouse.

*Smoking* required that the meat be hung from beams inside the smokehouse. A fire of hickory, oak, or corncobs was built in a pit in the dirt floor. Meat was smoked for 1-6 days until cured, depending on the size of the meat being smoked. The larger meats (hams or shoulders) would form a crusty surface that helped to keep insects out of the meat as it hung in the smokehouse during the winter.

Salting required that the fresh meat be covered with salt and put in boxes or barrels to “cure” or “take the salt.” Cool weather in the fall and winter helped preserve the meat in the saltboxes. When the weather warmed, the meat would be taken and washed prior to cooking and eating.

chicken coop

On my grandpa’s farm all of the chickens (rosters and hens) were free to walk wherever they wanted—the beginning of open range chickens. This also meant that we had to walk around chicken poop as we walked to the outhouse, and I only had city-girl shoes to wear. Not my favorite childhood memory.

Inside the hens are daily laying their eggs.

See this beauty at the end of the coop? Roosters walked all over the farm.

mule and hay barn

Barns like this one were called hay barns or “corncribs.”

They barns provided shelter for farm animals and storage for hay and feed. The logs were set apart to allow for air circulation. Sometimes pegs were stuck between the logs to catch the hay and keep it from being trampled on the ground. Often a second level would be added for storing grain and feed. The roof line was extended on the sides to form shelter from the weather and provide extra storage space for farm equipment.

See the goat on the left looking out through the boards? His friends are enjoying the sun in the open area on the other side of the barn area.

tobacco barn

In this barn, 2 heat sources were used for curing the tobacco. The heat source at the rear of the building is a coal-fed burner. The heat was funneled into the building through metal pipes that also served to carry smoke form the fires out of the building through the 4 metal pipes still located on the corners.

The heat source to the left of the front door is a traditional wood-burning firebox.

Many people would work together to cut and bundle the leaves, tie them onto “tobacco sticks,” and hang them on the cross beams in the barn.

In this barn, each row had 7 sticks high to store the tobacco leaves. On the right is an example of leaves drying that I found.

The temperature inside the building needed to be controlled between 80-160 degrees for about a week to cure the tobacco leaves. Then they were then placed in large baskets, covered with burlap, and taken to market.

Tobacco was a major cash crop in this area of Georgia during the early 1900s. Barns such as this one were quickly replaced in the 1920s and 30s with smaller barns called “bunk barns” that could be heated more efficiently. These smaller barns can still be seen on many local farms.

syrup boiler/hog scalder and cane press

Almost every farm in this area of Georgia used these 2 structures.

The cane press is on the right of the syrup shed.

A mule, horse, or even kids would turn the press in a circle by pulling the pole, while someone would feed sugar cane into the opening along the side. The cane juice would run out and be collected in a bucket. It was then boiled down in the syrup shed to form cane syrup.

Two of the main uses for the boiler (picture on the right) in the syrup shed were to cook sugar cane juice into cane syrup and to scald hogs at butchering time to remove bristles and hair. Cane syrup was the main source of sweetener for local farmers, and almost everyone grew some sugar cane on their farm. Hogs were raised to sell and eat.

Relihan cabin, now a museum

At the entrance to the Heritage Farm is this newer cabin known as the Relihan cabin. It is now a museum but was closed when we were there.

I tried to find out where this cabin came from and couldn’t find any info online. A Relihan family owns a funeral home in south Georgia, but I don’t know if they have a connection to this cabin. Let me know if you have any information.

See the decorations hanging from the beams on the porch? These painted wheels have decorations inserted into the spokes. So creative and fun to look at.

We had a great time at General Coffee State Park, and no, they didn’t provide coffee for the campers. Sigh.

So much to see in this area but places are closed for now. We’ve seen some but look forward to returning to see the rest of the area.

home

The day after we got home, our neighborhood J. Christopher’s opened for inside dining so we joined them for lunch on the patio. Such a favorite spot for us!

We’re home for about 10 days and then will take off for a 3-week trip to other state parks in southern Georgia.

2020 Georgia – part 2: General Coffee State Park, then and now

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