Georgia Natural Wonder #251 - Fernbank - DeKalb County (Part 1)

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #251 - Fernbank - DeKalb County (Part 1)

We are here at Georgia Natural Wonder 251 and we haven't even got to Atlanta yet. Now we did cover Metropolitan Counties of Cobb and Gwinnett Counties. We did cover Bartow, Rockdale, Douglas, and Roswell in Fulton County. We covered Coweta, Paulding, Newton, Walton, Barrow, and Forsyth Counties. But we did not cover Cherokee in the north of Atlanta, or Henry, Clayton, Fayette or Spalding County on the South of Atlanta. There are over 400 parks in the Atlanta area. There are 14 Civil War Battles. We may be here for a while. Let's start by finishing up DeKalb County. Part of Atlanta City limits are in DeKalb County. We covered Stone Mountain (GNW #7) and Arabia Mountain (GNW #83) in DeKalb County, but we did not cover the County. Now some of these other Wonders of DeKalb County may not approach the majesty of Stone Mountain, but few things do in America. I have personally experienced most of these Wonders of DeKalb County, growing up in Tucker. 


TRD on various sports teams in Tucker. Baseball (Indians), Tucker Swim Team, Basketball (Back left in front of Pop as coach), HS Football (Tucker Tigers).

There are 56 National Register of Historic Places listings in DeKalb County. There are over 100 Notable people. There are 33 communities and 112 Historical Markers. Now right now I have in mind 12 Parks and Trails worthy of a Georgia Natural Wonder and a week of significant Civil War action. Our third Georgia Natural Wonder of DeKalb County is one all of us DeKalb County students made field trips to multiple times and multiple years ...... Fernbank.  


Fernbank Forest.

Fernbank (Forest - Science Center - Planetarium - Observatory - Natural History Museum).

The Fernbank Science Center is a museum, classroom, and woodland complex located in Atlanta. It is owned and operated by the DeKalb County School District, which announced in May 2012 it was considering closing the facility to cut its annual budget, then quickly shelved the plan after public outcry.



The nearby Fernbank Museum of Natural History is a private non-profit organization that is separate from the Science Center. 



Overview

The Fernbank Science Center opened in December 1967, and is an educational facility and an integral part of the DeKalb County School District. It provides programs for the science education of local students, pre-K-12. Both its planetarium and observatory are open for public shows on specific occasions.



The mission of the Science Center is to provide and promote an understanding of science and technology and to communicate to its visitors the harmony and order of the natural world. Fernbank contains many materials for instruction, including dinosaur skeletons, rocks and minerals, a collection of tektites, an Aeronautics Education Laboratory and an electron microscope lab. 



The center also has an authentic Apollo spacecraft from the unmanned Apollo 6 Saturn V test flight. Apollo 6 (April 4, 1968), also known as AS-502, was the third and final uncrewed flight in the United States' Apollo Program and the second test of the Saturn V launch vehicle. 



It is also home to a planetarium with a 70-foot -diameter projection dome. 

Jim Cherry Memorial Planetarium

The Jim Cherry Memorial Planetarium is a 500-seat celestial theater in the round, equipped with a 70-foot, a Mark V Zeiss star projector, and over 100 special effects projectors. The planetarium, which was built in the 1960s is the largest planetarium within the state of Georgia and one of the largest in the U.S. It was also the first planetarium to be owned and operated by a public school system in the United States of America.

 

In 2012 Fernbank Science Center was the recipient of a grant from Lockheed Martin which was used to refurbish the Planetarium, and give the theater a technological upgrade bringing it into the 21st century and the digital age. A major component of technological upgrade is the fulldome/immersive projection system, produced by e-Planetarium of Houston. The fulldome system is intended to complement the planetarium's iconic Zeiss star projector not replace it.



Prior to the 2012 upgrade, Fernbank staff had been using standard projectors for the video portions of the shows, which put an image on only a small segment of the dome. Since the upgrade, a digital immersive projection system throws extraordinarily bright light onto a spherical mirror tuned to the exact shape of the planetarium dome so video and other images cover the entire dome. Before the upgrade, science center staff had the capability to project images like a slide show. Since the 2012 upgrade, animated images can move across the entire surface.

Dr. Ralph L. Buice, Jr. Observatory

The Dr. Ralph L. Buice, Jr. Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the Fernbank Science Center. It is located at the Science Center. The observatory owns a 36.00 inch Cassegrain telescope housed beneath a 33 foot dome.



Fernbank Forest

The Fernbank Forest is a 65-acre mature mixed forest that is part of Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia. It has some relatively old trees compared to much of the forests in the Piedmont; as such, it has been extensively studied by scientists.



A TRD Scrolling Nugget as we venture into the Forest. Savoy Brown is Waiting In The Bamboo Grove.



Fernbank Forest is a tract of relatively undisturbed mature mixed-hardwood forest, a remnant of the type of forest vegetation that originally covered the Piedmont region of Georgia, including the Atlanta metropolitan area. Nearly all of Atlanta’s original vegetation has been destroyed, first by farming and later by urban and suburban development. Visitors to Fernbank Forest can observe firsthand the primeval beauty of forest land as early explorers and southern Native Americans must have done hundreds of years ago.



Large specimens of white oak and tulip poplar, which grow up to 156 feet tall, can be found along one slope within the forest.



There also are a few equally tall loblolly pine.



Other canopy species include American beech, black oak, northern red oak, southern red oak, pignut hickory, bitternut hickory, mockernut hickory, winged elm and red maple. Eastern flowering dogwood, sourwood, umbrella magnolia and eastern redbud are prominent among the smaller trees.


And the well photographed Elephant Rock.

The forest floor is covered by many shrub, wildflower, and fern species.


Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis - A Bank of Ferns.

Common animals include raccoon, coyote, opossum, gray squirrel, chipmunk, American crow, pileated woodpecker, box turtle.



And several snake species, including the venomous copperhead.


I saw three Copperhead Snakes along this trail back in the 1990's. The North Druid Hills Neighborhood has found a solution to the Fernbank Copperheads.

The soils are mostly well-drained, with medium brown or dark reddish brown sandy loam topsoils. The subsoils are clay loam or clay; they are medium red or dark red. The darker soils, which support higher plant diversity, have developed on mafic rock; the medium-toned soils are on felsic rock.


You end up down by Hunteman Pond.



Fernbank is the 4th oldest environmental conservation not-for-profit in the United States.



History

The Fernbank Forest was purchased from Col. Z. D. Harrison in 1939 by a group of citizens who organized Fernbank, Inc., which today operates as Fernbank Museum of Natural History for the conservation and preservation of this old-growth forest to inspire and teach about nature.



In 1964 the Fernbank Trustees developed a 48-year lease which was accepted by the DeKalb County Board of Education, agreeing to manage and maintain the forest in exchange for offering free access to the public. The lease was renewable in eight-year intervals for a maximum of 48 years.

Controversy 2012 - 2014

The transfer of the lease from Dekalb County School System in 2012 led the closing of the forest and subsequent controversy. At the time, self-guided tours were not allowed in the forest due to safety concerns. 

Damn is that an Owl? Just now noticing that.

A Move-On petition garnered over 500 signatures to allow public access to the Forest. Concerned community members claimed the forest was not being maintained, leading to a possible reduction of educational opportunities in the forest for local school children. Community members were concerned about the lack of transparency since none of the plans were initially made public.

Forest reopens

In September 2016, after a 4-year restoration period, the forest reopened as part of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. 



Visitors to the museum can join guided tours with museum educators or go on self-guided tours along the paths of the forest. The museum now offers outdoor educational programming for students in the metro Atlanta area.

Fernbank Museum of Natural History

The Fernbank Museum of Natural History, in Atlanta, Georgia, is a museum that presents exhibitions and programming about natural history. Fernbank Museum has a number of permanent exhibitions and regularly hosts temporary exhibitions in its expansive facility, designed by Graham Gund Architects. Giants of the Mesozoic, on display in the atrium of Fernbank Museum, features a 123-foot long Argentinosaurus, the largest dinosaur ever classified; 



as well as a Giganotosaurus. 



The permanent exhibition, A Walk Through Time in Georgia, tells the twofold story of Georgia's natural history and the development of the planet. Fernbank Museum has won several national and international awards for one of its newest permanent exhibitions, Fernbank NatureQuest, an immersive, interactive exhibition for children that was designed and produced by Thinkwell Group. The awards NatureQuest has won include the 2012 Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement for a Museum Exhibit and the 2011 Bronze Award for Best Museum Environment from Event Design. The nearby Fernbank Science Center is a separate organization operated by the DeKalb County Board of Education and is not affiliated with Fernbank Museum of Natural History (Fernbank, Inc.). 

History

In the late 1800s, a nature-lover named Emily Harrison grew up in an area east of Atlanta which she called "Fernbank". Along with others, Harrison created a charter for Fernbank in 1938 and purchased the 70 acres of woodland on which Fernbank Museum now stands. In 1964, the Fernbank trustees and the DeKalb County School System created Fernbank Science Center, which led to a desire to share Fernbank's resources with the general public. 



Emily Harrison once wrote to her parents, “These heartstrings of ours have a curious way of getting tangled up in things: particularly trees and rocks and hill slopes…but gradually I had come to feel that Fernbank was too big and too beautiful for one family‘s consumption…The best thing to do with it would be to put it into the lives of children…”



And so the seed was planted that would ultimately grow into Fernbank.  Emily Harrison’s family owned the land that the natural history museum would come to stand on.  However, it was through her own determination that the institution was transformed from a dream to reality.  She had a deep love for the forest surrounding her home, and with developers encroaching on wooded spaces, she felt it was increasingly important to save the land.



After her father’s death in 1938 she got agreement from her siblings to sell the property to a corporation that was determined to save the 70 acres.  When developers came knocking in the aftermath of World War II and the subsequent population boom, she stood her ground.  Walter Huntermann, a staff forester who knew her very well once stated that, “She was so determined to save the forest as a teaching instrument for children that some persons who wanted to buy the tract called her a witch.”



And Emily Harrison truly did want to save the forest, not just for conservation’s sake, but to have it serve as a place for learning.  Before focus was shifted more to preservation of plant life, about three generations of Scouts and Campfire Girls had used the space to camp and learn forestry.  



But even with preservation in mind as a key focus of Fernbank, the importance of it as a learning space was never shunted to the side.  A partnership with the DeKalb School System meant that Fernbank would be open for use for students all over the county.  Students and visitors would be able to wonder at and learn from exhibits in the natural history museum, in the science center, or along various walking trails.



Fernbank was officially dedicated in 1967, and Emily Harrison was able to see her dream come to fruition.  It was through her determination and care that some simple, forested, family land has come to be one of the most “popular and iconic cultural attractions in Atlanta”.

Inside Fernbank 

Following master planning and designs by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based architectural firm, Graham Gund Architects, ground was broken in 1989, and on October 5, 1992, Fernbank Museum of Natural History opened to the public. The new building is carefully located behind a row of historic houses, and features a glass-enclosed atrium overlooking Fernbank Forest. 



Fernbank Museum now stands on 65 acres of the largest old-growth urban Piedmont forest in the country.



Exhibits

Fernbank Museum offers a variety of exhibits exploring many different natural history topics. Exhibits include: 

    Fernbank NatureQuest



    Dinosaur Plaza



    Giants of the Mesozoic



    A Walk Through Time in Georgia



    Reflections of Culture



    Conveyed in Clay: Stories from St. Catherines Island



    Our Favorite Things



    World of Shells



    Fantastic Forces



    Sky High


All about Birds.

    Star Gallery


Evidently great for Weddings under the Stars.

    STEAM Lab



The museum also has an area where special exhibitions are cycled through. These exhibits tend to stay open to the public for 2–4 months each. 

Outdoor exhibits

In 2016, the museum opened WildWoods, an accessible 10-acre area located directly behind the museum with trails and interactive exhibits. 



In 2016 Fernbank also opened access to the newly restored, 65-acre Fernbank Forest. There are Boardwalks.



Giant screen theater

Fernbank is home to the Rankin M. Smith, Sr. Giant Screen Theater. 



Formerly an IMAX theater, upgrades were completed in February 2017 including a digital 4K 3D laser-illuminated projection system. 

Special programming

Fernbank puts on special activities for adults and children including camps, lectures, workshops, interactive conversations, family activity days, and storytelling. 


One of Fernbank's most popular events, Fernbank After Dark runs the second Friday of each month and features hands-on educational activities, drinks, food and live music. 

FYI Volunteer Program

Fernbank Museum offers a year-round volunteer program for teens aged 13–17. FYI (Fernbank Youth Interpreter)



Volunteers interact with museum guests while working on educational carts throughout the museum, exploring a wide range of natural history topics, including Archaeology, Paleontology, Anatomy, and more.

DeKalb County (Part 1)

From Wikipedia and New Georgia Encyclopedia, DeKalb County (DEE-KAB) is located in the north central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 764,382, making it Georgia's fourth-most populous county. Its county seat is Decatur.



DeKalb County is included in the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell metropolitan area. It contains roughly 10% of the city of Atlanta (the other 90% lies in Fulton County). DeKalb is primarily a suburban county.



In 2009, DeKalb earned the Atlanta Regional Commission's "Green Communities" designation for its efforts in conserving energy, water and fuel, investing in renewable energy, reducing waste, and protecting and restoring natural resources.



In 2021, the non-profit American Rivers named DeKalb's South River the fourth-most endangered river in the United States, citing "the egregious threat that ongoing sewage pollution poses to clean water and public health."



In recent years, some communities in North DeKalb have incorporated, following a trend in other suburban areas around Metro Atlanta. Stonecrest, Dunwoody and Brookhaven are now the largest cities that are entirely contained within the county.

 
Stonecrest, Dunwoody.

 
Brookhaven.

History

The area of DeKalb county was acquired by the state of Georgia as a result of the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs with a faction of the Muscogee (Creek). These lands were opened for settlement after the Treaty removed the Creek and Cherokee Indians from the area. DeKalb County, formed in 1822 from Henry, Gwinnett and Fayette counties, took its name from Baron Johann de Kalb  (1721–1780), a Bavarian-born former officer in the French Army, who fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. 


DeKalb and his bust in Decatur.


DeKalb's horse was shot from under him, causing him to tumble to the ground. Before he could get up, he was shot three times and bayoneted repeatedly by British soldiers.


As he lay dying, Kalb was reported to have said to a British officer, "I thank you sir for your generous sympathy, but I die the death I always prayed for: the death of a soldier fighting for the rights of man."

DeKalb was greatly revered by his contemporaries and is still regarded as a hero of the American Revolution. Numerous towns and counties in the U.S. bear his name, including in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Texas.


DeKalb Illinois and DeKalb Texas.

DeKalb County was settled by new arrivals from Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina on land allotments of 202.5 acres each. A steady pioneer stock, their descendants continued to keep DeKalb a farming community until the 1960s.

1960'S DeKalb County farm.

In 1823 the state legislature chose a land lot for the county seat, which was named Decatur for Commodore Stephen Decatur Jr. , a naval hero from the War of 1812 (1812-15). 


Quite an impressive Wikipedia read, a lifetime of commanding several American ships including the USS Constitution.

Decatur emerged as a national hero in his own lifetime, becoming the first post-Revolutionary War hero. His name and legacy, like that of John Paul Jones, became identified with the United States Navy. We went to Climax Caverns and covered Decatur in our (GNW #152) Decatur County Georgia (Part 2). Decatur's career came to an early end when he was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron.


He may be best remembered for his response to an 1816 toast: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."

Situated on a knoll, a natural watershed where two Indian trails crossed, the town of Decatur quickly established itself with a log cabin courthouse on the square. 


It remains the location of the county government, having held off a challenge from the city of Stone Mountain in 1896. Can see Stone Mountain in distance.

The oldest existing house in the county is the  1831 Goodwin House along Peachtree Road in Brookhaven.


Dismantled now, not clear where it will be rebuilt as of 2024.

Much of the area was forested; a section of old-growth forest is preserved at Fernbank Forest. It was the home county for Atlanta until 1853, when Fulton County was established.


Original Forest of Atlanta - Dekalb County

In 1853, Fulton County formed from the western half of DeKalb, divided along a perfectly straight and due north–south line down the middle (along which Moreland Avenue now runs). 


Moreland at Memorial and at Euclid.


Moreland is a straight North South shot.

Until this time, the growing city of Atlanta had been inside DeKalb. Atlanta grew because the city of Decatur did not want to become the railroad terminus in the 1830s, thus a spot at the Thrasherville encampment in western DeKalb County .....



was picked to become Terminus and then Marthasville, before becoming Atlanta a few years after its founding.



North and southwest Fulton came from two other counties: Milton and southeast Campbell, respectively. DeKalb once extended slightly further north to the Chattahoochee River, but this strip was later given to Milton, and is now the panhandle of Sandy Springs.



During the American Civil War, much of the Battle of Atlanta took place in DeKalb. Particularly along the railroad heading west toward Atlanta. Troops were entrenched around Decatur’s square, and supply wagons were parked in the Decatur cemetery.



Surprised markers are still there on Courthouse Square, they made a big deal about pulling down the Confederate Monument.



General William T. Sherman spent a night in Lithonia, DeKalb’s granite city, and his troops were in Stone Mountain. 



A Decatur native, Mary Ann Harris Gay wrote Life in Dixie during the War (1892), recounting her memories of watching the Battle of Decatur. She was one of a number of women who wrote about their personal experiences during the Civil War.

  

During the first half of the twentieth century, DeKalb’s economy was chiefly agrarian. The county was once known for its granite quarries.



It was also known for it's dairy farms; in the 1940s and 1950s it was the leading producer of dairy products in the Southeast. 


I milked Rosebud at Mathis Diary. I still got my button somewhere. All DeKalb County kids all visited here in addition to Field Trips to Fernbank.

DeKalb’s lush farmland disappeared in the 1960s, as it became an urban county with more miles of interstate than any other county in Georgia. DeKalb County, is now a large urban county and a center for education in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Finished in 1969, the eastern half of the Interstate 285 beltway, called "the Perimeter", ringed the northeastern and southern edges of the county, placing most of it "inside the Perimeter" along with nearly all of Atlanta. 

What I-285 feels like.

Interstate 675 and Georgia 400 were originally planned to connect inside the Perimeter, along with the Stone Mountain Freeway (U.S. Highway 78) connecting with the Downtown Connector (a co-signment of I-75/I-85) near Moreland Avenue, destroying many neighborhoods in western DeKalb, but community opposition in the early 1970s spared them this fate of urbanization, although part of the proposed Stone Mountain Tollway later became the Freedom Parkway. Only Interstate 20 and Interstate 85 were successfully built through the county. 


Actual images I-285. Heaven forbid it should snow!!

DeKalb also became one of only two counties to approve MARTA rapid transit in the 1970s; the county now contains the east and northeast heavy rail lines.


Candler Park Station and heading North on 400.

Originally mostly whites of Anglo-Saxon descent, its population has become racially and ethnically diverse. The county is home to a large number of middle-class African Americans and to several distinct African American communities, such as Shermantown and Scottdale. 

 
Scottsdale then and now.

The city of Chamblee contains the “International Village” district, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country, with more than thirty different nationalities represented by its residents.


International Village.

The city of Clarkston is a site for refugee relocation, adding to the county’s already established international flavor. Your DeKalb Farmers Market, which opened as a produce stand in 1977, covers 140,000 square feet and sells a variety of international foods and produce.


DeKalb Farmers Market.

The county is home to the Georgia Center for the Book, Fernbank Science Center, Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Michael C. Carlos Museum of Art, Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve, Stone Mountain Park, and DeKalb Peachtree Airport, the second-busiest airport in Georgia and the site of the former Naval Air Station Atlanta. 



Both the Waffle House and Huddle House restaurant chains were established in DeKalb.



DeKalb is also home to nine colleges and other postsecondary institutions: Agnes Scott College, Columbia Theological Seminary, DeVry University, Emory University, Georgia Piedmont Technical College, Georgia State University Perimeter College, Luther Rice Seminary, the Atlanta campus of Mercer University, and Oglethorpe University.


Agnes Scott, Emory, Oglethorpe.

The DeKalb County seal was created in 1967, by artist Jackson Bailey. The design is based on a passage from Aristotle in which a comparison is made between human progress and the relay race. The background landscape shows planted fields, which is a tribute to DeKalb's heritage as an agrarian community and Stone Mountain, now recognized as Georgia's most popular tourist attraction. The date of the county's founding, 1822, is at the bottom of the seal.




That's enough for this post. My Georgia Natural Wonder Gal is someone who was a classmate at Tucker High School. She was a class behind me, Christie Hunt. She was in my Art Class. She was the Tucker Homecoming Queen and later, the UGA Homecoming Queen. Our Georgia Natural Wonder Gal striking close to home.