It’s always good to get back to your roots. Yesterday, April 1, I slipped out to one of my favorite state parks, Sweetwater Creek- located just west of Atlanta in Douglas County near I-20 West. The redbuds are just coming out, a bit late since all spring plants seem to be about two weeks late statewide this year.
The woods still look bare, but along Sweetwater Creek on a high rocky bank, I found a nice patch of Trailing-arbutus, Epigaea repens, blooming. My friend Joel McNeal at UGA, one of our foremost plant experts, tells me that Trailing-arbutus is “spotty” in the Piedmont but is found more commonly on the Cumberland Plateau of northwest Georgia and in Tallulah Gorge/ Panther Creek area of Rabun County. But then, Sweetwater Creek SP is the place of the unexpected. Until a flood scoured its banks a few years back, the creek was lined with Mountain Laurel. Some of it survived and is making a comeback. The park gives you the feeling sometime that you are not in the Piedmont anymore, but in the Mountains.
On February 21, 1996, a pair of Harlequin Ducks were found on a flat rock in the middle of Sweetwater Creek near the ruins of the old mill. Harlequins are extremely rare in Georgia, but they nest on fast flowing streams in places like Glacier National Park in Montana. Maybe they felt at home on Sweetwater Creek. I also found a Spring Azure, Celastrina ladon, along the path yesterday. Butterflies have just appeared in the Atlanta area during the last week, and migrant birds have started to trickle in from Central and South America and Mexico. The Yellow-rumped Warblers, one of the few warbler species that stays in Georgia for the winter, are still feeding in the treetops along Sweetwater Creek.During April, the males will become very colorful and begin singing prior to their departure for the nesting grounds in boreal Canada.
My visit reminded me that had it not been for the efforts of the Georgia Conservancy, there might not be a Sweetwater Creek State Park.
It was the Georgia Conservancy that convinced Governor Lester Maddox to purchase the land to be protected as a state park. He visited the property one Sunday afternoon with our president, Robert (Bob) Hanie, and was so taken by the old Confederate munitions factory ruins that he decided to protect the property (Dr. Bob Platt and Dr. Charlie Wharton were also on the trip).In the years since, additions have been made to the park.
During my time in office, I learned that a housing development was planned on the eastern side of Sweetwater Creek SP. Because I had learned to love the park from my birding trips, I immediately called DNR Commissioner Lonice Barrett and asked him to see what he could do to buy the 100 acres from the developer. A deal was made, and now the land is part of the park. Later, The Nature Conservancy was able to protect an important area at the confluence of Sweetwater Creek and the Chattahoochee River on the south side of the park.
Spring is a great time to go to Sweetwater- but so if summer, fall and winter. It is a state treasure.
