Nestled in the rolling hills of Georgia’s upper Piedmont, between the Atlantic coastal plain and the main Appalachian Mountains (stretching from New York in the north to central Alabama in the south) is described as one of northern Georgia’s best kept secrets. We agree!
Welcome to this new (for us) state park.
The Rice Creek flows through the park, providing a lovely setting for a stroll and a place where children can slide down a short water fall over some flat boulders. Hikers can follow either the short nature trail around the creek or the longer perimeter trail that travels through hardwoods and crosses creeks. We did both.
It’s hard to find information about the history of this park online, but Amanda in the state park office gave me some scoop on the park’s background and some printed information they had that I took pictures of to share with you.
Amanda said that members of the Bryant family still have homes close by.
This area had been owned by the Bryant family, and Paul Bryant finally convinced the State of Georgia in the 1950s to accept his donation of the 45 acres of land he had inherited from his mother so a state park could be built and named in memory of his mother who had died when he was just an infant. She must have been a wonderful mother for him to want to honor her in this way.
Here’s some more information about Paul Bryant.
Born in 1900, he grew up in Royston just a few miles from here. The family home was a local landmark until 2005. After finishing his education and coming home for a worldwide tour with a friend in the 1920s, he went to work.
He first worked as a cotton broker in North Carolina (remember we learned about cotton brokers when we were in Savannah in part 5 of this trip?). Later he was employed by the IRS in Atlanta where he got to interview Al Capone about his tax returns when the gangster was serving time in the Federal Penitentiary. A mandatory retirement age of 65 forced him to change occupations again to work as an agent of the Georgia Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. A second retirement didn’t slow him down either as he left for a long tour of Russia when the Cold War was still going on.
During his working years he lived in the Henry Grady Hotel on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, which was a meeting place of many well known Georgians of the era.
A lifelong bachelor, he enjoyed the company of many pretty women as he was out and about socially in Atlanta.
Paul Bryant was a generous and well-respected gentleman who was well known and valued in the community. He wanted this state park to honor his mother and give fellow Georgians a place to relax and enjoy themselves in the countryside where he grew up. He passed away in 1977.
Members of the Bryant family from Paul’s 2 older siblings still have homes around the area of the state park, and Amanda said the great-granddaughter often comes by. No one in the family seems to know where Bolen and Victoria lived in this state park, but this is where there home was and where Paul grew up.
Victoria Bryant 1863 – 1901
campground
The campsites are huge with long drives for parking vehicles. Here’s our setup for this site.
Each day when sitting on our chairs in front of our RV, we got to look out on these hardwood trees.
The temperatures were in the 90s every day we were here, so we spent afternoons inside with the air conditioner running. Afternoon thunderstorms cooled off the high temps and high humidity by almost 20 degrees, making it more comfortable to sit outside in the late afternoons.
This is one of the smallest state parks in the state. It only has 30 camping sites located around 2 small camping circles. We’re in the smaller of the 2 circles with only 9 sites around us.
Each circle also had these tent sites. We thought having the roof coverings for the tents was a great way to protect the campers from afternoon thunderstorms. Each of these tent sites also had their own water sources.
On the weekend, the campground was full and most of the tent sites were being used. But by Monday morning, only a few of us were still enjoying the park.
The campground also had 2 pioneer camping sites for large groups. This is 1 of those sites with a fire circle for evening programs and a covered shelter for meals.
Up the hill were more of these open air buildings for groups. These group sites brought back memories for both of us of camping with scout groups and church groups.
We didn’t see any groups enjoying these group campsites.
lots to do here
The campground also has a pool that is closed for the season because of Covid-19.
The Highland Walk golf course is next to the state park.
Clubhouse looks really nice. We should have stopped by for lunch to have a club sandwich, always a favorite.
Another option for fun is the nearby Archery Range.
Of course these targets look familiar. This area is called the static range.
But a 3-D trail is a new one for me but not for Barney. He’d been on these archery trails with his dad when he was young here in Georgia and with our sons before I came along in California.
In this area, target stands are spaced out along the trail (20-some targets in this case), and archers walk along and try each out.
Target 4 has a bear standing up in the distance.
Target 5 was closed for now because bird built her nest around the target.
Here’s the target that hosting momma bird.
Another closeup of a target is this black bear.
And my favorite, the skunk as a target. Hope they kill it or the smell will be one they’ll remember well after this target shooting.
river runs through it
The Rice Creek runs through the park providing this beautiful view for us to walk along. The creek starts higher up in the mountains and then flows into the north fork of the Broad River, which eventually ends up flowing into the Savannah River.
flowing river over the rocks
The river doesn’t look at all hazardous at this time of year, but when the rains come, I bet the creek does flood.
The young boy and his older sister (or sitter) were enjoying the water today. Barney said that on Saturday, the creek was full of children.
view of the flowing creek
This is where the children were “swimming” down the rocks, thoroughly enjoying themselves on a really hot day.
Amanda told me that further on down the creek, holes can be seen in the granite where a mill stood along the creek for water power. She thinks that it was a mill for grinding wheat or corn rather than being a sawmill.
hikes
A couple of mornings we took off early (for us) on trails around the park. At parks that we’ve been at that were further south, we really thought that our outings were walks instead of hikes since the paths were flat. Now we’re hiking! The elevations changes we navigated were 500 feet up from 60 feet in the last park.
This access to the trail is in our campground and goes down to the trail
This is one of the few fairly flat spots along the trail; boy did we drink a lot of water on these hikes!
The trails around the park are in the lower half of this map. The top half shows the layout of the golf course next to the park.
We’re so used to nature signs as we walk along the trails, but not so in this park. We just get to enjoy what we’re seeing.
This loop trail is the longer one in the park, but we had already been walking for 2 hours so just decided to go to the beaver pond. Why does it have a “no parking” notice on the sign, you ask?
Because the sign is next to this road that isn’t part of the park so they don’t want people to park along the road. This lack of parking means the only way to get to this loop is to start the hike in the park and cross the road, which makes this a longer hike for sure.
After just a few steps, we saw this opening in front of us that was the tee box for the course’s 7th hole.
This 2-some was enjoying the wide open spaces in the fairway. Looks like a beautiful, well care for course.
We got to the Beaver Pond Overlook loop.
And this is what we saw from an overlook stand. Somewhere in there is the beaver’s home (we think).
But Barney did see these animal prints along the stream just below where we’re standing.
Back along the Perimeter Trail, we saw this direction sign for a lookout tower.
From information we saw in the park’s brochure, this is a lookout over one of the park’s food plots where the park puts out food for the local animals, especially deer.
Our view from the lookout tower. Can’t you just imagine the deer who come to feed around here?
Here’s another open, cleared out area that we saw as we walked along the trail. We wondered why this open spot was here among the wooded areas. Maybe it was originally a homestead.
2 fishing ponds
The park has 2 fishing ponds with water that has been dammed up. Amanda at the park office said the lakes had been man-made by the Bryant family when they lived on this land.
This first pond was at the end of one of our hikes. The algae on top of the water shows how stagnant it is.
This is probably one of the most unnecessary signs we’ve ever seen. Who would want to swim here?
But fishing was supposed to be good according to this sign. Grandma and her 2 grandsons are going fishing.
This second lake was made right by the road we drive on to enter the park. Wonder if the Bryant family drove in this way when they lived here?
The view of the lake from the road by the dam.
A flowering bush? This is the only one we’ve seen in a long time so had to take a picture of it.
trip to town for baseball connection
We had to go into town on Sunday for a little grocery shopping since today is National Ice Cream Day. The closest towns are Franklin Springs (population 950+) and Royston (populations 2500+), which are next to each other just a few miles away from the park.
Franklin Springs is home to Emmanuel College, a private, nonprofit Christian school associated with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church; it enrolls more than 900 students.
One of Royston’s claim to fame is that it’s part of 3 Georgia counties: Franklin, Hart, and Madison. Royston is also the childhood home and burial place of Ty Cobb.
Dill’s is a great grocery store (part of the IGA chain). Such good produce.
Ty Cobb
Ty was born in a small town south of Savannah but grew up here in Royston. Online information said that his father was really demanding, which helped to shape Ty’s character as a competitor.
Ty was born in 1888, about 20 years after the end of the Civil War, and passed away in 1961. Nicknamed the Georgia Peach, he played outfield with the Detroit Tigers for 22 seasons and retired with the Philadelphia Athletics. He’s considered to be one of the greatest offensive players in baseball history and generally regarded as the fiercest competitor in the game.
So what did he achieve in his lifetime? According to a brochure from his museum, here are his official MLB stats:
.367 batting average
12 American League batting titles
4191 base hits
892 stolen bases
2245 runs scored
1909 Triple Crown
3033 games
11,429 at-bats
first player voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936
After his baseball career was over, his competitive zeal helped make him a multimillionaire because of his investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors. Cobb used his wealth to establish the Cobb Memorial Hospital in Royston, which was considered the crown jewel of an integrated rural healthcare system for 60 years and served thousands of patients each year in northeast Georgia.
Cobb also earmarked 1/4 of his income to set up the Cobb Scholarship Fund that helps send more than 300 Georgians to college each year. I thought that maybe Cobb County in Georgia was named after him, but not so.
Barney remembered some negative things about Ty’s time playing history, but in reading about him online, we found that these negative comments came from an early biographer and have been discredited.
Ty Cobb’s final resting place is with the rest of his family.
Ty Cobb was buried on the left side of the family crypt.
A fan left this softball gift.
The view from Ty Cobb’s burial site.
This cemetery is so different from those we known since it’s set up by family plots instead of headstone after headstone. Shows that this is really a family cemetery with families settling here for a long time.
Here’s a close up of one of the family plots with a picture on the right of a couple buried together. We hadn’t seen pictures of the deceased on gravestones before.
This museum about Ty Cobb was closed, of course, because of Covid-19. It’s location is the site of the family home where Ty grew up. The museum opened up in 1998 and has hosted over 54,000 visitors since then and generated $1 million to the improvements of the exhibits and professional services inside the museum.
After 5 nights here, we’re on to our next state park on the west side of Georgia.
