Georgia Natural Wonder #50 - Calloway Memorial Forest – Calloway Gardens. 1,051

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Georgia Natural Wonder #50 - Cason J. Calloway Memorial Forest – Calloway Gardens

I am doing the 12 National Natural Landmarks and when I searched for today’s Georgia Natural Wonder this is all I found….

In 1971, Virginia Callaway founded the Cason J. Callaway Memorial Forest. Its dual purposes are to preserve a large tract of mature woodland on the Pine Mountain Ridge and to serve as a conservation education facility. In 1972, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior designates Cason J. Callaway Memorial Forest as a Natural Landmark. The forest is an outstanding example of transitional conditions between eastern deciduous and southern coniferous forest types. Several plants reach northern and southern limits here. The assemblage of species is among the most interesting and unique in the southeastern United States, with species such as mountain laurel and titi occurring together.


I find this one photo just like we did with the EF Boyd site Thursday.

So we are not going to get far talking about this private property forest where Cason and Virginia found the plumleaf azalea back in 1930. I mocked Callaway Gardens in an earlier post on Providence Canyon, saying they weren’t natural as azaleas are all imported from Europe, and were not native to Georgia. Boy was I naïve, I find that I really didn’t know full well the history. Calls to the Callaway Gardens offices reveal that the Forest and the Gardens is the same thing. Both are the brainchild of Cason and Virginia Callaway and was carried on until their deaths. The whole business is run now under the direction of Bo and Beth Callaway. So our 53rd Natural Wonder of Georgia officially Callaway Gardens.



Now since I was ignorant to the true history of this site, I feel we should start with a nice tangent on the life story of Cason Callaway and his wife Virginia.

CASON JEWELL CALLAWAY (1894-1961)

Cason Callaway assumed many roles during his sixty-six years: textile manufacturer, farmer, business leader, and founder of Callaway Gardens. As a young man, he was groomed to follow his father into the textile business. This he did successfully for more than half of his adult life. He retired from Callaway Mills in LaGrange at age forty-four to devote his attention to development of his beloved Blue Springs in nearby Harris County.



From 1938 on, he listed his occupation as farmer, but he was much more. Using Blue Springs Farms as a model, he became the South's leading proponent of agricultural reform. He developed the One Hundred Georgia Better Farms Program and published The Business of Farming. Callaway was a Regent of the University System of Georgia and a director of U.S. Steel and Shell Oil. Through his friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, he became involved with the Warm Springs Foundation. His support was instrumental in developing their rehabilitation facilities. Callaway Gardens became the focus of the last ten years of Cason Callaway's life. The project grew out of his admiration for the beauty of the Pine Mountain Ridge and his desire to share that environment with others.

EARLY YEARS

Cason Jewell Callaway was born November 6, 1894, at LaGrange, Georgia. He was the older of two sons of Fuller Earle Callaway, Sr. (1870-1928) and Ida Jane Cason Callaway (1874-1936). Their younger child, Fuller E. Callaway, Jr., was born in 1907. Cason's ancestors, for at least five generations, were farmers and Baptist preachers in Georgia. His grandfather, Abner Reeves Callaway, who came to LaGrange shortly after the Civil War, preached in local churches and taught at Southern Female College. At the time of Cason's birth, his father owned and operated Callaway's Department Store in LaGrange. Fuller Callaway, Sr. was an innovative salesman, a trait that brought him success in the mercantile business and later served him well as he marketed his textile products.


Three generations of Callaway’s at the boxwood garden at Hills and Dales, which Fuller purchased in 1912. Young Cason in foreground.

In May 1900, five-year-old Cason Callaway pulled the cord that blew the steam whistle to signal the opening of Unity Cotton Mill in which his father was a major investor. It marked the beginning of the Callaway textile business which Fuller Callaway and his sons would manage for almost seventy years.


Unity Mills was the second mill in which Fuller Callaway invested, and the LaGrange plant shipped its first finished cotton product on December 24, 1901.

Fuller served as secretary-treasurer of the company, a position he would hold in other mill projects as well. Between 1900 and 1920, Fuller and others opened several mills located within 100 miles of LaGrange. He was widely quoted as saying, "I make American citizens and run cotton mills to pay the expenses." Such paternalistic interest in his workers also served to keep their morale up and thus to keep unionizing efforts from either within or outside the mill community at bay.


The self-made businessman Fuller E. Callaway displayed an entrepreneurial spirit at a young age. The son of a minister, Callaway grew up to become a successful manufacturer and banker with diverse commercial interests and a reputation for generosity and moral leadership.

Fuller also established a variety of businesses, including banks, warehouses, and an insurance company. He held positions in national textile associations, and he was president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association. He also served as a railroad commissioner of Georgia from 1907 to 1909 and was appointed by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson to the Conference on Industrial Relations in 1919.



Hill and Dales

Fuller said that one of his greatest accomplishments was marrying Ida Jane Cason of Jewell in 1891. They met while she attended Southern Female College in LaGrange and after their marriage lived frugally on what Fuller termed "cash street rather than mortgage street." Between 1914 and 1916, he engaged architect Neel Reid, of Hentz and Reid, to design their Hills and Dales home on Vernon Road in LaGrange.



The Italian style of the home complemented the gardens that Sarah Coleman Ferrell had planted on the site beginning in 1841. You can now tour the estate.

 

Fuller and his wife had two sons, Cason Jewell Callaway and Fuller Earle Callaway Jr.


Cason’s brother, Fuller Callaway Jr. attends a picnic in LaGrange with Alice Hinman Hand, whom he married in 1930, and his mother, Ida Callaway. Like his father, Fuller Callaway Jr. was heavily involved in the textiles industry.

Cason Callaway's early education was in LaGrange schools. At age fourteen, he entered Bingham Military School in Asheville, North Carolina, where he excelled in athletics and rose to the rank of captain of his company. After graduating from Bingham, he worked for a summer as a laborer in the mills. In the autumn of 1912, he entered the University of Virginia. A year later, his father decided a business school would be more practical for a young man destined to enter the textile industry. Cason enrolled in the Eastman School of Business in Poughkeepsie, New York, and progressed rapidly through the course of study.

TEXTILE CAREER

At age twenty, Cason began his career with the mills as a bookkeeper at the Hillside plant. He soon became a director of several of the mills and helped organize Valley Waste Mills, a subsidiary which made use of by-products of the other mills. He served as manager and a one-person sales force, traveling extensively to promote the products of the new mill. During World War I, Lieutenant Cason J. Callaway served in the Navy Department's Bureau of Supplies and Accounts in Washington, D.C. His responsibilities included purchasing cotton textiles for the Navy's use.


Years later he continued his nautical pathway and had a large freighter named for him. Cason J. Callaway (left) and his wife Virginia came into Duluth aboard the Callaway on July 14, 1958. With his second son “Bo” and Bo’s wife Elizabeth, just behind Cason and Virginia, they were here to celebrate the naming of the Callaway as the Flagship of the Pittsburgh Steamship Company.

By 1920, Fuller Callaway, Sr. was in failing health and stepped out of the day-to-day management of the mills to become Chairman of the Board. Cason increasingly assumed responsibility for the mill operations. Under his leadership, the mills began to produce finished goods - rugs, towels, laundry products, industrial cleaning rags - in addition to tons of raw textiles used by other industries. He opened a New York office to expand sales efforts. Through stock purchases, he and brother, Fuller, Jr., were able to concentrate firm control of the network of mills in the family, leading to the 1928 charter of Callaway Mills, Incorporated. In the mid-1920s, on the advice of their father, they began to sell off less profitable operations and non-textile businesses, a move that helped the company survive the Depression years.



The Callaway brothers kept the mills operating during the Great Depression, though on a reduced schedule. The company stockpiled manufactured products in warehouses and tried to insure that at least one member of each employee's family worked a full week at full pay. During those difficult times, Cason served as President of the American Cotton Manufacturers' Association (1931-1932), as his father had done and as his brother would do later. In 1932, he became a Director of the Cotton Textile Institute and served on the Cotton Price Stabilization Board in Washington. In 1937, he joined three other private citizens representing the textile industry to travel to Japan and successfully negotiate a trade agreement reducing Japanese exports, which were flooding American markets.



In 1930, Cason and his wife, Virginia, purchased property at Blue Springs in Harris County, which they used as a weekend retreat from the rigors of running the mills.



In 1935, Cason turned over the presidency of Callaway Mills to his brother and he became Chairman of the Board. In July 1938, at age forty-four, he retired from Callaway Mills and moved to Blue Springs.

VIRGINIA HOLLIS HAND CALLAWAY (1900-1995)

Virginia Hollis Hand was born February 21, 1900 at Pelham, Georgia. Her parents were Judson Larrabee Hand (1851-1916) and Florence Hollis Hand (1876-1969). Like Fuller Callaway, Judson Hand was successful in a variety of businesses, including farming, railroads, banking, and fertilizer works. He also opened a cotton mill around the turn of the century, but it is the mercantile business for which he is best remembered. The J.L. Hand Trading Company, in Pelham, operated as a family business until 1984.



Virginia attended the Lucy Cobb School in Athens, Georgia, and the Merrill School in Mamaroneck, New York. She met Cason Callaway while both were visiting in Atlanta. They married on April 3, 1920, and had three children, Virginia (1921-1986), Cason, Jr. (1924-), and Howard (1927-). Characteristic of the times, Virginia Callaway's primary role was that of wife and mother. She supported her husband in his various enterprises and was hostess to a continuous stream of visitors at their homes in LaGrange and Blue Springs.



Mrs. Callaway shared her husband's concern for the welfare of Georgia's people. Her philanthropic endeavors usually centered on individual children or families in the form of financial aid for education. She was active in Red Cross work, especially during World War II. She initiated Red Cross swimming classes for area children at Blue Springs pool, and frequently sponsored children at summer camps. Her interest in horticulture and preservation of native plants found fruition in Callaway Gardens where she was an active partner with her husband in planning and guiding the Gardens' development. Following Mr. Callaway's death, she succeeded him as Chairman of the Board of the Ida Cason Callaway Foundation. In 1971, she founded the Cason J. Callaway Memorial Forest. Its dual purposes are to preserve a large tract of mature woodland on the Pine Mountain Ridge and to serve as a conservation education facility. In 1973, she led a coalition of conservation organizations in opposing the proposed route of Interstate Highway 185 linking Atlanta and Columbus. Original plans had I-185 bisecting Pine Mountain. As a result of Mrs. Callaway's effort, the road runs west of the mountain and the environment of the ridge was protected.



Mrs. Callaway's leadership role at the Gardens continued into the 1980s, which saw construction of the Sibley Horticultural Center and other major expansion projects. She died on February 11, 1995.

BLUE SPRINGS

Blue Spring is located four miles west of Hamilton in Harris County. Situated at the base of a quartzite cliff, it measures some twenty-five feet across and produces over three hundred gallons of water per minute. At one time, plans had been considered to tap the spring as a water supply for Columbus, Georgia. Cason and Virginia Callaway first visited the spring on a picnic with friends in 1921. Subsequent visits to the spring followed with increasing frequency and, on August 12, 1930, the Callaway's purchased a 2,500-acre tract that included Blue Spring. They impounded a fourteen-acre lake on nearby Barnes Creek, christening it Lake Ida after Cason's mother. They built a cottage beside the lake that served as a weekend retreat. When Cason retired from the mills in 1938, he and Virginia acquired from Fuller Callaway, Jr. a lodge on Lake Ida, which they enlarged as their permanent residence.



Mr. Callaway added to his Harris County land holdings and began a program of land improvement that included reforestation, erosion control, and clearing for agriculture. Determined not to continue the process of soil depletion with corn and cotton, Callaway constantly experimented with new crops and livestock. Though he styled himself a farmer, others referred to him as an agricultural economist. He applied strict budgeting and accounting practices to each of his farming operations, always with an eye to discovering crops that could turn a profit without destroying the land. He grew innumerable varieties of grain and silage crops. He planted acres of kudzu, recently imported from the Orient. Now despised a as rampant weed, it once held promise as a nutritious forage and silage crop. Blueberry bushes, muscadine vines, and fruit trees were planted on the slopes of Pine Mountain. The thirty-eight acre Lake Florence was built in 1937. Mr. Callaway demonstrated that with proper management the lake was capable of producing tons of fish annually. The poultry division produced as many as ten thousand turkeys and fifteen thousand mallard ducks annually. He built grain storage facilities, a dehydrating plant, a canning plant, and freezer lockers so that his products could be processed locally.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Most notable among the visitors who toured Blue Springs Farms was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who occasionally drove across Pine Mountain from Warm Springs to inspect the progress. Callaway met Roosevelt about 1925 when the future President was developing a rehabilitation facility for polio victims at Warm Springs. With their mutual interest in the land and the welfare of the people of west Georgia, the two men developed a close friendship. They worked together with the Warm Springs Foundation and the National Polio Foundation. In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, Cason Callaway led a group of prominent Georgians who raised $100,000 to construct Georgia Hall, a residence facility for Warm Springs patients.



BUSINESS AND CIVIC LEADERSHIP

President Roosevelt appointed Callaway to the Business and Industry Council, an organization whose function was to search for ways to pull the country out of the Depression. In 1932, Governor Richard Russell appointed him as a charter member to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. He served for twenty-one years, concentrating on the economic problems that continually confronted the State's colleges. On at least two occasions, efforts were initiated to draft him as a gubernatorial candidate. Each time he quietly but firmly rejected the idea. In 1943, Callaway became a director of United States Steel Corporation. He also served as a director of Shell Oil, Chemical Corn Exchange Bank of New York, and Trust Company of Georgia.



ONE HUNDRED GEORGIA BETTER FARMS

Callaway's model farm at Blue Springs attracted considerable interest on both the state and national levels. He served as chairman of the agricultural panel of the state's Agricultural and Industrial Development Board and chairman of the Agriculture Committee of the Board of Regents. From 1941 until his death in 1961, he served as a trustee of the Nutrition Foundation.
In November, 1943, at the Vanderbilt University Conference On Postwar Problems, he presented a paper he called "Postwar Problems and Opportunities of Southern Agriculture. He outlined four steps necessary for improvement: improve the soil, provide long-term credit, use machinery and provide processing plants near the farms. Out of this presentation grew his plan for "One Hundred Georgia Better Farms." On August 2, 1944, at a conference of business and civic leaders in Atlanta, he introduced his plan which called for groups of seven individuals to invest $1,000 each for purchasing and improving a one hundred acre farm. The initial phase of the project lasted three years (1945-1947) with about seventy-five of the one hundred farms showing marked improvement in crop yields and income.


Cason Jewell Callaway inspects the cabbage crop at one of his experimental farms.

In August 1947, Callaway suffered a heart attack forcing him to curtail the strenuous schedule he had maintained in his crusade for agricultural reform. A few months later, a devastating flood inundated much of Blue Springs' crop land. He reduced the scope of the model farm, and most of the experimental fields were converted to pasture or planted in pine trees. In 1950, Mr. Callaway initiated a long-term forest genetics program. Under the direction of Blue Springs forester and engineer Eitel Bauer, the goal was to select and propagate superior pine trees, thereby benefiting both land owners and the timber industry.

CALLAWAY GARDENS

While he lived in LaGrange, Callaway helped to organize Highland Country Club. He developed Piney Woods Subdivision near the Country Club, selling lots to friends and business associates. He envisioned the same sort of development on a tract of his Harris County property. In 1949, work began on the "Goodman Project." Eitel Bauer surveyed a 175 acre lake site on Mountain Creek, with a road encircling it and a series of smaller lakes on tributary streams. Plans were drawn for a nine hole golf course, clubhouse and boathouse. Blue Springs manager William T. Cooksey headed the project and farm crews provided skilled labor for construction.



As work progressed, Mr. and Mrs. Callaway decided to turn the development into a public garden rather than a private residential community. Mr. Callaway had established the Ida Cason Callaway Foundation, a charitable trust, in 1936. Ownership of the property was transferred to the Foundation. Picnic tables, parking areas, walking trails, and other facilities were added to make the gardens amenable to the public. On May 21, 1952, Ida Cason Gardens opened. In 1955, the name was changed to Ida Cason Callaway Gardens, and shortened to Callaway Gardens in 1962.



Being a public garden meant that the project would have to be funded by some means other than selling lots. The Country Store, the Old Water Mill and the Gardens Farms were conceived as revenue producing businesses to support the Gardens. In January 1952, Gardens Industries, Inc. was formed to operate the profit-making businesses. Gardens Services, Inc. was formed in 1958 to operate the recreational facilities, the motel, and later the cottages. In 1964 the two companies merged, retaining the name, Gardens Services (now called Callaway Gardens Resort, Inc.). The Ida Cason Callaway Foundation continued to operate the gardens and other non-profit activities.



Since their earliest days at Blue Springs, the Callaways had worked to preserve the native flora of the Pine Mountain ridge. During a 1930 summer visit, Cason discovered a shrub bearing coral red flowers - the plumleaf azalea, Rhododendron prunifolium. Over the years the Callaways had propagated thousands of the rare azalea. Under Mrs. Callaway's direction, azaleas and other native plants from the Blue Springs nurseries were used to enhance the lakeside drive at Callaway Gardens. In 1953, Fred C. Galle came to the Gardens and spent the next twenty-seven years as Director of Horticulture, assembling extensive collections of hollies, azaleas, and rare plants that brought Callaway Gardens recognition as one of the nation's leading botanical gardens.



Mr. Callaway corresponded with government officials seeking their support on matters ranging from tax legislation to construction and maintenance of roads in his area. He also expressed opinions regarding such matters as shortages caused by World War II and Communist infiltration.



Mr. and Mrs. Callaway entertained regularly, both on a grand scale and on a more personal basis. Some of the groups entertained at Blue Springs include the boards of U.S. Steel, Shell Oil, and Callaway Mills. In addition, the Callaways entertained such notables as Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower and General Jimmy Doolittle. Some correspondence deals with arrangements for these special occasions.



Correspondence designated by Mr. Callaway as "Gardens Letters" includes inquiries and comments from visitors or potential visitors to the Gardens. Much of the mail was in response to a 1957 article on the Gardens which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Planning and daily operation of the Gardens are topics of correspondence between Mr. Callaway and Gardens supervisors.



Among the many demands on Mr. Callaway's time were requests to make speeches, invitations to join a variety of organizations, and an unending stream of invitations to attend conventions, meetings, commencements and the like. After suffering a heart attack, Mr. Callaway began increasingly to decline such invitations. The presence of hundreds of thank-you notes, get well cards, and congratulatory letters in the collection attests to Mr. Callaway's widely acclaimed generosity and popularity.


Cason Callaway has a big ole ship named after him.

Cason Callaway died on April 12, 1961. Implementation of his plans and further development of the Gardens continued under the leadership of Virginia Callaway and their son, Howard. Howard "Bo" Callaway joined the organization in 1952 as head of Gardens Industries and later served as Executive Director of Ida Cason Gardens and President of the Ida Cason Callaway Foundation. Bo Callaway is also noted for his political career in Georgia and on the national level. The third generation of the Callaway family now participates in the development of Callaway Gardens, which continues today as an active participant in West Georgia's tourist and convention industry and as a leader in environmental education.

Callaway Gardens – New Georgia Encyclopedia and Timeline: The History of Callaway Resort & Gardens

Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, site of the world's largest azalea garden, encompasses more than 14,000 acres and, in addition to the gardens, offers golfing, boating, cycling, and other leisure activities. In the 1950s Cason and Virginia Hand Callaway transformed land left barren from decades of cotton farming into a place of beauty and relaxation. Since it opened to the public, Callaway Gardens, located about seventy miles southwest of Atlanta, has attracted millions of visitors.

Origins

While picnicking near their home one day in the summer of 1930, Cason Callaway, a textile manufacturer, and his wife, Virginia, a knowledgeable horticulturist, came upon a bright, orange-red azalea. Virginia Callaway soon identified the flower as a plumleaf azalea (Rhododendron prunifolium), which is native to a 100-mile area in west Georgia's Harris County. Taken with the beauty and local flora of the place, the Callaways purchased 2,500 acres for a weekend retreat. After retiring from his textile business in 1938, Cason Callaway considered making the lands useful again. His initial idea was to create a place where friends from the business world could build retirement homes. He also envisioned a golf course, so that they would not have to travel all the way to LaGrange or Columbus to enjoy the game.


Plumleaf Azalea

After Blue Springs Farm suffers from a flood in 1949, Cason and Virginia turn their attention to creating the Gardens. Callaway cleared fields, moved rocks, and built dams along the creeks to create lakes, and he constructed a nine-hole golf course. In the Fall, construction begins on Mountain Creek Lake and Boathouse, Lake View Golf Course and clubhouse (which now serves as the Gardens Restaurant), Overlook Pavilion, the Gardens Office (now the Human Resources office) and the boathouse on Whippoorwill Lake.



Within just a few years, the basic patterns of lakes, woodlands, flower trails, and golf courses were laid out. Virginia Callaway worked with the landscape architects Gilmore Clark and John Leon Hoffman to plant more than 20,000 new trees and shrubs, including many native flowering varieties. The Horticulture Department is created, and the first plant nursery constructed.



In May 1952 the couple opened the Ida Cason Gardens, named for Cason Callaway's mother, Ida Cason Callaway. In the 1960s the facility became known as Callaway Gardens. The gardens included a driving trail through wooded areas, a golf course, picnic grounds, a restaurant, and canoes and boats for fishing.



The following year the Callaway’s brought in thousands of tons of white sand to create Robin Lake Beach, one of the largest man-made sand beaches in the world.



In 1956 the first 50 rooms of Gardens Motel (which would eventually become Mountain Creek Inn) open, making it the largest motel on U.S. Hwy. 27 between Hamilton, GA and Chattanooga, Tenn. The Pavilion at Robin Lake Beach is constructed. The one millionth visitor passes through the Garden gates. On Sept. 8, Cason Callaway is featured in a story in The Saturday Evening Post titled “His Own Garden of Eden.” The article, written by Harold H. Martin, included a picture of the first nine holes of Lake View Golf Course taken by Bill Shrout.


Cover of Post 9/8/56

During the next decade, they added a seven-and-a-half-acre fruit and vegetable garden, known as Mr. Cason's Vegetable Garden. It became the site of the southern filming of The Victory Garden on PBS, a long-running production of WGBH in Boston.



Before his death in 1961, Callaway approved designs for a chapel. Built of fieldstone and arched timbers hewn from surrounding fields, the chapel is located beside a natural waterfall at the head of a small lake.



The well-known minister and inspirational speaker Norman Vincent Peale dedicated the chapel, which remains a place for quiet reflection, weddings, and organ concerts.



In 1965 the Mountain View Golf Course opens. The five millionth visitor enters the Garden gates.


This may be Lake View.

After his father's death, Howard "Bo" Callaway oversaw the gardens until he launched his failed campaign in 1966 to become the first Republican governor of Georgia since Reconstruction (1867-76).



He left again in the 1970s to serve as secretary of the army under U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and then to develop Crested Butte Mountain Resort in Colorado.


Cason and Bo 1950.

In 1972, Virginia Callaway establishes Cason J. Callaway Memorial Forest, which the U.S. Dept. of the Interior designates as a Natural Landmark. Meadowlark Garden opens with the cupola from the Hand family home as a feature. This area is where the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center stands today with the cupola atop the facility.



In 1989, a 7.5-mile Discovery Bicycle Trail opens.



Permanent Beach Dome erected at Robin Lake Beach.


Pavilion Robin Beach. More like inverted concrete umbrellas.

Legacy

Callaway Gardens offers a hotel, cabins for rent, a conference facility, and other attractions, including the John A. Sibley Horticultural Center, the Virginia Hand Callaway Discovery Center, and the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center.







Since 1958 the facility has hosted the Masters Water Ski and Wakeboard Tournament.



Since 1958 the facility has also hosted the Florida State University Circus, which performs each summer under the great tent.



From 1991 to 2002 the PGA Golf Buick Southern Open (held in Columbus since 1968)called the gardens home at the Mountain View Golf Course.



Since 1992, the Fantasy in Lights display, with more than 8 million lights illuminating the driving trail, trees, and lakes, occurs annually during the Christmas season.



Virginia Callaway died in 1995. Bo and his wife, Beth, moved back to Georgia in the 1990s to help with the gardens' operations.



In 1999, the Callaway Brothers Azalea Bowl was dedicated.



The Discovery Bicycle Trail expansion to 10 miles officially opens.



Sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival begins.



One year later the Virginia Hand Callaway Discovery Center, Mountain Creek Café, Discovery Gift Shop, and Birds of Prey program at Discovery Amphitheater open on what would have been Virginia Callaway’s 100th birthday.



Wildflower Trail is renamed Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Trail, and Callaway becomes affiliate of Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.



In 2016 the exterior gardens of the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center are renovated, including a walking corridor between the Hydrangea Trail and the Butterfly Center. Seating at the Discovery Amphitheatre is expanded. The Discovery Bicycle Trail is completely renovated and repaved. In celebration of the 25th year of Fantasy in Lights, the new scene “Snow Day” is added. Last year the Lodge and Spa at Callaway Gardens were completely renovated to create a more upscale experience for guests. It is now possible to view Robin Lake from the Lodge.



Cason Callaway once told a visitor to the gardens, "What I'm trying to do here is hang the picture a little higher on the wall for the people of this region. Every child ought to see something beautiful before he's six years old - something he will remember all his life. And there hasn't been too much beauty in this part of the country in the past."



Rock City – Stone Mountain – Tybee Island – Callaway Gardens – Natural Wonders can be very visited and profitable. We continue the next few days with two more magnificent Georgia Natural Wonders I never heard of, as we continue with this tracking of Georgia National Natural Landmarks. Our GNW gal today is in to Azalea Yoga.