Georgia Natural Wonder #80 – North High Shoals – Oconee County. 1,415

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #80 – North High Shoals – Oconee County

OK I only got 10 more places to be in the top 100. I was going to the 10 biggest swamps, or a listing of the State Parks, but I am going to defer those. I am going with my gut and the ten places left where I have some familiarity(More photos). Now this first place I have not been to in 36 years so I have no photos, just my memory of what a fantastic place it was. Attempts to pass the gate have been rebuffed since then. But in its day, this was truly a place UGA kids could come to for a fun frolic in the sun, a really cool hang out. I can only suspect someone got hurt and legal actions closed down the place.


Town of North High Shoals

The town of North High Shoals is situated on the eastern bank of the Apalachee River in Oconee County, Georgia. The area of High Shoals was originally populated by white settlers in the late eighteenth century, and a fort was built on a bluff overlooking the river in or around the year 1794. At that time, the Apalachee marked the border between white civilization and Indian Territory. In the early 1800s, High Shoals was a stop on the young state of Georgia’s postal and stage coach routes.


View crossing bridge

Although continually populated, the area didn’t really blossom until the mid nineteenth century, when a textile mill was established on the western bank of the river. During the civil war, thread used to make Confederate soldiers’ uniforms was manufactured there. The factory at High Shoals made cotton thread of various sizes and quality for making fabrics of various types. No fabrics were ever made at High Shoals, but the cotton threads were well known for their high quality. The factory began production about 1830, I believe, and was well known throughout the Eastern USA.



The town of High Shoals was incorporated as a municipality in the year 1902. Disaster struck in 1928 when the New High Shoals Manufacturing Company mill, which had been the town’s lifeblood for nearly a century, was completely destroyed by fire. The population of the town – by some estimates around 3,000 at that time – dwindled as residents moved away in search of work, and the town charter for High Shoals was allowed to lapse. A new charter, this one concerning only property on the eastern / Oconee County side of the river and christened North High Shoals, was established in 1933, but was not actually acted upon until 1968. In October of 2006, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources - Historic Preservation Division certified the High Shoals Historic District.


From Bridge

After the Shoals part of the river was purchased by the Founder of High Shoals Beach and Paradise Falls, the River area was fenced and the general public could not enter without paying admission.  The Mayor and Council held a meeting on the subject one summer night.  There was an overflow crowd that spilled into the yard. 



Reverend Anthony was there and urged restraint and had prayer I believe.  The new owner explained the new rules about the shoals.  Some natives described how they had played in the river as children and did not feel it should be closed.  At one point, it got so noisy and rambunctious that Mayor Jack Landers banged the gavel.  In an expression of exasperation, he said, “I wish that Damn River would dry up!”  Then he looked toward Reverend Anthony and said, “Sorry, Uncle El!”



American Whitewater ran this Fall

River Description

Directly below the bridge/dam, there are a series of small drops that lead to a large sliding drop of about 25-30' that ends in a big pool.


Looking over the dam from the bridge downstream.

The drop can reportedly be run on most sides although the launch pad in the center is preferable for nice boofs at higher water. Beware potential pitoning on rocks below surface on river right and left of launch pad (although open boaters have said they had no problems on these rocks, there could be a potential piton leading to injured legs in a kayak).


Dam below bridge

From the highway coming from Athens, turn on dirt road on left immediately before bridge and go to sandy beach below drop. Carry up on river left and enjoy. At higher flows some boaters have run the low head dam on far river left scraping against the river bank, but screwing this up could lead to a protracted surf (to say the least)- be careful in doing this.


You look downstream and you see the river horizon.

Minimum level should be considered around 350 cfs, but at this level it will be mighty scrapy. Better flows are from 500 or so and more. Around 2000-3000 cfs, boofs off the launch pad get really fun and lofty.


Look back upstream to the dam. Wonderful play area, these rocky shoals. Use to be.

High Shoals is just a big slide with a nice launch pad in the center at proper flows.


Property owners will no longer allow access to falls.

I have only run it at high flows, around 2000 and above, and at that level it is great, fun stuff above the drop to play in and then the big drop to hit.


Anticipation builds as you near the falls.

The main danger is that rocks below the surface on the river left of the launch pad that are easy to piton on if you are running it at too low of a level, leg breakers for sure.



If in doubt, make sure you boof the launch pad in the center.


Then BOOM……. North High Shoals baby.

Not sure about the slot on far right, never got over there to check it out but it may offer a creeky alternative, just gotta scope it out and make the call.



Oh man this was a great slide us early 1980’s UGA kids really dug coming out here to play and hang on the beaches below it.


View from Millhouse back up to falls

To get there, go out 441 south from Athens and at the big gas station complex (handy Pantry perhaps), take the right and go till you are about to cross over the river, take the small dirt road on the left and follow to a sandy beach below the drop.



Carry up the river left side of the drop and run it. Fun, fun, fun, but definitely a one hit wonder.


Flood Stage

There is an alternative line on far river right that includes a vertical drop. The drop is an actual class III move but has some rebar near the top.


Other parts of Apalachee River. This Apalachee worth a look as future Georgia Natural Wonder

Oh man I didn’t think I could find anything on this spot but I did. I wish I had video of the fools standing and surfing down this rock back in the day, very impressive local rednecks. Big snapping turtles pool below the fall after a rain storm. Back In Black blasting down on the beach when 50 people laid out. Not huge but indelible impression on my fragile egg shell mind. Huge bolt of lightning hit within 100 yards while we were huddling under rocky overhang from thunderstorm. Man is naked in front of nature sometimes. Anybody find some vintage North High Shoals images, post them as reply.



Well only five pages, we may not get back to Oconee County for a while so we are doing a tangent on Oconee County and Watkinsville.



Oconee County comprises 186 square miles in northeast Georgia. The state's 137th county, it was created from part of western Clarke County in 1875 by the Georgia General Assembly. Oconee County was named for the river flowing along part of its eastern border, whose name in turn comes from a Native American word meaning "spring of the hills." The new county was created to satisfy western Clarke County residents' demand for their own county after the county seat moved from the less populous Watkinsville to the thriving university town of Athens in 1872.


Watkinsville

The newly formed Oconee County retained Watkinsville as its seat. The current courthouse (a New Deal project of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) was built in 1939 to replace a courthouse built in 1875. It has been modified twice. The second modification in 1998 more than doubled its size.



Early History

Watkinsville was named after Colonel Robert Watkins (1766-1805), son of Thomas Watkins and his wife Sally (Walton) Watkins of Powhatan, Virginia. Robert Watkins was commissioned ensign in the 5th Regiment Virginia Continental Line on 5 February 1776 and was promoted to lieutenant in the 5th Virginia later that same year. However, he resigned his commission on 12 March 1778. He moved to Savannah, later to Richmond County, Georgia, after the Revolution. He was admitted to the practice of law there. In 1789 he became captain of the Troop of Horse in the Richmond County Regiment. In 1797 Watkins was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel commanding the Richmond County Regiment. As a member of the Georgia Legislature he voted in favor of the Yazoo Acts. In 1800 he and his brother George published their "Digest of the Laws of Georgia", the first compilation of Georgia laws.



Robert Watkins fought a series of duels with James Jackson as a result of this compilation's inclusion of the Yazoo Acts as well as the Rescinding Act. The Watkins' argued that both the "obnoxious" acts and the repealing statute were passed by the General Assembly so should be included. General Jackson, however, argued that the Yazoo Acts had usurped authority that did not belong to the General Assembly and refused to draw the warrants on the treasury to pay the editors for compiling the "Digest". After one such fight between Watkins and Jackson, the former with "great civility" offered his carriage to carry the wounded Jackson home, but the latter refused the offer.



This Yazoo Land Fraud tangent belongs in Louisville Georgia



Watkins served in the Georgia House of Representatives from Richmond County, 1796-1799, 1801-1804. He was, therefore, a member of the Session which created Clarke County with its seat at Watkinsville. Watkins died at Bath, Richmond County, on 24 August, 1805. He was buried in the family cemetery on his plantation Rosney in Richmond County. His plantation, "Rosney", was located on the Savannah River where Bush Field, the Augusta, GA airport is now located.



Watkinsville was a village located on the dangerous western frontier of the new United States between Creek and Cherokee territories. Fort Edward offered a modicum of protection, but the members of Mars Hill Baptist Church, founded in 1799, still carried guns to their Sunday services. Eagle Tavern, believed to stand on the site of the old Fort Edward, opened in 1801 and today serves as the Oconee County Welcome Center, as well as a museum commemorating the era of wagon and stage travel.  I have always heard that the serving of alcohol at the tavern influenced the founding of UGA in Athens instead.



Travelers from Madison and Greensboro visited the hotel and tavern, which became famous thanks to the legend of a Confederate veteran. The lore of Eagle Tavern holds that a Southern soldier hid in its attic as Union troops moved through the town after they were defeated at the Battle of Sunshine Church on July 31, 1864. The soldier was cared for by slaves, who provided him with food and coal.



Watkinsville first appeared in Clarke County records in 1791, only fifty-eight years after James Edward Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia. In 1802 John Cobb gave up eight lots of his plantation to create the city. It then became the seat for Clarke County and remained so until 1872, when Athens took over that role. Angry locals voted to create a new county, named after the Oconee River on its eastern border, and Watkinsville became its seat on February 25, 1875.


Oconee River

Plantation agriculture dominated the early economy. Cotton was the crop of choice, and slaves provided the labor. In the census of 1810, 35 whites and 55 slaves made up the town's population. By 1860 there were 447 whites and 426 slaves.

People and Places

The Methodist Church has played a prominent role in the city's history and founded a cemetery there in the early 1800s. Watkinsville was the birthplace of two famous Methodists, Bishop Atticus G. Haygood in 1839 and his sister, Laura Haygood, in 1845. Laura Haygood became one of the first Christian missionaries to China and the principal of an Atlanta girls' school. Bishop Haygood was chaplain to the Confederate army during the Civil War (1861-65) and served as president of Emory College in Oxford from 1875 to 1884. Their family home in downtown Watkinsville, known as the Haygood House, today houses the Chappelle Gallery.


Haygood House

In 1905 one of the worst acts of racial violence in Georgia's history occurred outside of Watkinsville. Nine men, eight black and one white, were lynched (shot) on the pretense that one of them had tried to rape a white woman. A mob of seventy-five men took the unprotected prisoners, who had no apparent relationship to one another, out of the Oconee County jail while the judge and sheriff were apparently out of town. Warts of Georgia all at UGA library.

Then on the shore of Oconee County on the Apalachee River above High Shoals, one of the last and more famous lynchings took place during the Truman administration.



The Moore's Ford Lynching has a newer historical marker right along Highway 78 on the way to football games.



The Moore’s Ford Lynching may belong more to Monroe County than Oconee County.



In addition to Watkinsville, Oconee County's incorporated communities are Bishop, Bogart, and North High Shoals. Bogart, on the county's northern border, was founded in 1869 and was originally named for Osceola, a Creek-Seminole Indian. The town was renamed Bogart for a railroad agent in 1892 after learning that another Georgia community, in Terrell County, was also called Osceola.


Bogart was once named Osceola. No site can give first name this Bogart fellow. Tim Bogart played with the Vanilla Fudge.

Bishop, originally known as Greenwood Crossing, was named for local resident W. H. Bishop (one of the county's original councilmen). Bishop was incorporated in 1890. North High Shoals, on the western border, was named for a rapid in the nearby Apalachee River. It was incorporated in 1933.



In January of 2009, University of Georgia horse riders moved into their spacious new home, the UGA Equestrian Complex, located in Bishop, Ga., approximately 12 miles south of the UGA campus. The 109-acre farm offers Georgia the finest in equine accommodations.Formerly known as High Point Farm, the facility served the Athens-area equine community with boarding and training facilities since 1993. In 1996, High Point was selected as the training site for the U.S. Dressage Team, which competed in the Summer Olympic Games at the International Horse Park in Conyers, Ga.


Bonus Georgia Natural Wonder Gal.

Equestrian was added as UGA's 21st intercollegiate varsity sport in 2001. Since the first year of competition in 2002, the team trained and held meets at the Animal Science Arena on South Milledge Avenue. UGA's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) and the Department of Animal and Dairy Science operate the facility and graciously hosted the Bulldogs through the Fall of 2008. The academic programs within the CAES, as well as the varsity Equestrian program, continued to expand in the middle years of the past decade. The Equestrian program's move to High Point Farm in 2009 facilitated the continued growth of both programs.



Today Oconee County is often characterized as a transitional community, moving away from its longtime rural foundations to become a bedroom community for Athens and even for Atlanta. Pine forests and cattle ranches have given way to residential subdivisions, shopping centers, and numerous art galleries. Boosted by the building of Georgia Highway 316 from west of Athens through Oconee County, the county's transformation has brought with it rising traffic, hundreds of shoppers, increasing sales tax revenues, and escalating property prices.



Points of interest include Eagle Tavern, located on North Main Street in Watkinsville. Built before 1801, possibly as a stronghold called Fort Edwards, the building was renovated by 1820 to serve as a stagecoach inn for Athens-bound travelers. The tavern was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.



Elder Mill Covered Bridge, built in 1897 and moved to its current location just south of Watkinsville off State Road 15 in the 1920s, was restored during Jimmy Carter's term as governor.


Elder Mill Covered Bridge circa 1975.

One of the few covered bridges left in Georgia, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.



Ambitious photo from down stream.



Eagle Tavern, Harris Shoals Park, and the Oconee County Courthouse attract visitors from throughout the area.


Harris Shoals Park

The historic South Main Street District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, includes the Ashford Memorial Methodist Church, the Haygood House, and Ashford Manor.


Ashford Manor

Ashford Manor, a bed and breakfast, conducts summer pop and classic concerts and supports various charitable events, including "Grace's Birthday Party," an annual fundraiser for veterinary research and pet adoption.



Notable Oconee County residents have included Lottie Moon, who worked as a governess in Farmington before becoming a Southern Baptist missionary to China. The founder of an annual fund drive to support international missions, Moon promoted the mission cause through her writing and establishing of churches and schools in China.


Y / N?

Another notable Oconee County resident was Jeannette Rankin, who bought land in Bogart in the 1920s and in Watkinsville in the 1930s, was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. A pacifist and champion of women's rights, she left her Watkinsville property, Shady Grove, for the foundation of a charitable trust to fund women's education. The Jeannette Rankin Foundation, based in Athens, remains active.


J.R.

She was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana in 1916, and again in 1940. She remains the only woman elected to Congress from Montana. Each of Rankin's Congressional terms coincided with initiation of U.S. military intervention in each of the two world wars. A lifelong pacifist and a supporter of non-interventionism, she was one of 50 House members, along with 6 Senators, who opposed the war declaration of 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Top Row Dawg Addendum for Oconee County, the Iron Horse. From Roadside America…..

While a student at UGA, I witnessed the placement of the Iron Horse close to Milledge Hall and Milledge Annex, the area where the athletes dormed. We watched the crew pour the concrete pad, a few days later placing the Iron Horse. It was not a horse that looked like Trigger, so you had to imagine quite a bit when you looked. It was the gift of a Chicago artist in 1954. The project was finally completed, and the parties began.



First, there was a huge bonfire built under and around the horse. It was made of iron so it could not be damaged. The principal thing damaged was the morale and spirit of the sculptor. When he heard about the fire and the image of his works being so degrading, he packed his bag and headed back home to Chicago. Eventually, the horse was moved because it became a focal point for pranksters. It was moved away from the campus, after a farm owner in Watkinsville offered a place in his pasture. A classmate of mine, Jack Curtis, now owns the farm and pasture, and takes care of the Iron Horse. There are those who saw the events unfold, and have their own versions of how things happened. That was in either 1953 or 1954. We did not have very much couth back then.



That was fun, brought back memories of misspent youth. Looking forward to tomorrow’s Georgia Natural Wonder, lot of my own photo’s. GNW gal today – slippery slope.