The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The American burying beetle, Nicrophorus americanus, is an endangered species and is no longer found in Georgia. Beetles, order Coleoptera, are the largest group of insects, and thousands of species can be found in Georgia.
Photograph by the Frost Museum
European honeybees are not native to Georgia, but records show they arrived in the state by 1743. They were named the state insect in 1975. In addition to creating honey, honeybees pollinate several crops, including blueberries, apples, melons, and gourds.
Photograph by Waugsberg
An adult silkmoth, Bombyx mori. This species's caterpillar, the mulberry silkworm, has produced silk textiles for millennia. Eighteenth-century Georgia colonists tried and failed to establish a silk industry in Savannah.
Photograph by Nikita
Solenopsis invicta are an invasive ant species from South America. The species has interbred with native ants to create hybrid ant species that threaten soybean production. All ants are eusocial, which means they live in strict social hiearchies.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Researchers have attributed recent declines in apiary honeybee populations to parasitic varroa mites, pictured between the bee's wings above. Varroa mites suck drone and developing brood blood, weakening individuals. An untreated varroa infestation may kill colonies.
Photograph by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
The golden garden spider, Argiope aurantia, is a member of the orb-web family. Here, an individual uses its spinnerets, located on its abdomen, to trap prey. Spiders are exclusively carnivorous, though the golden garden spider is no danger to humans.
Photograph by Tom McC
Widow spiders produce cobwebs and seclude themselves in dark, isolated areas. They have a painful bite, which requires medical attention, but they are rarely fatal.
Photograph by Charaj
The eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilo glaucus, is the state butterfly of Georgia. It's common across the eastern United States.
Courtesy of Loy Xingwen
Jane Hurt Yarn, an influential advocate for environmental conservation in Georgia, is pictured in Atlanta, circa 1995. She served on U.S. president Jimmy Carter's Council on Environmental Quality and was instrumental in the creation of Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, located off the coast of Jekyll Island.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Conservationist Jim Fowler, a Georgia native, holds a peregrine falcon at the National Bison Range near Missoula, Montana, in 1998. Fowler cohosted the television series Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom for more than twenty years and made frequent appearances on the Today show and on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Jim Fowler (center), a conservationist and environmental educator, shows a student in Rockdale County how to feed a baby black-spotted leopard in 2003. A native of Dougherty County, Fowler was the longtime cohost of the television series Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Visitors feed a rhino in the Parks at Chehaw in Albany. The zoo was designed by Dougherty County native Jim Fowler, the longtime cohost of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. The Chehaw zoo and Zoo Atlanta are the only two accredited zoos in the state.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Proper procedures for handling hazardous waste include labeling and maintaining inventories of dangerous substances, as well as creating emergency-response plans in case of accidental releases.
Photograph by Jeremy Brooks
Household garbage is compacted at the Seminole Road Landfill in DeKalb County, pictured in 2005. Subtitle D of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulates the proper management of landfills in order to protect the surrounding environment and communities.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Photograph by Rich Addicks..
Christmas trees in Bainbridge are chipped into mulch in January 2009 as part of the statewide "Bring One for the Chipper" tree recycling program. The chipping was a joint effort by the City of Bainbridge and Keep Decatur County Beautiful.
Courtesy of Bainbridgega.com
Hazardous solid waste consists of material that has been discarded and poses a threat to human health or the environment. Disposal of hazardous wastes, much of which are produced as by-products of industrial processes, is regulated by Subtitle C of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey. Photograph by S. C. Delaney
An employee at the Seminole Road Landfill in DeKalb County separates old car tires from rims in preparation for recycling. The management of solid and hazardous waste is covered by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976, which was passed to help protect human and environmental health and to reduce waste.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Photograph by Rich Addicks..
Recycle 4 Georgia is a program administered by the Office of Environmental Management of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. The program encourages local governments to manage waste through recycling by providing recycling trailers for special events.
Courtesy of Recycle 4 Georgia
Major sources of industrial toxins in Georgia include agriculture, manufacturing, and coal-fired electrical power generation. Georgia Power Company's Bowen plant, a coal-fired power plant in Bartow County, is the nation's top producer of sulfur dioxide, a toxic substance.Photograph by Joe McTyre.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Gilman Paper Company, pictured in 1952, was located in Camden County. Like other paper mills, the Gilman Paper Company released a variety of toxins into the surrounding environment during its years of operation. The site of the plant was later cleaned under Superfund legislation.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
cam045.
Georgia Power Company's Scherer plant is one of twelve coal-fired power plants operating in Georgia as of 2009. These plants produce approximately 64 percent of the state's electricity with coal mined in other states.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center, Photograph by W. A. Bridges..
Georgia Power Company's Bowen coal-fired power plant, pictured in 1977, is located in Bartow County. Toxins produced by burning coal include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury compounds.Photograph by Charles Pugh.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Hercules Inc. in Brunswick, pictured in 2004, is an active chemical processing plant. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified the plant as a Superfund site because of contamination from toxic waste.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A broken gate in Coweta County marks the entrance to a Superfund site, where 2-3 million tires were once burned. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oversees the cleanup of toxic-waste sites under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund).
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Atlantic Steel Mill in Atlanta operated for more than 100 years before closing in 1998. The contamined 138-acre site on which the mill stood was cleaned as part of the largest brownfield reclamation project in the nation. In 2001 it reopened as Atlantic Station, a mixed-use development complex.
Courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Atlantic Station, a development on the west side of Atlanta, was built on a reclaimed brownfield and designed according to the principles of New Urbanism, an architectural movement that offers an alternative to the suburban, automobile-dependent lifestyle.
Courtesy of Atlantic Station
The Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island opened in 2007 to provide veterinary care to injured sea turtles and to educate the public about sea turtle conservation. The facility was built on a reclaimed brownfield, the former site of a coal-fired power plant that had contaminated the property with various industrial toxins.
Courtesy of Georgia Sea Turtle Center
The Tugaloo Dam, located on the Tugaloo River in northeast Georgia, is one of many impoundments that occur within the Savannah River basin. Such dams provide hydroelectric power and water reserves to municipal areas, but they also threaten the health of the watershed's ecosystem.
Photograph by Joel Shiver
The Ogeechee River is one of five rivers that form a collective river basin in Georgia's Coastal Plain. The tea-colored water of these rivers, which are known as blackwater rivers, is caused by high concentrations of dissolved organic material.
Image from Jet Lowe
Fourteen river basins, or watersheds, lie within Georgia's borders. The Altamaha, Ocmulgee, Oconee, Ogeechee, Satilla, Savannah, and St. Marys basins drain into the Atlantic Ocean. The Chattahoochee, Coosa, Flint, Ochlockonee, Suwanee, Tallapoosa, and Tennessee basins drain into the Gulf of Mexico.
Courtesy of Georgia Water Coalition
The Ogeechee River, one of only forty-two free-flowing rivers in the United States longer than 200 kilometers, drains from the eastern part of Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean.
Courtesy of Georgia Rivers LMER
The Savannah River, which forms the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina, begins at Lake Hartwell in northeast Georgia and flows south to Savannah, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
Image from jpellgen (@1179_jp)
The Tallapoosa River (pictured in Elmore County, Alabama) originates in Georgia's Paulding County, west of Atlanta. The river covers 720 square miles in Georgia before entering Alabama, where its remaining 3,960 square miles lie.
Image from cmh2315fl
The Coosa River, formed by the confluence of the Etowah and Oostanaula rivers in Rome, empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The river supports more than 147 species of fish and contains the world's largest diversity of freshwater snails and mussels.
Image from CarolinePope22
The Flint River, which begins in Georgia's Piedmont region, is part of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin, which drains portions of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. It flows to the Chattahoochee River in southwest Georgia.
Photograph from Doug Bradley
The Chattahoochee River, part of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin, is one of the nation's most endangered rivers. In addition to providing habitat for birds, mammals, and reptiles, the river supports six endangered or threatened mussel species. The river begins in the Blue Ridge Mountains and flows to southwest Georgia.
Photograph by Dianne Frost
A popular boating destination, West Point Lake in Troup County is formed by an impoundment of the Chattahoochee River. The lake covers 25,900 acres in area and has a shoreline of 525 miles.
Courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The Oconee River begins in the Appalachian Mountains and joins with the Ocmulgee River to form the Altamaha River in Georgia's Upper Coastal Plain. The cities of Athens, Milledgeville, and Dublin are located along the Oconee.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The Altamaha River, formed by the convergence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers, drains into the Atlantic Ocean at Darien. The Altamaha watershed is the largest in Georgia and the third largest in the United States to drain into the Atlantic.
Courtesy of Georgia Rivers LMER
The Altamaha River watershed provides habitat for numerous nesting and migratory birds, as well as for more than 100 rare and endangered aquatic species.
Image from Electronic Collection of Georgia Birds
A third-order tributary of the Ogeechee River, a blackwater river that begins in Greene County, flows through a densely forested area in the Coastal Plain.
Courtesy of J. L. Meyer
The Satilla River, one of five blackwater rivers in Georgia, begins in Ben Hill County and lies entirely within the Coastal Plain. It drains to the Atlantic Ocean. Pollution levels are very low in the Satilla, which is bordered by cypress and black gum forests.
Courtesy of Georgia Rivers LMER
John Abbot painted his Yellow Breasted Finch (watercolor on paper, 11 1/8" x 8 3/4") in 1790, fifteen years after moving from Virginia to Georgia. A native of England, Abbot traveled to America in 1773 and spent the remainder of his life collecting and drawing specimens of New World birds, insects, and butterflies.
Courtesy of Morris Museum of Art
Painter John Abbot's Grebe, Didapper, or Water Witch (watercolor on paper, 11 1/8" x 8 3/4") is housed at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta.
Courtesy of Morris Museum of Art
This bronze plaque depicting the naturalist and illustrator John Abbot graces a monument erected in 1957 by the Georgia Historical Society and the Georgia Historical Commission in Bulloch County. Abbot, a British native, collected and drew numerous specimens of birds, insects, butterflies, and moths during his nearly sixty-five years in Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Historical Society, Georgia Historical Society collection of photographs, #GHS 1361PH-24-01-4588.
This watercolor of a butterfly, today identified as the American Painted Lady, is one of many images depicting butterflies and moths by John Abbot, a British collector and illustrator who lived and worked in Georgia from 1775 until around 1840.
From The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia, by J. Abbot
John Abbot, a painter and naturalist, created Little Horn Owl or Screech Owl (watercolor on paper, 11 1/8" x 8 3/4") in 1790. From 1775 until 1818 Abbot lived and worked in present-day Burke County, sending specimens and illustrations of New World species to collectors in his homeland of England.
Courtesy of Morris Museum of Art
Herbert Stoddard, a renowned southern conservationist of the twentieth century, was an authority on the bobwhite quail and a pioneer in the development of both land and wildlife management practices. Much of Stoddard's work was conducted at Sherwood, his 1,000-acre property in Grady County.
Courtesy of Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy
Naturalist Herbert Stoddard ignites a controlled burn on his longleaf pine preserve, Sherwood, in Grady County, circa 1966. Stoddard was a staunch advocate of using fire in the management of the wiregrass and longleaf pine ecosystem of south Georgia.
Courtesy of Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy
Eliza Frances Andrews (pictured ca. 1879) was a writer of journals, novels, newspaper reports, botany articles and textbooks, and editorials. Her published diary, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865, is one of the most compelling first-person accounts of the Civil War home front.
Courtesy of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Lupton Library Special Collections
Image of Eliza Frances Andrews in the War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865, one of the most compelling first-person accounts of the Civil War (1861-65) home front, published in 1908. Eliza Frances Andrews was a writer, newspaper reporter, editor, columnist, social critic, scientist, and educator. By the time of her death in 1931 in Rome, Georgia, Andrews had written three novels, more than a dozen scientific articles on botany, two internationally recognized botany textbooks, and dozens of articles, commentaries, and reports on topics ranging from politics to environmental issues.
Image from The War Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908)
A dirt road in rural Madison County showcases Georgia's famous red clay, found throughout the state's Piedmont. The clay's composition of silicon, aluminum, and iron oxides is called saprolite.
Photograph from Elizabeth Prata
A bare fallow field, composed of sandy soil and clay subsoil, in Vienna, Georgia. Soil, which is composed of minerals, organic material, water, and air, is generally less than a meter in depth and forms through the weathering of the earth's surface.
Image from Lee Coursey
Cloudland Canyon State Park is located in Dade County, near the northern end of Lookout Mountain, in the Appalachian Plateau.
Photograph by Jeff Gunn
High Falls State Park, near Jackson in Butts County, is a popular destination along the Towaliga River for camping and boating. The town of High Falls, established in the early 1800s, became a ghost town during the 1880s, when the railroads gained prominence over waterways for commercial transportation.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Black Rock Mountain State Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains is located in Rabun County along the Eastern Continental Divide. At an altitude of 3,640 feet, Black Rock Mountain is the highest state park in Georgia and offers numerous scenic overlooks and hiking trails.
Image from Bradley Huchteman
Indian Springs State Park, located in Butts County, is one of the first two state parks to be established in Georgia. In 1927 the state passed a resolution to preserve the Indian Springs Reserve, and in 1931 the park was founded as part of the newly created Georgia State Parks System.
Image by David Dugan
The F. D. Roosevelt State Park, located on Pine Mountain in Harris County, was named for U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who maintained a home in nearby Warm Springs. The park was established under Roosevelt's New Deal policies in the mid-1930s.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park in Cordele County was established in honor of U.S. veterans. The park offers a museum featuring wartime memoribilia, as well as a lodge, conference center, and golf course.
Image from Courtney McGough
The fifty-six-room lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park in Dawson County was built during the 1980s. The park's primary attraction is the 729-foot Amicalola Falls, the highest waterfall in Georgia.
Image from J. Stephen Conn
Vogel State Park was established in 1931 as one of the first two state parks in Georgia. Located at the base of Blood Mountain in Union County, Vogel offers scenic mountain trails and close proximity to Brasstown Bald, the highest point in the state.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Longleaf pines and wiregrass dominate the landscape of southeast Georgia. Pines can grow quickly on clear-cut land, without competition for resources from other trees, especially hardwoods.
Photograph by Roy Cohutta
Several local farmers travel through the Okefenokee Swamp in Ware County, circa 1900. At more than 700 square miles, the Okefenokee is the largest swamp in North America.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
war012.
The Franklinia is a deciduous small tree or large shrub growing fifteen to twenty feet high and ten to fifteen feet wide, with elongated, dark green leaves (which turn red, orange, or pink in the fall) and showy two- to three-inch snow-white flowers, with clusters of golden yellow stamens in the centers.
Image from John Donges
Longleaf pine trees and wiregrass form a distinctive ecosystem in south Georgia. The region's pine forest is divided into three areas: pine and palmetto flats in the east, pine barrens in the interior, and a lime-sink section in the west. Lowland areas of the forest support a variety of other trees as well, including oak, hickory, and cypress.
Photograph by Chris M. Morris
An engine stops at a sawmill in Clinch County, at a now-defunct town called Humphries between Dupont and Stockton, in 1893. The mill was located in the wiregrass region of the state, which was heavily logged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #cln002.
Anthony Head, a worker in a Lowndes County turpentine still, makes barrels for holding rosin, circa 1900. The naval stores industry formed an important part of the economy in wiregrass Georgia, of which Lowndes County is a part, in the early twentieth century.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
low096.
The painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) is a migratory species of butterfly that spends part of its life cycle in Georgia.
Image from Vanessa Cardui
The state legislature named the tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) as the official butterfly of Georgia in 1988. The butterfly species is one of several hundred found in the state.
Image from Peter Miller
The knobby ends of its antennae stalk, as well as the upright position of its wings, identify the grey hairstreak (Strymon melinus) as a butterfly, rather than a moth.
Image from mwms1916
Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is one of the best plants for attracting butterflies in Georgia and one of only several species eaten by caterpillars. Caterpillars feed only on the type of plant upon which they hatch, and they can eat several times their weight in food on a single day.
Image from Philip Bouchard
An eastern black swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio polyxenes) feeds on a dill plant. A butterfly or moth caterpillar typically feeds for two to four weeks before beginning its metamorphosis into a butterfly by spinning a silk cocoon.
Photograph by Paul Thomas
Tiger swallowtails (Papilio glaucus) sip from a stream. Georgia's state butterfly, the tiger swallowtail produces two "broods" of caterpillars each season, one in May and the other in July or August.
Image from Vicki DeLoach
Upright verbena (Verbena bonairiensis) is one of the best plants for attracting butterflies in Georgia. The loss of important forage plants, often due to the use of herbicides in agriculture, poses a threat to the survival of many species of butterfly in the state.
Image from Linda De Volder
Wide, sandy beaches like this one on Wassaw Island are typical of Georgia's barrier islands. Wassaw is one of more than a dozen barrier islands that stretch along Georgia's 100-mile coast.
Photograph by Bruce Tuten
Skimmers on the coast of Amelia Island. The tern-like birds feed by flying low over the water, skimming for fish.
Image from Lee Coursey
The forests on Wassaw Island include cedar, oak, and pine, as well as an understory of holly, magnolia, and other plants.
Photograph by Garry Tucker, USFWS
The Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve is committed to research, education, and the sound management of coastal resources in Georgia. It lies in an estuary where the currents of Doboy Sound meet the Duplin River.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
This aerial photograph shows the south end of Sapelo Island and Doboy Sound. Freshwater from the Altamaha River is transported into upper Doboy Sound through the connecting Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and marsh channels.
Courtesy of Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
The National Estuarine Research Reserve, Sapelo Island.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
Because they tolerate only low-salinity water, Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are found in sounds, estuaries, salt marshes, and tidal creeks. In the early 1900s Georgia produced more oysters commercially than any other state. Today, Georgia's oyster industry is only worth about $100,000.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
Edible shrimps, like this white shrimp (Penaeus setiferus), depend on healthy estuaries for their survival. After spawning in the Atlantic Ocean from late March to September, the larval shrimp enter estuaries, where they feed on bottom algae, small animals, and debris. Within a few months they return to ocean waters as adults.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
Coastal tides bring nutrients from estuaries connected by tidal creeks to the marshes. Outgoing tides carry nutritious marsh products back into the estuaries. There, the products help to sustain large numbers of other marine organisms. The outgoing tides also remove wastes from the marsh.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Red drum (Scaenops occelatus), also known as "spottail bass," live the first four years of life in estuaries, where they feed primarily on shrimp and crabs.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
Located in Dawson County, Amicalola Falls derives its name from the Native American word meaning "tumbling waters." Just one of many waterfalls in Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains, Amicalola Falls is the highest, with a drop of 729 feet.
Photograph by Ryan McKee
Brasstown Bald, located partly in Union County and partly in Towns County, was formed by the breaching of thrust faults by erosion, resulting in the exposure of rocks once deeply buried in the Appalachian Mountains. Situated in the Blue Ridge province, Brasstown Bald is the highest point in Georgia.
Photograph by Vicki's Nature
The Russell-Brasstown Scenic Byway is a forty-one-mile paved loop that lies entirely within the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains. It extends north from Helen to Brasstown Bald and then southwest to Raven Cliff Falls and Wilderness Area and Dukes Creek Falls. Due to changes in elevation, the byway enjoys an extended fall color season.
Image from Thomson200
The falls and scenery at Tallulah Gorge State Park, located in northeast Georgia, attract thousands of visitors each year. The gorge, located in the state's Blue Ridge geological province, is cut through a large section of the metamorphic rock quartzite.
Image from Martin Bravenboer
In 1838 a federal Branch Mint went into operation at Dahlonega. It coined more than $100,000 worth of gold in its first year, and by the time it closed in 1861, it had produced almost 1.5 million gold coins with a face value of more than $6 million.
Courtesy of Dahlonega Mountain Signal
Black bears (Ursus americanus) are commonly found in Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains in places like the Chattooga River watershed. They also are found along the Ocmulgee River drainage system in central Georgia and along the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia.
Photograph by Terry Spivey, USDA Forest Service
As part of his exploration of what is now the state of Georgia, Hernando de Soto traveled through the Blue Ridge Mountains. He likely spent time near Carters Lake, which is near Ellijay in Gilmer County.
Courtesy of Florida State Archives, Photographic Collection.
This photograph shows workers at a sawmill in Rabun County circa 1900. Logging operations such as this one in Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains removed many old-growth trees, including these huge specimens.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
rab334.
This photograph shows a group of men standing beside a moonshine still near Ellijay in Gilmer County. Although moonshining was practiced throughout Georgia, it is most often associated with the Blue Ridge Mountains in north Georgia, where moonshine "wars" occurred throughout the late nineteenth century.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
gil001.
Visitors to St. Simons Island gather on its pier in the late nineteenth century. The tourism industry, still a primary economic activity on the island today, began in the 1870s, and by the 1880s a grand hotel and pier had been built on the southeastern end of the island.
Courtesy of Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
The lighthouse on St. Simons Island, pictured during a fireworks display in 1989, replaced the island's original lighthouse, which was dynamited by Confederate troops in 1862 as they retreated from Union forces. The occupying Union troops used the island as a camp for freedpeople.
Courtesy of Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
Fort Frederica, pictured in 1905, was built by James Oglethorpe on St. Simons Island in 1736. From the time of its establishment until 1749, the fort served as the headquarters for the British military on the Georgia coast.
Courtesy of Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
Ebos Landing, pictured in 2004, was the site of an 1803 slave rebellion, during which a group of Ebo Africans drowned themselves rather than submit to slavery.
Photograph by Elisabeth Hughes, New Georgia Encyclopedia
The Retreat Plantation house on St. Simons Island was owned by Major William Page from 1804 until his death in 1827, when his daughter, Anna Matilda Page, and her husband, Thomas Butler King, inherited it. The house, no longer standing, was located on the southwestern tip of the island.
Courtesy of Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
Timber from St. Simons Lumber Mills on St. Simons Island was shipped to market from this dock in Brunswick. After coming to a halt during the Civil War, the timber industry on the island was revived during the 1870s.
Courtesy of Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
The village on St. Simons Island, pictured in 1946, grew during World War II, with the establishment of a naval air base and radar school on the island. In addition to a growing permanent population, St. Simons also attracted increasing numbers of vacationers from the mainland during the war.
Courtesy of Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
A marsh in Glynn County is pictured from Jekyll Island in 2004. Poet Sidney Lanier was inspired to write "The Marshes of Glynn" (1879) after a visit to Brunswick. The poem's narrator begins with a rhythmic description of the thick marsh before his vision expands seaward, culminating in an epiphany that the vast marshes and sea are filled with power and mystery.
Photograph by Moultrie Creek
The salt marsh on Sapelo Island is composed primarily of smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), as are the salt marshes all along the Georgia coast. Other salt-tolerant plants, including needlerush (Juncus roemerianus), compete with Spartina in higher marsh areas, which receive a greater influx of freshwater from the mainland.
Courtesy of Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
Tidal marshes originated around 18,000 years ago, when water from melting glaciers created lagoons behind barrier islands. Clay and sand deposits eventually accumulated in the lagoons and began to support populations of the dominant marsh plant that provides both food and protection to a variety of fauna. The marshes are especially important as nursery grounds for several species of marine life.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), the dominant plant species in Georgia's tidal marshes, forms the basis of the salt-marsh food chain. When the plants die, they are broken down by bacteria and fungi into minute particles called detritus, which washes into estuaries and tidal creeks and is consumed by small marine organisms.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
While alligators often feed in Georgia's salt marshes, the only reptile inhabitants of the marshes are diamondback terrapins (Malachlenys terrapin; adult female pictured). Other animals residing in the marshes include several bird species, as well as raccoons, marsh rabbits, and rice rats.
Photograph by Mary Hollinger, NODC biologist. Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
A salt marsh extends between the mainland and Sapelo Island, one of the barrier islands lining the Georgia coast. According to estimates by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, salt marshes cover more than 378,000 acres in the state.
Photograph by Darby Carl Sanders
St. Catherines Island, located in Liberty County, is one of the barrier islands lining the coast of Georgia. The privately owned island, a National Historic Landmark, is about ten miles long and approximately one to three miles wide. From the 1590s to the 1680s a Spanish mission, Santa Catalina de Guale, was located on the island (at that time part of the Spanish colony La Florida).
Photograph by Jason D. Williams
Lemurs wander the grounds of a laboratory on St. Catherines Island. The subject of extensive biological surveys, the island once served as a refuge for endangered animals under the administration of the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Bronx Zoo in New York City.
Photograph by Jason D. Williams
One of the busiest ports on the East Coast of the United States, Savannah handles approximately 80 percent of the shipborne cargo entering Georgia.
Photograph by Ron CogswellÂ
The Savannah River, which originates in Hart County at the confluence of the Seneca and Tugaloo rivers, flows for 313 miles to the Atlantic Ocean. The river has played in important role in the state's human history and forms the basis for one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
A diversion dam on the Savannah River pushes water to the headgate and locks of the Savannah-Ogeechee-Altamaha Canal, in Augusta. Along its route from the Piedmont to the Atlantic Ocean, the Savannah River is diverted for various purposes, including navigation, the generation of electricity, and water for human consumption.
Image from Stacie Wells
The Savannah River is impounded along its upper stretch to form Lake Richard B. Russell at the Russell Dam. Other reservoirs along the upper Savannah are Lake Hartwell and Clarks Hill Lake.
Photograph by Darby Carl Sanders
False rue anemone is one of the more than seventy-five rare plant species native to the Savannah River basin. The anemone, along with bottle-brush buckeye and relict trillium, is found along river bluffs near Augusta.
Courtesy of Joseph O'Brien, USDA Forest Service, www.forestryimages.org
The Savannah River flows past downtown Savannah. The river has played an integral role in the development of human settlements in Georgia, from the Paleoindian period to the present day.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Workers load cotton bales onto a ship docked on the Savannah River at Savannah, circa 1880. The river served as an important shipping channel throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
ctm345-86.
Georgia's Lower Coastal Plain geographic province comprises the barrier islands and the mainland coastal region, which extends inland from the shore for approximately seventy miles. The state's shoreline continually shifts, as the barrier islands are altered through wind, waves, currents, and tides.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
The Okefenokee Swamp, located in the Lower Coastal Plain geographic province, supports a variety of plant and animal life. The swamp is the largest in North America, covering approximately 700 square miles.
Photograph from John Whitehill
One of the barrier islands that protect the Georgia coast, Blackbeard covers more than 5,600 acres. The island is a National Wildlife Refuge and is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Barrier islands, also known as the Golden Isles, line the coast of Georgia. The Lower Coastal Plain extends for sixty-five to seventy miles between the Savannah and St. Marys rivers and contains the remains of older and higher shorelines west of the present coast. Previously occupied by Native Americans, today these ancient shorelines support the cities of Savannah, Darien, and Brunswick.
Courtesy of V. J. Henry
Sand dunes are a prominent feature on Cumberland Island, one of the barrier islands lining the coast of Georgia. Facing the ocean on the eastern side of the islands, the sand dunes are formed by wind and waves and stabilized by such plants as sea oats and morning glories.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Marshes along the western side of Sapelo Island meet the maritime forest of the island's interior. The marsh, dominated by smooth cordgrass, transitions abruptly to the maritime forest, which is dominated by live oaks, the state tree.
Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve Collection.
Workers on St. Simons Island grind sugar cane, one of the crops raised on Georgia's barrier islands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A number of other crops were raised on the island during this time as well, including indigo, rice, and Sea Island cotton.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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Fences erected to combat erosion line the beaches of Tybee Island, one of the barrier islands along the Georgia coast. Currently experiencing significant erosion as a result of rising sea levels, the Tybee beaches are maintained through renourishment projects and protected by man-made sea walls.
Photograph by William Folsom. Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Baby giant panda Mei Lan ("Atlanta Beauty"), pictured in 2007, was born at Zoo Atlanta in September 2006. Her parents, female Lun Lun and male Yang Yang, were on loan to the zoo from Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In 1999 giant pandas arrived at Zoo Atlanta, located in the city's historic Grant Park, and quickly became one of the most popular attractions at the facility. Each year more than 500,000 people visit the zoo, which focuses on education, conservation, and research.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Visitors, pictured in 1928, observe an elephant at the Grant Park Zoo in Atlanta. The zoo was founded in 1886 with a spotted fawn, and its collection expanded to include exotic animals three years later with a donation from Atlanta businessman George V. Gress. Today the attraction is known as Zoo Atlanta.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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The gorillas, as well as other animals at Zoo Atlanta, live in outdoor habitats designed to approximate their natural environments. Primates have played important roles in the zoo's history, including the arrival of Willie B., a lowland gorilla, in 1959 and the establishment of ties to the Yerkes National Primate Center in the late 1960s.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
The fifty-mile Chattooga River begins in North Carolina and flows through South Carolina and Georgia. One of the few rivers to qualify for the national designation of a Wild and Scenic River, the Chattooga is protected from development and motorized vehicles along its banks by a one-fourth-mile-wide corridor on each side.
Photograph by Brenda Wiley
The Chattooga Rivers flows through the Ellicott Rock Wilderness Area, located on the shared borders of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The forests adjacent to the river are among the most biologically diverse in the nation.
Photograph by Joel Shiver
The effects of the timber industry are visible in this photograph taken from the Chattooga River, at the mouth of the Tallulah River. During the late nineteenth century, extensive logging in southern forests threatened the fragile ecosystem of the Chattooga River watershed.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
A stand of old-growth longleaf pines lines a road on Greenwood Plantation in Thomas County. Although longleaf pines covered more than 4 million acres in Georgia early in the twentieth century, by 1997 the acreage in the state was estimated to be 376,400.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
Longleaf pines, the dominant species in a fire-dependent ecosystem, rely on seasonal fires to clear away understory species, including wiregrass, that prevent the pine seeds from germinating. Today such fires are carefully managed by foresters in their efforts to recover and conserve the longleaf ecosystem.
Photograph by USDA Forest Service Archives, USDA Forest Service. Courtesy of Forestry Images
The red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) is one of many species endangered by the destruction of the longleaf pine-grassland ecosystem. The only woodpecker species to make cavities in living pine trees, the red-cockaded woodpecker prefers to make its home in longleaf pines. Its cavities are later inhabited by other species in the longleaf forest, including other birds, squirrels, insects, and reptiles.
Photograph by Erich G. Vallery, USDA Forest Service. Courtesy of Forestry Images
Employees of the Red Cypress Lumber Company harvest logs in Dougherty County, circa 1905. The timber and naval stores industries, both important economic activities in Georgia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were reliant on the longleaf pines in the state's Upper Coastal Plain.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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The native range of the endangered longleaf pine and grassland forest ecosystem once covered approximately 90 million acres, from southern Virginia to east Texas. In 1936 around 4 million acres were found in Georgia, reduced to 376,400 acres by 1997.
Image by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway, located in Baker County, conducts research and offers educational programs related to ecology and conservation. The center was founded upon the death of Robert Woodruff, the owner of Ichauway, in 1985, and the campus was completed in 1996.
Courtesy of Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center
A hunting party gathers at Ichauway, in Baker County, circa 1931. Today Ichauway, founded as a quail-hunting plantation by Coca-Cola executive Robert Woodruff in 1929, is the site of the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center.
Courtesy of Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center
Researchers for the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway, in Baker County, use an access tower to conduct research on longleaf pines. The center also conducts research in such areas as conservation biology and wetland ecology.
Courtesy of Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center
The Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta offers a variety of science education programs to the public in its planetarium, observatory, and exhibit hall. The center also offers tours through the Fernbank Forest, a sixty-five acre primeval forest adjoining the center's grounds.
Courtesy of Fernbank Science Center
One of the few stands of original oak and hickory forests remaining in Georgia is located at Fernbank Forest in Atlanta. Trail guides at the Fernbank Science Center offer programs in the forest for both students and the general public throughout the year.
Courtesy of Fernbank Science Center
The Jim Cherry Memorial Planetarium at the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta houses more than 200 projectors, including the Carl Zeiss Mark V projector, which are used to simulate the night sky for students and visitors.
Image from Ryan Stavely
The Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta opened in 1992 and is a partner with the Fernbank Science Center. The 160,000-square-foot museum houses several permanent exhibitions on nature and culture, in addition to the Star Gallery, the Children's Discovery Room, and a living reef aquarium.
Image from Jeremy Brooks
In 2001 the Fernbank Museum of Natural History installed Giants of the Mesozoic, a permanent exhibition featuring life-size replicas of dinosaurs, in its atrium. Based on fossils found in Argentina, the replicas include two of the world's largest dinosaurs, Argentinosaurus and Gigantosaurus.
Image from Eden, Janine and Jim
Replicas of the world's largest dinosaur and the world's largest carnivorous dinosaur are on display at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. The Fernbank was the first museum in the world to install full-scale dinosaur skeleton replicas of this magnitude.
Image from Steve Harwood
Saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, was mined from caves during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and used to make gunpowder. Several caves in Georgia, including the Kingston Saltpeter Cave in Bartow County, were excavated for the substance during both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
A caver investigates the remains of a wooden vat used to hold the soil excavated during the process of mining saltpeter, or potassium nitrate. Water added to the soil leached out the nitrates and collected in troughs at the base of the vat.
Courtesy of Joel M. Sneed
A kettle formerly used in saltpeter operations was removed from a north Georgia cave and put into use on a local farm. Kettles were used to boil water containing potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, in order to extract the substance for use in the production of gunpowder.
Courtesy of Joel M. Sneed
A Columbia azalea blooms along a walking path in the Callaway Brothers Azalea Bowl at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain. Dedicated in 1999, the Azalea Bowl is the world's largest azalea garden.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In 1930 Cason and Virginia Callaway purchased 2,500 acres of land in Harris County upon which a number of indigenous flowering plants, including the plumleaf azalea, grew. The couple developed the land, and in 1952 they opened the Ida Cason Gardens (later Callaway Gardens) to the public.
Courtesy of Callaway Gardens
Japanese paperkites emerge from their cocoons in the conservatory of the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center at Callaway Gardens. The center is the largest enclosed tropical conservatory in North America and is home to more than 1,000 butterflies.
Courtesy of Callaway Gardens
The Listening Place at Birdsong Nature Center, located near Thomasville in southwest Georgia, overlooks the Big Bay Swamp and provides an isolated place for the public to observe wood ducks, alligators, snakes, and other wildlife.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
Ed and Betty Komarek purchased the Birdsong Plantation in southwest Georgia in 1938. Today the house serves as an observation area for the Birdsong Nature Center, a nonprofit educational training center founded by Betty in 1986.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
The bird window, situated in the former dining room of the Komarek home at the Birdsong Nature Center near Thomasville, overlooks Betty Komarek's Japanese garden, where as many as 130 different bird species may be observed throughout the year. Komarek founded the center in 1986.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
The Southface Energy Institute was founded in Atlanta in 1978 to promote the construction of environmentally sustainable homes and communities through the use of "green" technology. Consumers and builders learn to conserve energy and water, reduce waste, and maintain healthy air quality through the institute's programs.
Photograph by Neil Dent
Leon Neel stands at the entrance to the Big Woods of Greenwood Plantation in Thomas County. Neel spent his career promoting the ecological management of the longleaf pine forests in Georgia and Florida.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
A stand of longleaf pines grows at the Greenwood Plantation in Thomas County. The longleaf pine ecosystem is naturally managed by fire, and the use of prescribed annual burning, as was promoted by Georgia ecologist Leon Neel, is fundamental to the maintenance of the forest.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
The Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area is Georgia's second-largest ecosystem, covering 18,000 acres in Lowndes County.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
Kinderlou Tower stands at the end of a half-mile boardwalk at the Grand Bay Wetland Education Center near Valdosta. Originally a fire tower, the structure now allows visitors a view of the wetland's diverse plant and animal communities.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
Pitcher plants grow in the savannah plant community at Grand Bay Wetland Education Center in Lowndes County. The wetland is home to a variety of plant communities, including longleaf and slash pine flatwoods, cypress and gum swamps, and shrub bogs.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
The white ibis is one of many bird species inhabiting the Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area in Lowndes County. The Grand Bay wetland is a designated bird-watching site along the Southern Rivers Birding Trail and offers glimpses of a variety of birds, including egrets, hawks, owls, and woodpeckers.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
Wood ducks fly over the Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area in Lowndes County, which includes the 18,000-acre Grand Bay/Banks Lake ecosystem.
Photograph by Julius F. Ariail Jr.
The Flint River, named for the stone along much of its shore, supports many varieties of local wildlife. Originating near Atlanta, the river flows south for more than 200 miles, feeding two power-producing lakes along the way, as well as providing farmers with water for crop irrigation.
Photograph by J. S. Clark
Fishing is a popular activity on the Flint River, which flows for more than 200 miles from the Piedmont region to the Chattahoochee River in southwest Georgia. Fishermen prize the river's shoal bass, a fish unique to the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system.
Photograph from Wikimedia
Two men attempt to rescue a cow in high water near Albany during the Flint River flood of 1925. The Flint River has overrun its banks several times in Albany's history; the most severe flood occurred in the summer of 1994, when the river crested in the city at more than forty-three feet.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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Fish swim in the constructed "blue hole" at the Flint RiverQuarium, which opened in Albany in 2004. The 22-foot-deep tank is modeled on the natural blue holes, or springs rising from underground caverns, that occur along the Flint River in southwest Georgia.
Courtesy of Flint RiverQuarium
In 1994, due to tropical storm Alberto, the Flint River overflowed its banks and flooded Montezuma. The water rose as high as the rooftops, and whole buildings were engulfed in the flood.
Photograph from 161st Military History Detachment
A man-made channel known as the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway allows watercraft to navigate the marshes separating Georgia's barrier islands from the mainland.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Tybee Island, formerly known as Savannah Beach, is located about eighteen miles east of Savannah. A popular destination for tourists, Tybee is home to approximately 3,400 year-round residents.
Image from James St. John
Because of its strategic location at the mouth of the Savannah River, Tybee Island has played an important role in the military history of Georgia. The island's lighthouse, constructed in 1736, was used as part of a warning system during the War of 1812.
Fort Pulaski, completed in 1847, could mount 146 cannons, some on the parapet atop the seven-and-a-half-foot-wide walls and others in casemates inside the walls. The fort is positioned at the mouth of the Savannah River, across from Tybee Island.
Courtesy of Georgia Historical Society.
The beach on Tybee Island is a popular destination during the summer months for both tourists and Savannah residents. At the end of the nineteenth century, physicians often encouraged patients to "take the salts" at Tybee in the hopes of curing such ailments as asthma and allergies.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The Tybee Pavilion, located at the end of a pier on Tybrisa Street, is used for festivals and other special events throughout the year. The original Tybrisa Pavilion, which burned down in 1967, was popular for its crystal ball, big bands, and dime dances early in the twentieth century.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The lighthouse on Tybee Island is the island's most recognized landmark. Constructed in 1736, the lighthouse is one of the oldest in the nation still in operation. Renovations began on the lighthouse in 1999, and in 2002 ownership and management of the lighthouse transferred to the Tybee Island Historical Society.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Hotel Tybee, shown here about 1930, was one of several grand hotels built on Tybee Island around the turn of the twentieth century, during the area's heyday as a resort community.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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At a Whigham Roundup a rattlesnake is displayed for festivalgoers who want a closer view.
Courtesy of John B. Jensen, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
A rattlesnake is placed in an enclosure following weighing at a Claxton Roundup.
Courtesy of John B. Jensen, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
Venom extraction at a Whigham Rattlesnake Roundup.
Courtesy of John B. Jensen, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
Rattlesnakes contained within enclosures at a Claxton Roundup. Between 300 and 600 snakes are typically collected for the roundups.
Courtesy of John B. Jensen, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
A rattlesnake roundup takes place in Fitzgerald, the seat of Ben Hill County, in 1974. Originally intended to reduce venomous snake populations in the community, Fitzgerald's annual roundup was replaced in 2001 with a wild chicken festival, in part because of public condemnation of the practice.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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The acquisition of such potential greenspace as this stream corridor helps to connect other greenspaces, preserve animal habitat, and maintain water quality.
Courtesy of Leslie Edwards
The doubling of Georgia's population has exacerbated pollution problems and fragmented the landscape through urban sprawl. This housing development in the Atlanta metropolitan area illustrates the loss of greenspace over a wide area.
Photograph by Maik
This former pasture, now an example of preserved rural land, provides greenspace in the midst of rapid development.
Courtesy of Leslie Edwards
The threatened loggerhead sea turtle lives in the waters off Georgia and nests on the state's beaches.
Image from Florida Fish and Wildlife
A sea turtle hatchling makes its way to the ocean on Blackbeard Island.
Courtesy of U.S Fish and Wildlife Service
Blair's Saltpeter Corridor leads into Kingston Saltpeter Cave in Bartow County. The Georgia Speleological Society has documented the existence of at least 513 caves in the state.
Photograph by Joel M. Sneed
Sixteen species of bats, including gray bats (Myotis grisescens), use Georgia's caves as crucual hibernation or migration habitats. As many as 15,000 gray bats, an endangered species, live in Frick's Cave in Walker County.
Courtesy of Georgia Wildlife Federation
A caver descends the Fantastic in Ellison's Cave (in Walker County), one of the largest caves in the country. The Fantastic, at 586 feet, is the deepest straight cave drop in the continental United States.
Photograph by Willie Hunt
Caver Larry Blair examines vandalism of the "Jug Formation" in Kingston Saltpeter Cave, the only cave in Georgia to be managed as a preserve by the National Speleological Society. Because most caves in Georgia are located on private land, the preservation of caves, including the protection of wildlife within them, often falls to the landowners.
Photograph by Joel M. Sneed
As a result of changes in the landscape, the number of painted buntings (Passerina ciris), the most colorful songbirds in the state, declined by more than 50 percent in Georgia from 1966 to 2000.
Photograph by Amanda Heffron Morgan
An osprey (Pandion haliaetus) soars in the sky.
Image from Colby Stopa
Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), the world's fastest birds, reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour as they dive for prey. Although use of the pesticide DDT during the mid-twentieth century drove the species to extinction in the eastern United States, peregrine falcons have recovered and often choose to nest in large urban areas like Atlanta.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), also known as the bobwhite quail, is Georgia's state gamebird and is featured on one of Georgia's wildlife license plates.
Image from William L. Farr
The colorful and musical house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) has taken over habitat once used by the house sparrow. From 1980 to 2000 the house finch population exploded in Georgia's suburbs and towns.
Image from Rhododendrites
Thomas Burleigh, recognized as the state's most important ornithologist, is the author of Georgia Birds (1958), the first comprehensive state bird book.
Courtesy of Warnell School of Forest Resources, University of Georgia
The Okefenokee Swamp, which floods about 400,000 acres in south Georgia, is an important wetland bird habitat. About 232 different birds can be found in the swamp, which provides habitat for 64 nesting species.
Image from George Gentry - US Fish and Wildlife Service
Endangered wood storks in Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, located in Liberty County, is one of seven refuges administered by the Savannah Coastal Refuges Complex. The refuge's 2,762 acres consist of saltwater marsh, grassland, mixed deciduous woods, and cropland, which serve as home to many different bird species.
Image from Evangelio Gonzalez
The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) has recovered from losses caused by pesticides, especially DDT. No nests were found in Georgia in 1979, but by 2004 eagles had nested in more than eighty locations in the state.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The colorful and musical house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) has taken over habitat once used by the house sparrow. From 1980 to 2000 the house finch population exploded in Georgia's suburbs and towns.
Image from Rick from Alabama
The bobwhite quail, pictured here on a 1987 first-class stamp, is Georgia's official state game bird.Â
Courtesy of Smithsonian National Postal MuseumÂ
This granite outcrop is located at Panola Mountain State Conservation Park in Rockdale County. Most of the granite outcrops in the Piedmont are approximately 300-350 million years old.
Photograph by Melinda Smith Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
Stone Mountain Park encompasses 3,200 acres just sixteen miles east of downtown Atlanta. Formed around 300 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era, the mountain itself is the world's largest mass of exposed granite.
Image from Darryl Pierce
This Panola granite, found at Panola Mountain State Conservation Park in Rockdale County, differs in mineral composition and texture from the granite outcrops at nearby Stone Mountain and Arabia Mountain.
Photograph by Chad A. S. Mullikin
Bobcats are one of the more than ninety species of mammals that inhabit Georgia. Bobcats generally feed on such smaller mammals as rats, mice, and shrews.
Photograph by Melinda Smith Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
As a result of habitat loss and the overhunting of fur, river otters were extinct in Georgia by the mid-twentieth century. After being successfully reintroduced, however, otters now thrive throughout the state.
Photograph by Melinda Smith Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
The only known calving grounds for the right whale are off the coast of Georgia and north Florida. In the late fall the pregnant females migrate to the relatively calm, cool, and predator-free waters, where, from December to April, calving occurs.
Image from FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
The "Confederate Daisy," or "Stone Mountain Yellow Daisy," grows in the shallow soil on the granite outcrops of Stone Mountain. The flower is so named because it is found only within a sixty-mile radius of the mountain. The species was discovered in 1846.
Photograph by Lee Coursey
Although many plants from the surrounding forest and old-field communities cannot survive on granite outcrops, a unique and highly specialized group of plant species are able to thrive in the thin soil layers on the rock. The soil is shallow at the edges of the outcrop and becomes progressively deeper toward the center.
Photograph by Melinda Smith Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
Lichens and mosses grow on a granite outcrop at Panola Mountain State Park in Stockbridge. As resurrection plants, lichens and mosses are able to resume photosynthesis after a drought, making them ideally suited to the desert-like conditions on the outcrops.
Photograph by Melinda Smith Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
The mat-forming quillwort (Isoetes tegetiformans) is a spore-producing (no flowers) plant found only in a few granite outcrops of the Georgia Piedmont region.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
The North Atlantic right whale is the world's most endangered large whale. Less than 350 individuals remain.
Image from Moira Brown
The Franklin tree or lost camellia (Franklinia alatamaha), once native only to Georgia, was discovered along the banks of the Altamaha River in the mid-eighteenth century and was last recorded in the wild by nurseryman and plant collector in 1803. All known specimens today are in cultivation.
Photograph from Francine Riez, Wikimedia
The riparian zone along the sides of the Altamaha River is thick with vegetation. The plants in the riparian zone are diverse. Common trees include river birch, laurel oak, southern red oak, post oak, willow, red maple, sycamore, locust, hickory, red cedar, cypress, and sweet gum.
Image from Bubba73 (Jud McCranie)
Darien is a coastal tidewater town about sixty miles south of Savannah, located at the mouth of the Altamaha River. The port town's origins can be traced to the earliest years of colonial Georgia.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The Altamaha River Delta in Glynn and McIntosh counties is a major reserve for migratory and wintering birds. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources estimates this area supports at least 55,000 species of seabirds and shorebirds annually.
Image from Electronic Collection of Georgia Birds
The Ocmulgee River runs from Macon just south of Lumber City before converging with the Oconee to form the Altamaha River.
Photograph by Melinda S. Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
The Ocmulgee River flows right through Macon. In fact, Macon is the dividing line between two very different Ocmulgees. To the north of Macon, the river is rocky. Below Macon, the river turns sandy and slowly meanders southward.
Image from Lee Coursey
The chiefdom of Ichisi was located between modern Macon and Perry on the Ocmulgee River. The capital town was probably located at the present-day Lamar archaeological site, a part of Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
William Bartram, an accomplished naturalist and artist, traveled widely throughout the southeastern United States in the late eighteenth century.
Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park Collection, Philadelphia
Bartram's Travels is an account of his second trip to the Southeast (1773-77). He accurately described the flora and fauna in their natural habitats, including Georgia's rare Franklin tree (Franklinia alatamaha).
From Travels, by W. Bartram
The title page of William Bartram's Travels (1791). The book has been reprinted many times and continues to fascinate American readers.
Visually, sandhills are often striking as islands of exposed sand and sparse vegetation in the midst of denser forest. Sandhills are characterized by thick sandy deposits one to twenty-five meters deep.
Sandhills form the prime habitat of Georgia's state reptile, the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus).
Courtesy of James H. Miller, USDA Forest Service, www.forestryimages.org
Black seabasses and sponges at Gray's Reef, one of the largest nearshore live-bottom reefs of the southeastern United States. The Gray's Reef sanctuary is located thirty-two kilometers off Sapelo Island.
Image from Virginia Sea Grant
The Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, located on Skidaway Island near Savannah, is an autonomous research unit within the University System of Georgia. The institute's 700-acre campus contains facilities for both saltwater and freshwater ecological research and supports approximately fourteen faculty and seventy staff members.
Image from Michael Rivera
Stone Mountain is the largest exposed mass of granite in the world. It was once used by Native Americans as a ceremonial place. Today, Stone Mountain Park is owned by the state of Georgia.
Image from G. DAWSON
The town at the base of Stone Mountain was founded in 1847. The expansion of Georgia's railways connected Stone Mountain to residents in Atlanta and as far away as Augusta.
Photograph by Daniel Meyer, Wikimedia
The Memorial Lawn at Stone Mountain is used as a viewing area for the park's summer laser show. During the winter the park provides snow tubing for visitors on the lawn.
Photograph by Chris Yunker, Wikimedia
An unknown group on a bus trip tours the site of Stone Mountain in June 1929. Work on a Confederate memorial had begun on the side of the granite mountain, but the carving would not be completed until the 1950s.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #cob162b.
The carving on Stone Mountain depicts the Confederate icons Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Commissioned by the president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the sculptor Gutzon Borglum began work on the relief in 1915. He was fired in 1925, and Augustus Lukeman completed the carving.
Photograph by Mark Griffin, Wikimedia
Many blackwater rivers originate in the Coastal Plain. Large floodplains and swamp systems are often associated with these river systems, which are critically important for restoring groundwater, preserving wildlife habitat, and reducing water pollution.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
A stream flows through the Chattahoochee National Forest, a large portion of which lies in Gilmer County.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Large portions of the Cohutta Wilderness Area lie in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Fannin County. Designated a wilderness area by the federal government in 1976, Cohutta today covers around 40,000 acres in Georgia and Tennessee and is the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi River.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Lake Allatoona was created in 1950 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control. At more than 12,000 acres, Allatoona is one of the larger lakes in the state.
Image from Ronnie
Lake Rabun was created in 1915 by the Georgia Power Company. Today, residents enjoy water sports, such as jet-skiing, at the Rabun County lake.
Photograph from Wikimedia Commons
Dam construction, ca. 1909, on the Ocmulgee River near Jackson, in Butts County.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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The Georgia Power Company built Lake Oconee in 1979. The area around the lake includes a golf course and a resort.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Lake Chatuge, in the north Georgia mountains, was created by the Tennessee Valley Authority during World War II.
Image from Shawn Taylor
Lake Hartwell, named after Revolutionary War hero Nancy Hart, provides drinking water, hydropower, and public entertainment to millions of people each year. The reservoir, which borders Georgia and South Carolina, exists because of Hartwell Dam on the Savannah River.
Courtesy of UGA Archway Partnership
These men are rafting timber down the Oconee River in Laurens County, circa 1890.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
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A worker at the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, located in Bibb and Twiggs counties, lights a prescibed fire in 2014. Burning the understory encourages the growth of pine trees, which provide habitat for the red cockaded woodpecker. Native Americans living in the Piedmont prior to European arrival also set surface fires to clear land for agriculture. The thick-barked pines survive, but most shrubs and saplings are killed, favoring an open forest with grasses and herbs.
Photograph by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
Native Americans in Georgia impacted species distributions. For instance, Yaupon holly leaves were dried and made into a highly caffeinated black tea, which was used for purification purposes. The holly leaves were traded far beyond the plant's native Coastal Plain range.
Engraving by Theodore de Bry after an original painting by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues
The East and West Railroad, built between Cartersville and Cedartown around 1900, is one of several railroads that came to Polk County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
plk073-84.
Construction on Hartwell Dam began in 1955 and concluded in 1963. The dam diverts the Savannah River and some of its tributaries into Lake Hartwell, which, with nearly 1,000 miles of shoreline, is one of the largest man-made bodies of water east of the Mississippi River.
Photograph by U.S Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District
Vintage photo of an American chestnut tree, taken in the early twentieth century.
Courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation
Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) are the largest North American frogs and can be almost eight inches long. They are found in lakes, bogs, and ponds and will eat almost anything they can catch, including insects, fish, mice, and other frogs.
Photograph by Carl D. Howe
The red spots on this juvenile newt are warnings of toxic skin secretions. Because of this chemical defense, red-spotted newts (Notophthalmus viridescens) can coexist with fish, which often eat other salamanders.
Image from Nicholas A. Tonelli
The tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) is fast-growing and large, and it approaches eight inches in length. This terrestrial salamander is usually black with yellow markings that may come in the form of spots, blotches, bands, or even short stripes.
Image from Peter Paplanus
Rat snakes (Elaphe obsoleta) are commonly found in wooded or swampy areas. Known as the "chicken snake" in farming areas because they will readily eat chicks and chicken eggs, rat snakes also enter barns in search of mice and rats. Like corn snakes, they are very good climbers.
Image from Alabama Extension
The alligator snapping turtle (Macrochelys temminckii) is the largest freshwater turtle in North America. An adult can weigh from 35 to 200 pounds. This turtle has very powerful jaws.
Image from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Southeast Region
Ground skinks (Scincella lateralis) inhabit pine and mixed hardwood forests where leaf litter is abundant. They are brown with black stripes on their backs and range in size from three to five inches. Ground skinks feed on insects and spiders.
Image from Dan Mooney
Green anoles (Anolis carolinensis) live in trees, shrubs, vines, and tall grasses. These lizards can often be found on fences and walls. Green anoles are also known as chameleons because they can quickly change color from green (when they fight) to brown (during cool weather).
Image from Vicki DeLoach
The scarlet kingsnake (Lampropeltis triangulum) is restricted to wooded areas, primarily pine. Adults are usually less than two feet long. The diet of these snakes includes baby rodents, small lizards, and snakes.
Image from Peter Paplanus
American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) are found on the Upper Coastal Plain of Georgia, in swampy areas, rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. They are the last of the living reptiles that were closely related to dinosaurs.
Image from gailhampshire
The marbled salamander (Ambystoma opacum) is three to five inches in length. The ground color is Black, and there are numerous silver-white crossbands, giving the marbled appearance for which the species is named.
Image from Peter Paplanus
The eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is primarily terrestrial, and during periods of inactivity, it will find shelter under leaf litter or rotting logs. The box turtle has a high-domed carapace that is olive to brown with yellow markings.
Image from Ezra S F
The six-lined racerunner (Cnemidophorus sexlineatus) lives in dry, sunny areas, such as grasslands and open woodlands. The slender bodies of these lizards range in size from six to eleven inches. They feed on insects.
Image from Hans Hillewaert
Eastern coral snakes (Micrurus fulvius fulvius) have short, fixed fangs in the front of the mouth. The potential seriousness of a bite from this species warrants a universal warning not to pick up a snake in this region of the country, no matter how pretty, without being certain of its identity.
Image from FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
Although this species is considered terrestrial, it is often found in the vicinity of permanent or temporary aquatic areas. Adults often reach lengths of three to four feet. This eastern kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) feeds on snakes (including venomous species), lizards, rodents, birds and eggs, even eggs scavenged from turtle nests.
Image from Seanin Og
The ornate chorus frog (Pseudacris ornata) can be identified by its dark mask and broad black spots on its sides and groin. Its color ranges from reddish brown, to gray, to bright green. The mating call can be heard near small ponds or flooded areas during the winter and early spring.
Image from FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
Commonly found in the sandy areas of south Georgia, the gopher tortoise is the state reptile of Georgia.
Image from Randy Browning, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
Photograph of an oak toad sitting on a log. Growing to only about 1.75 inches, oak toads (Bufo quercicus) are the smallest toads in North America. Oak toads, unlike most toad species, are usually active during the day. They can be found in southern pine forests by turning over logs and other woodland debris.
Image from Alabama Extension
The secretive, small (less than five inches) spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) is easily distinguished by the bright yellow or orange spots on its smooth black carapace.
Image from Bernard DUPONT
The Chattahoochee River, as seen in Peachtree Corners, Georgia.
Image from Marcus Williams
The Chattahoochee River is a popular recreation spot for canoers, kayakers, and tubers.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The Eugene P. Odum School of Ecology is the primary academic unit for ecological research and teaching at the University of Georgia.
Courtesy of University of Georgia Photographic Services. Photograph by Paul Efland
Odum was instrumental in the founding of the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, and the Institute of Ecology, which was later renamed in his honor.
Courtesy of University of Georgia Photographic Services
The Rock House, on the University of Georgia's south campus, overlooks the Tanyard Creek ravine and Sanford Stadium. The structure was the first home of the Institute of Ecology (later Odum School of Ecology).
Photograph from GeorgiaInfo
Members of professor Whit Gibbons's staff search for snakes along marshy areas of the Savannah River Ecology Lab.
Courtesy of University of Georgia Photographic Services. Photograph by Rick O'Quinn
The Alcovy Conservation Center in Covington serves as the Georgia Wildlife Federation's headquarters and as a training ground for environmental activists and educators.
Sawnee Mountain Preserve, a 720-acre park in Forsyth County, opened to the public in 2005. Built on abandoned mining lands, the park offers hiking, rock climbing, and environmental education to vistors.
Photograph by Melinda S. Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia
The W. H. Reynolds Memorial Nature Preserve is named for Judge William Reynolds, who donated 130 acres of wetlands to Clayton County in 1976. In 1997 the preserve obtained an additonal sixteen acres adjacent to the original property, including primarily hardwood forests, as well as ponds, wetlands, streams, designated picnic areas, and four miles of well-defined footpaths. The preserve promotes environmental education and is open to the public.
Courtesy of UGA Archway Partnership
Cypress trees line the Flint River, which supports one of the state's unique local ecosystems. During the 1970s, the Georgia Wildlife Federation successfully fought the construction of a dam on the river in an effort to preserve Sprewell Bluff in Upson County.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
The island, marsh, and estuary system of Cumberland Island is a highly productive ecological system.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Sand dunes protect Cumberland from erosion and inundation by the sea.
Photograph by Sean McMenemy
Marshes trap sediments discharged from mainland rivers, protecting the appearance and recreational qualities of Cumberland's beach.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Pottery fragments dating to the era of slavery, excavated from Cumberland Island.
Courtesy of Southeast Archaeological Center
Dungeness Plantation was built on the south end of Cumberland Island in 1884 by Thomas Carnegie. Only ruins of the structure remain.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey, Photograph by Philip E. Gardner.
The First African Baptist Church, constructed in 1937, is on the northern end of Cumberland Island.
Photograph from National Park Service
Cumberland's interior maritime forest is studded with saltwater coves, freshwater ponds, and inland swamps, all providing shelter for migratory ducks and long-legged wading birds.
Image from JR P
Cumberland Island was established as a national seashore in 1972. Its beaches are protected from development.
Image from Maigh
Cumberland's interior maritime forest includes live oaks and saw palmettos.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Nineteenth-century tobacco pipes excavated on Cumberland Island.
Courtesy of Southeast Archaeological Center
Sewing and tailoring tools from slavery days, excavated on Cumberland Island.
Courtesy of Southeast Archaeological Center
Personal adornments probably worn by enslaved people, excavated on Cumberland Island.
Courtesy of Southeast Archeological Center
A fireplace that once was part of a slave cabin on Cumberland Island.
Image from NPCA
Ruins of the Dungeness Mansion on Cumberland Island. The mansion, built by Thomas Carnegie on the former site of Catharine Greene Miller's estate, burned in the mid-twentieth century.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Despite the fact that Georgia receives an average of fifty inches of rain annually, demands placed on the state's water resources have increased greatly during the last thirty years, making water a major environmental concern.
Photograph by Bradley Huchteman
The Georgia Conservancy acquired more than 2,000 acres in Douglas County in the late 1960s, which became Sweetwater Creek State Park. Sweetwater Creek runs through the Lithia Springs park on its way to the Chattahoochee River. The acquisition of this land for the state was one of the conservancy's earliest victories.
Photograph by Jeff Gunn
Appropriate maintenance is critical once the other six water-saving steps of Xeriscape gardening are in place.
Photograph by Gary L. Wade
Efficient irrigation is one of the seven steps involved in Xeriscape gardening, a method of gardening used primarily in urban areas to conserve water while maintaining lawns and plants. Drip irrigation and hand watering help target irrigation to plants that need it.
Photograph by Gary L. Wade
Proper planning and design are important, both for designing a new landscape and for adding to an existing landscape. When possible, incorporate existing native vegetation, including trees, into the landscape.
Photograph by Gary L. Wade
Archaeological evidence indicates that humans have lived along the banks of the Chattahoochee River for a very long time.
From Flowing through Time: A History of the Lower Chattahoochee River, by L. Willoughby
The Chattahoochee River flows through Columbus, one of the cities located along the fall line marking the boundary between the Piedmont and Coastal Plain geologic provinces. The hard rocks of the Piedmont form outcrops that create rapids and waterfalls along the fall line.
Photograph by andrewI04Â
This spring near Jacks Knob Trail in Union County is the likely source of the Chattahoochee River. Georgia is a headwaters state—many rivers begin in the state, but none within its borders has its origins elsewhere.
Courtesy of Edwin L. Jackson
Georgia encompasses parts of five distinct geographic regions: the Appalachian Plateau, the Valley and Ridge, the Blue Ridge, the Piedmont, and the Coastal Plain.
Courtesy of Pamela J. W. Gore
Sea oats grow along the coast of Blackbeard Island in Georgia's Lower Coastal Plain.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Flint River runs through Sprewell Bluff State Park in Upson County. Rivers are slow in the Piedmont region because of the flatter, rolling topography.
Photograph by Doug Bradley
As of 2003 thirteen of Georgia's ninety-eight species of freshwater mussels were protected under the Endangered Species Act, and four more were candidates for listing; only a single species of Georgia's sixty-seven freshwater snails was listed in 2003, and one other species was a candidate.
Courtesy of Paula M. Gagnon
The logging industry thrives in Georgia in the twenty-first century.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Laurel Brake on the Tallulah River. Early settlers used draft animals, like the oxen shown here, to haul logs.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
A splash dam built by the Gennett Lumber Company on Camp Creek, in Rabun County. Splash dams are log structures that raise the water level enough to back up a large quantity of cut timber.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
This splash dam on Camp Creek releases its power and quickly moves harvested timber downstream.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
The first government crew from the U.S. Forest Service to arrive in Fannin County, May 1911. The forest service was created to protect forested land from overharvesting and poor forestry practices.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
The Chattahoochee National Forest was established in 1937 by the U.S. Forest Service. National forest land is protected from development.
Image from JR P
Workers at a logging operation in the Persimmon community in Rabun County, ca. 1907. Teams of oxen are shown hauling logs.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
rab078.
Crew and equipment at a logging camp in Franklin County, ca. 1900.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #fra073.
A logging crew with a team of oxen, working on the Cliff Creek in Rabun County.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
A logging crew with some oxen, working on Camp Creek in Rabun County.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
A splash dam on Camp Creek in Rabun County, built by the Gennett Lumber Company.
Courtesy of Mars Hill College, Appalachian Room Archives, Gennett Collection.
American chestnut seedlings growing at Pennsylvania State University's Arboretum, a partnership research project with the American Chestnut Foundation.
Courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation
Surviving American chestnut tree in Kentucky, 2003.
Courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation
Open burr of an American chestnut.
Courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation
An American chestnut tree after destruction by the blight, circa 1900.
Courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation
An American chestnut tree infected with the fungus imported from Asia, commonly known as the blight.
Courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation
A photo of American chestnut flowers that have been bagged for controlled pollination. American chestnut trees provided the most useful hardwood in the United States until a widespread fungus almost eradicated the species.
Courtesy of American Chestnut Foundation
Three loggers sit in a partially cut American chestnut tree, circa 1850. Prior to 1900 the American chestnut covered approximately one-quarter of the Appalachian forests, with its range extending into the Piedmont region and mountains of north Georgia.
Courtesy of American Chestnut Foundation
The unconsolidated sandstone bluffs of Providence Canyon in Stewart County were formed during the Cretaceous Period and are among the oldest exposed Coastal Plains rock formations in the state.
Courtesy of Matthew M. Moye
Providence Canyon, pictured in 1893, is a network of gorges created by soil erosion in Stewart County. Historical accounts indicate that the canyon began to form in the early 1800s as a result of poor farming practices.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
stw002.
Identified by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources as one of the state's "Seven Wonders," the site is protected by Providence Canyon State Park, located approximately 150 miles southwest of Atlanta, in Stewart County.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Pioneer agriculture and sharecropping in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to the massive erosion of topsoil across nearly 10 million acres of Georgia's farmland, resulting in loss of productivity in the soil and silting in the state's streams and creeks.
In 2008 this specimen of Franklinia alatamaha was named Georgia State Champion by the Georgia Forestry Commission for being the largest of its species in the state.Â
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center, Photograph by John Manion.
The Pigeon Mountain salamander (Plethodon petraeus) is found only on the eastern slopes of Pigeon Mountain in northwestern Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
The Etowah darter (Etheostoma etowahae) is a fish restricted to the upper reaches of the Etowah River (Coosa River basin) in Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Hairy rattleweed (Baptisia arachnifera) is a perennial legume with heart-shaped leaves clasping the stem. It is greenish-gray and covered with dense, cobwebby hairs. This plant is native to Wayne and Brantley counties, Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Once a leading destination for tourists in the Southeast, Tallulah Gorge still attracts numerous visitors, particularly in the fall when the mountainsides are ablaze with color.
Photograph by Jeno
In 1992 the state, in partnership with Georgia Power, created Tallulah Gorge State Park, one of the most popular in Georgia's park system. Controlled releases from the dam allow visitors to hear the roar of the falls on selected weekends in the spring and autumn.
Photograph by Jeno
Tempesta Falls is located in northeast Georgia's Tallulah Gorge State Park, near the Rabun and Habersham county line. Tempesta, one of a series of four main cataracts that make up Tallulah, today only roars to life on selected weekends in the spring and autumn.
Photograph by Mark Morrison
George Cooke's Tallulah Falls (1841) features elements typical of the Hudson River School of landscape painting, particularly in its depiction of the picturesque and sublime. Tallulah Falls, located in the northeast Georgia mountains, comprises four waterfalls, three of which Cooke captures in his painting. Oil on canvas (35 3/4" x 28 3/4").
Courtesy of Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; gift of Mrs. William Lorenzo Moss. GMOA 1959.646
A train on the Tallulah Falls Railway travels through Cornelia, in Habersham County, in the 1930s. Completed in 1907, the railroad ran from Cornelia to Franklin, North Carolina, stopping at Tallulah Falls along the way.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
hab046.
Helen Dortch Longstreet, the second wife of General James Longstreet, is remembered for her unflagging work as a Confederate memorialist, progressive reformer, and a librarian and postmistress. She is also known for her unsuccessful efforts to prevent the damming of Tallulah Falls in northeast Georgia.
Rufus L. Moss Sr., pictured in 1853, was a prominent Athens businessman who played a vital role in the development around Tallullah Falls and Gorge. In addition to founding the first hotel in the area, the Cliff House, in 1882, Moss cofounded the town of Tallulah Falls and worked to bring the Northeastern Railroad into the region. In 1909 he sold his significant land holdings to the Georgia Power Company, paving the way for the electrification of Georgia.
Courtesy of Mary Bondurant Warren
The Cliff House Hotel, built in 1882 by Rufus L. Moss Sr., was the first lodging establishment in Tallulah Falls. The hotel served the thriving tourist industry until 1937, when it burned in a kitchen fire.
Courtesy of Rabun County Historical Society
The "Old Hotel," as Tallulah Falls locals called it, pictured in the 1930s. Many people came from all over Georgia (and beyond), some via the Tallulah Falls Railroad, to bathe in and enjoy the springs in the surrounding area. The resort was built in the 1800s.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, # rab033.
Once a leading destination for tourists in the Southeast, Tallulah Gorge still attracts numerous visitors, particularly in the fall when the mountainsides are ablaze with color.
Photograph by Martin Bravenboer
Lying twenty miles south of Savannah, Ossabaw is the principal barrier island of the upper Georgia coast (11,800 upland acres) and the third largest of Georgia's Sea Islands.
Courtesy of Buddy Sullivan
The durable timber from live oaks, plentiful on Blackbeard Island, was used for shipbuilding in the first half of the nineteenth century. The island was purchased as a federal timber reserve by the U.S. Navy Department in 1800.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Ships entering Georgia ports reported first to the disinfecting wharves of the South Atlantic Quarantine Station, which was established in 1883 on Blackbeard Island for the detention and treatment of ship crews and cargoes infected with yellow fever.
From Images from the History of the Public Health Service, by R. Kondratas
The remains of dead trees, mostly live oaks, jut out of the sand like sculpture in "The Boneyard" on Blackbeard Island. The term is used to describe the areas of beach on barrier islands where old trees are buried and exposed over and over as the tides change the shape of the islands.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The western side of Jekyll Island is fronted by Jekyll Creek and salt marsh, and the eastern edge of the island is defined by its beach and the Atlantic Ocean.
Courtesy of Jekyll Island Museum
Built in 1919, the Crane Cottage was one of the most expensive homes ever built on Jekyll Island during the Jekyll Island Club era. The Italian Renaissance mansion was designed to resemble a villa in northern Italy admired by Richard Teller Crane Jr. Landscaped gardens were an important component of the estate's beauty.
Image from Evangelio Gonzalez
The original clubhouse for the Jekyll Island Club was completed late in 1887. In 1978 the 240-acre club district was designated a National Historic Landmark, and seven years later work began to restore the clubhouse and annexes into a world-class hotel and resort named the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
AT&T president Theodore Vail (with telephone, far right) joined the opening ceremony for the first transcontinental telephone line from his home on Jekyll Island. With Vail are (left to right) architects Welles Bosworth and Samuel Trowbridge, banker J. P. Morgan, and businessman William Rockefeller.
Courtesy of Jekyll Island Museum
Since 1950 Jekyll has operated under the auspices of the Jekyll Island Authority. The island has become renowned for the preservation of its natural and historic resources, and it provides public access to thousands of visitors annually.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Peruvian bark (Cinchona calisaya), also known as quinine, was grown during the mid-eighteenth century in the Trustee Garden at Savannah. Cultivated by the Georgia colonists as a medical botanical for the lowering of fevers, quinine was later used in the nineteenth century to treat malaria.
From Kohler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, by F. E. Kohler
Even before the Savannah settlement was a reality, artist John Pine produced this imaginary depiction of clearing the land. The central clearing in the background of his 1732 engraving may reflect the early planners' vision of a public garden as an integral part of the new colony.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Photo File.
The white mulberry tree (Morus alba) was introduced to Georgia in 1734, when James Oglethorpe established the Trustee Garden in Savannah. Mulberry leaves are used to feed silkworms, which the colonists raised to make silk for shipment to England.
Photograph by Wikimedia
Sumac (Rhus glabra), a native North American plant with medicinal properties, was cultivated in the Trustee Garden by early settlers to the Georgia colony and sent to London, England. The garden was established in 1734 as an agricultural experiment station modeled after the physick and botanical gardens at Oxford and Chelsea in England.
Image from formulanone
Metropolitan Atlanta has nearly 16,000 miles of roads, the second highest per capita of any other city in the nation. It also has the fifteenth worst traffic congestion in the country and the eighteenth worst year-round particle pollution.
Photograph by Doug Waldron
The International Garden explores the interrelationship of plants and people throughout civilization and contains representative species from the floras of the Mediterranean region, Latin America, China, and the southeastern United States.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia
The State Botanical Garden of Georgia is a "living laboratory" serving teaching, research, public service, and outreach missions for the University of Georgia and the citizens of Georgia.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Society of Georgia
The theme gardens, collections, and display beds contain a diverse array of both native and exotic plant species, including orchids.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia
The Annual and Perennial Garden, one of the most colorful areas in the entire garden, includes the All-America Selections Display Garden.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia
The Alice Hand Callaway Visitor Center and Conservatory was completed in 1984 and contains offices, classrooms, a gift shop, the Garden Room Cafe, and a 10,000-square-foot conservatory featuring tropical plants of economic interest.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia
The Day Chapel, completed in 1994, was the third major building constructed at the State Botanical Garden. Modern in design, the chapel contains an eclectic combination of styles and details.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia
The International Garden at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia pays homage to John and William Bartram, who discovered the Franklin Tree (named in honor of Benjamin Franklin), and Ernest Henry "Chinese" Wilson, who introduced Asian varieties to the Southeast.
Courtesy of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia
Kudzu (Pueraria lobata; formerly P. Thunbergiana)Â is a prolific weedy vine and botanical newcomer that has covered millions of acres in Georgia and the Southeast and has made its way into southern folklore and culture
Photograph by NatureServeÂ
Between 1935 and 1942 Soil Conservation Service nurseries grew 100 million kudzu seedlings. They were shipped throughout the Southeast and distributed to farmers, who used the vine on rilled and gullied croplands, and to railroads and highway departments that planted the seedlings along exposed rights-of-way.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive, #AJCP554-01b.
Kudzu, an aggressive invasive species, grows upward or outward at the rate of 60 to 100 feet per season. It engulfs and smothers trees and establishes dense mats along the sunny sides of roads.
Photograph by Chris Dilworth
The eastern box turtle is the only resident species of turtle on the Savannah River Site that is primarily terrestrial.
Image from Stannatsw
The University of Georgia Marine Institute was founded primarily as a research institute for salt marsh, watershed, and nearshore ecosystems. The goals of the research are to understand the biological, chemical, geological, and physical processes that control salt marsh systems.
Photograph by Darby Carl Sanders, New Georgia Encyclopedia
A great egret perches on a branch in the Okefenokee Swamp.
Photograph by Siddharth Sharma
One end of Georgia's fall line, which marks the boundary between the hard rocks of the Piedmont geologic province and the softer rocks of the Coastal Plain, is located in Columbus. Marked by waterfalls and rapids, the fall line stretches across the state to Augusta.
Photograph by Pamela J. W. Gore
In 1964, as president of the Ecological Society of America, Odum announced in the journal BioScience the establishment of a "new ecology," a "systems ecology" that dealt with the world as a whole, bringing all of the ecosystem sciences together.
Courtesy of University of Georgia Photographic Services
The collections at the UGA museum grow by more than 25,000 specimens each year. Here, a scientist inspects specimens in the arthropod (mites and insects) collection.
Courtesy of University of Georgia Photographic Services
Tools used by nineteenth-century inhabitants of the Okefenokee Swamp.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Cypress swamps, winding waterways, and floating peat mats are a major part of the Okefenokee's habitat mosaic.
Image from Timothy J
The swamp's distinctive ecosystem is the subject of legends, tall tales, and personal experience narratives about bears, alligators, and encounters with the natural world.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Geoff L. Johnson.
The Honey Prairie Fire, a massive wildfire in the Okefenokee Swamp, is pictured on April 30, 2011, two days after a lightning strike in the swamp ignited the blaze. The fire burned more than 300,000 acres in the swamp over the next three months.
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Traditional poled boats, suited to maneuvering in tight water, were used in the days of alligator hunting and frog gigging. The swamp is now a federal wildlife refuge.
Courtesy of Zach S. Henderson Library, Georgia Southern University, Delma E. Presley Collection of South Georgia History and Culture.
In 2007 lightning strikes caused the largest wildfire in Georgia's history, which burned more than 564,000 acres. Known as the Bugaboo Scrub Fire or the Georgia Bay Complex Fire, it took almost two months to put out.
Photograph from FEMA
The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is one of the most ecologically dominant species in the Okefenokee Swamp.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
The Okefenokee Swamp's ecosystem is home to a diverse assemblage of animals and plants, none of which are unique to the swamp, but which together create an unusual biodiversity found in few places in the United States.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Geoff L. Johnson.
Virtually all species of wading birds and waterfowl native to the Southeast can be found in the Okefenokee in some season. Sightings of great egrets, wood storks, blue herons, and white ibises are common.
Image from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
Alligators are among the hundreds of animal species to make their home in the Okefenokee Swamp.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Geoff L. Johnson.
The green tree frog can be found in wetlands of Georgia, including the Okefenokee Swamp. The chorus of these frogs during the spring and summer months can be almost deafening.
Image from Vicki DeLoach
Alligators, which are native to Georgia, are among the hundreds of animal species to make their home in the Okefenokee Swamp.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Amicalola Falls in Dawson County is one of Georgia's most popular attractions.
Photograph by Darren Duke
Falls also exist in central Georgia, where the Coastal Plain gives rise to the Piedmont Plateau. The most notable of these is High Falls at High Falls State Park, near Jackson in Butts County.
Image from gary riley
Anna Ruby Falls, in the heart of the Chattahoochee National Forest, marks the junction of Curtis and York creeks. Curtis Creek drops 153 feet and York Creek 50 feet to form the twin falls known as Anna Ruby Falls.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Geoff L. Johnson.
Little St. Simons Island, consisting mostly of low tidal salt marsh with forested upland tracts on its eastern (ocean) side, is privately owned and is accessible only by water.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Sea Oats grow wild on the beach in Tybee Island.
Image from Melissa Johnson
An English actress, Kemble married Pierce Mease Butler and was upset to learn of the family's slave labor operations. She eventually published an account of her impressions of slavery, after divorcing Butler and losing custody of their two children.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Photo File.
One of a series of barrier islands, Sea Island is approximately five miles long and one and a half miles wide at its widest point. A causeway connects the island with St. Simons Island, its larger neighbor to the west.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Aerial view of Sea Island in 1931.
Courtesy of Sea Island Company
Trillium persistens, an endangered plant found in northeast Georgia, is one of the plants that the Georgia Botanical Society helps to monitor.
Reprinted with permission from Hugh and Carol Nourse
A scenic road cuts through the wilds of Sapelo Island. The barrier island is home to abundant plant and animal life.
Image from Kevin
Detroit automotive engineer Howard Coffin (right) visits with U.S. president Calvin Coolidge (left) on the porch of "The Big House"—the south-end tabby-stucco structure originally built by Thomas Spalding in 1810. Coffin owned much of Sapelo Island from 1912 to 1934.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, # sap118.
North Carolina tobacco heir Richard J. Reynolds Jr. utilized the island as a part-time residence for thirty years, from 1934 until his death in 1964. His widow sold her holdings on Sapelo to the state of Georgia in two separate transactions in 1969 and 1976.
Image from Bubba73 (Jud McCranie)
A hurricane in October 1898 seriously undermined the foundation of the original Sapelo Lighthouse. In September 1905 a new lighthouse—a 100-foot steel pyramidal tower with a kerosene-lit flashing light—was activated and a third-order Fresnel lens was installed.
Image from Kevin
Spanish moss hangs from the trees across much of Savannah and coastal Georgia.
Image from Via Tsuji
Thomas Spalding reintroduced the use of tabby, a local mixture of oyster shell, lime, sand, and water, as a primary building material on the coast.
Courtesy of Patricia Barefoot
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