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The Waterfall in Roswell Used to Power Confederate Cloth · The Red Solo Traveler Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Close your eyes for a second and just imagine the sound.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: You are walking through this dense, humid canopy of Georgia trees.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: And long before you see anything at all, you hear it.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely not a quiet stroll.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Right. It's not a little babbling brook. It is a heavy, wide,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: unyielding sheet of water just violently smashing into the rocks below.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And it's not a quiet stroll. The sound is so
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: immense it literally physically vibrates in your chest.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: It absolutely dominates the space.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: It does. It dictates the entire atmosphere of the woods
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: before you even lay eyes on the source. So welcome
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to the Red Solo Traveler podcast. Today we are exploring
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a place that is universally beloved for that exact sound
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: astounding metro Atlanta waterfall park that hides well. A staggering
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: industrial nightmare.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Which is a side of the park most people just
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: completely ignore.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Totally. And we need to clarify something for the map
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: readers right up front. The water you are hearing is
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Vickery Creek. That is V-I-C-K-E-R-Y. You might see some old
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: signs or rogue digital maps trying to spell it Vickery
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: with an O, but it is absolutely Vickery. Yeah.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Getting the name right is the very first step in
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: reclaiming the actual history of this space. Because when you
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: visit today, the landscape itself is Well, it's actively lying
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: to you.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because reading through Louie's article, The
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Waterfall in Roswell Used to Power Confederate Cloth, I have
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: to admit, my first instinct was entirely about the camera
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: roll aesthetic.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, sure. It looks incredible in photos.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: It really does. If you look at the photos of
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: this place, I would totally drive out to Roswell just
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to hike it. It looks like this pristine, hidden oasis
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: tucked into the shade of the city.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: But that is the trap. It is incredibly easy to
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: look at that rushing water and the lush greenery, And
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: just assume you have stumbled into a natural sanctuary. We
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: have to break that illusion immediately. That dam is not scenery.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It was never meant to be a natural wonder. It
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: was constructed to forcibly choke a creek and turn it
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: into a massive engine for manufacturing cloth. So the underlying
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: question we have to grapple with today is this. Can
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: a place this photogenic still tell you the grim truth
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: of what happened there? Or does a spray of the
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: water inevitably win out over the history?
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: The way this park tricks visitors is honestly brilliant. Because
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: it plays on, like, every single expectation we have of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: what a historic nature hike should be. You pull into
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the small city parking lot on a weekday morning. The
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: address is 95 Mill Street, by the way.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yep, 95 Mill Street.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: You step out of your car, and the very first
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: thing you encounter is this covered wooden footbridge spanning the creek.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: It looks perfectly rustic. You immediately think you are walking
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: into some preserved, sleepy 19th century village.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: And that bridge... Is the very first lie. It has
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: zero historical connection to the mill era.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Wait, zero? None.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: The city of Roswell built that covered bridge in 2005.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, I took a second look at the photos
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: after reading that. It's younger than the original iPhone.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is a modern construction designed simply to connect
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: two different park areas, but it instantly primes visitors to
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: romanticize the space.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: It totally works, too. It lulls you into this quaint mindset. Mm-hmm.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And then past the bridge, you hit the ruins. You
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: see these massive stone and brick walls of the old
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Roswell Manufacturing Company just sitting in the shade of the trees.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Right, which looks very dramatic.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, growing up, I saw a lot of
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: old brick mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. And they
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: almost always got these incredible second lives. They became trendy
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: loft apartments or, you know, microbreweries with exposed brick walls
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: or art galleries. My brain naturally expected that same trajectory here.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Which is another expectation that completely fails in this environment.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: This site never got that trendy adaptive reuse second life.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: It remained a ruin.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: It just sat there.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again by fire, and
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: then largely abandoned to decay until the city incorporated it
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: as parkland. You get just enough of a standing wall
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: to understand the massive footprint of the operation. But there
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: is no roof, no windows, nothing to remind you that
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: this was a functional, deafening workspace.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: See, when you were walking those trails, navigating the stairs,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: stepping over massive tree roots, hitting those short pitches where
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you're really glad you wore sneakers with some serious tread,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it feels almost enchanted.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: People love the hike vibes.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: They do. It's like nature has reclaimed this harsh industrial footprint.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Doesn't it make sense that visitors just go there to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: soak in that feeling? Like, do we have to carry
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the weight of the history when the forest has literally
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: grown over the trauma?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: We do, actually. Because focusing solely on that nature healing
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: aesthetic completely erases the human beings who suffered for that infrastructure.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: We have to establish the foundational rule of this site.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Keep this in your head whenever you look at a
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: photograph of that park. The waterfall is the power source.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: The workforce is the story.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: The waterfall is the power source. The workforce is the story.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The trees might look beautiful today, but those brick
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: walls housed a machine, and that machine chewed people up.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So if the waterfall is just a power source, then
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the way people treat it today is profoundly disconnected from reality.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Louis mentions visiting on a warm June morning, and he
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: describes the scene below the spillway. And to be clear,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: this isn't some gentle mountain cascade.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: It's a wide, aggressive sheet of water pouring over a
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: sheer industrial dam. But in the basin below, he said
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: it looked like a city beach. Families were packed onto
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the rocks. Kids were splashing in the water. It has
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the exact image you see on travel blogs, labeled as
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: a hidden gem swimming hole.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that specific travel advice is entirely obsolete and
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: honestly dangerous. As of August 16, 2024, the city of
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Roswell strictly banned all water access from On the city
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: side of the falls.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I know they had already banned coolers and alcohol, right?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those were already out. But now the signage explicitly
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: mandates trail use only.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So the era of treating the industrial basin like a
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: municipal pool is over.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Precisely. But here is the bizarre reality of how we
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: manage public land. You are standing in the city lot
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: at 95 Mill Street, subject to that strict water ban.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: But if you walk across that 2005 wooden footbridge, you
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: trigger an invisible jurisdictional tripwire.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Just by crossing the bridge? Yep.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: You completely leave the city's jurisdiction and enter National Park
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Service land, specifically the Vickery Creek unit of the Chattahoochee
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: River National Recreation Area. Oh, right. And the MPS unit
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: has its own separate parking lots off Riverside Road and
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Oxbow Road.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: That is wild. You can cross a wooden plank and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: completely change the governing body, the rule set, and the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: law enforcement jurisdiction without the landscape changing at all. It is.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And that jurisdictional split creates chaos. Because on the MPS side,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: The opposite bank people routinely ignore the preservation ethos.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: They just scramble down.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they pick their way down the steep, eroded dirt
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: banks just to get into the water. They completely ignore
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: the fact that the viewing platform isn't there to help
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: you scope out a swimming spot. The platform exists so
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: you can look at the dam and comprehend the sheer
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: scale of the engineering.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Wait, mechanically speaking, how does a waterfall weave cloth? Because
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: we aren't talking about plugging a machine into a wall.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: If that water is the power source... How does it
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: physically run a factory of that size?
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating, really. Think of the dam as a massive
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: engine block. By damming the creek, they created a deep
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: pool of water which generates vertical pressure or head.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm with you.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: That pressurized water is forced through a penstock, basically a
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: large pipe, where it smashes into a turbine. The spinning
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: turbine turns a massive central drive shaft that runs the
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: entire length of the mill building. Wow. And from that
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: central shaft, A terrifying maze of leather belts and wooden
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: pulleys connects to hundreds of individual looms.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So the roar of the waterfall outside is directly translating
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to the deafening, bone-rattling clatter of hundreds of mechanical looms inside.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly that. Roswell King built these mills in the late
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: 1830s specifically to harness that free kinetic energy. He had
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: the massive Roswell Manufacturing Company mills built in 1839 and
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: 1853 and the nearby Ivy Woolen mill.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the output, because if this is
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a massive deafening machine, what is it churning out? Knowing
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: what they produced completely changes how we view the arrival
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: of the Union Army.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: By the time the Civil War escalated, this complex was
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: an indispensable industrial engine for the Confederacy. They were not
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: making quaint local blankets. They were producing heavy sheeting, tenting materials, rope,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: and most critically, a specific gray woolen cloth used for
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Confederate uniforms. A textile so ubiquitous that that historians still
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: refer to it today as Roswell Gray.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And that is the pivot point for the entire story.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: When you learn about the Atlanta campaign and Sherman's march,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the destruction of Southern property is often painted as random,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: vindictive cruelty. But if these mills are pumping out Roswell
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Gray in military tents, this isn't random collateral damage.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: The Union Army wasn't there to break things for fun.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: They were there to sever a critical military supply line.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: It was a highly tactical strike.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the strict sequence of events in July
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: 1864 because it unfolds with brutal logic. Union Brigadier General
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Kenner Gurge's cavalry rides into the area. But their primary
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: objective isn't actually the mills. They are desperately looking for
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: a way to cross the Chattahoochee River to advance on Atlanta.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: But the Confederate militia sees them coming and burns the
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: river bridge to stall the advance, right?
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Correct. So Gerard's cavalry is stalled. The next day, July 6th,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Gerard moves into Roswell to secure the area. And discovers
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: this massive industrial complex. And the mills are still running.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: The letter belts are still turning. The looms are still
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: weaving Roswell Gray.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: The audacity to... to keep the machines running while the
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Union cavalry is literally in town. And this leads to
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: one of the most absurd, almost cinematic moments in the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: historical record. The Ivy Mill, which is actively weaving Confederate supplies.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: tries to pull a massive diplomatic bluff.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was a spectacular miscalculation.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: They ran a French flag up the flagpole over the mill.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the owners transferred title to a French citizen hoping
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: to claim international neutrality. They assumed the Union Army wouldn't
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: risk an international incident by burning foreign-owned property.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: How did they possibly think that would work? A French
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: flag waving over a Georgia factory making Confederate uniforms.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, it failed the moment a Union officer walked
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: through the door. You can't claim neutrality when the physical
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: evidence of war production is stacked to the ceiling. The
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: bluff was called immediately. The mills were systematically emptied of
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: their usable materials and the buildings were burned to the ground.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: And Sherman signed off on this.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. When General William T. Sherman was informed of
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: the strike on July 7th, he replied with his, quote,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: entire approval.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: OK, so the buildings are scorched. The machinery is disabled.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But an industrial complex of that size doesn't run itself.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: There had to be hundreds of people operating those looms
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: when the cavalry rode in. What happens to them?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: This is where the narrative shifts from a standard military
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: operation into a profound, chilling human tragedy.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Sherman issues a subsequent order. He doesn't simply commend the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: destruction of the physical plant. He orders the arrest of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: every single person connected with the factories.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Hold on. Arrested? We are talking about roughly 400 workers?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And the men of military age in Roswell were already gone,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: drafted or enlisted in the Confederate Army. So the people
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: left running these machines were almost entirely women and children.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: How do you legally arrest a workforce of women and
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: children in the middle of a war? What is the charge?
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Sherman charged them with treason.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Treason, a capital military offense for 12-year-old girls and mothers.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Under the harsh logic of total war, Sherman argued
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: that by actively operating a factory that exclusively supplied the
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: enemy's military... They were no longer noncombatants. They were an
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: active component of the rebellion.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: They weren't holding rifles, but they were outfitting the army
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: that was killing Union soldiers. By charging them with treason,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Sherman created the legal framework to completely eradicate the workforce,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: ensuring the mills could not be restarted even if machinery
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: was repaired.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: The logistics of what happens next are terrifying. This wasn't
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: a tidy, organized relocation program. They were treated as prisoners
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: of war.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: The physical journey is a nightmare of logistics. These 400
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: women and children were loaded onto open wagons and hauled
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: roughly 15 miles to Marietta, where they were held at
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: the abandoned Georgia Military Institute. From there, they were forced
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: into railroad boxcars.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure you, the listener, really visualize this.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: We are talking about the dead heat of a Georgia July. Wooden,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: unventilated freight cars packed with terrified families. That isn't a relocation.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: That borders on a death march by rail.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: It was unimaginably brutal. They were shipped north through Chattanooga,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: up through Nashville, and finally dumped in Louisville, Kentucky. And
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: from Louisville, they were pushed across the Ohio River into
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Indiana and the surrounding northern areas.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Why Indiana? What was the strategic value of sending them there?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Sherman's exact justification was devastatingly blunt. He wrote, the women
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: can find employment in Indiana. He gave them a few
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: days rations, shoved them onto freight trains, and exiled them
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: into entirely unfamiliar territory. a region where they were actively
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: despised as the enemy and just left them to fend
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: for themselves.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the agonizing question of memory. With
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a human tragedy of this magnitude, how does a modern
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: visitor reconcile the deportation of 400 women and children with
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the serene, sun-dappled waterfall they are taking selfies in front
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of today? Like, where is the memory kept? Because the
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: landscape at 95 Mill Street seems to have complete amnesia.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Well, the physical site reflects the erasure of the community.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Very few of those deported workers ever made it back
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: to Roswell. The survivors who made it through the first
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: northern winter took whatever menial labor they could find in
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: river towns that were already bursting with war refugees.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: So they just scattered.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, families fractured and lost track of each other forever.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: The community was simply deleted.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And the mill itself tried to move on, right? The
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: 1853 building was actually rebuilt after the war.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: It was. It was rebuilt and operated for decades until
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: a second massive fire destroyed it in 1926. After that,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: The ruins were left to the elements, slowly aging into
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: the scenic parkland visitors walk through today.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So you have a massive gap in the historical record
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: at the site of the falls. An entire population vanished,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and the ruins just look like a romantic hiking trail.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But there is a place in Roswell where that gap
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: is filled, where the names of the exiled are actually remembered.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. A monument was eventually erected, dedicated to the lost
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: mill workers of Roswell. It attempts to give permanence to
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: a story that the river washed away.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: But, and this is the ultimate spatial irony, the detail
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: that completely exposes how we curate our public history, the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: monument is not at the falls. You can pull into
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Old Mill Park, you can walk across the 2005 wooden bridge,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: you can stand on the scenic overlook platform staring at
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the dam, and you will never see their monument.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: No, you won't.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: It is located in Sloan Street Park, which is a
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: 10-minute walk away from the Mill parking lot.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: It perfectly encapsulates how we package history for public consumption.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: If you read the standard Explore Georgia write-up for the ruins,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: it provides a highly sanitized architectural timeline. It tells you
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: when the bricks were laid and when they burned. But
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: the overlooked platform at the falls doesn't shout about the deportation.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: It doesn't tell you about the treason charges or the
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: unventilated boxcars in July.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: So if you pull into 95 Mill Street, if you
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: come solely for the rushing water and you skip the
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: stone monument on Sloan Street, you have only seen the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: pretty half of the story. You have consumed the aesthetic
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of the park without digesting the reality of the ground
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: you're standing on.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: You've looked at the power source, but you've entirely ignored
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: the workforce.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So bringing it all together into a final verdict
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: for you, how should you properly visit and digest this space?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I will say it is absolutely worth a morning visit
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: if you are already in the Atlanta area. It's only
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: 20 odd miles north of downtown, and it is incredibly
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: easy to pair with a lunch on Canton Street in Roswell,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: which has a fantastic dining scene.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: But we need to attach some heavy caveats to that recommendation. First,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: calibrate your expectations. This is not a destination waterfall in
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: the deep North Georgia mountains. Do not drive three hours
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: expecting Amicalola Falls. It is a metro Atlanta park with
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: a very heavy industrial footprint.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And second, please do not make Vickery Creek your only
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: history stop in Atlanta, especially if your time in the
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: city is tight. Right.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: You only have one or two days. Institutions like the
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and the Atlanta History Center carry
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: much more of the comprehensive civic story of the region.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Vickery Creek is a highly specific localized story about industrial
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: infrastructure and a brutal military campaign. And frankly, it's a
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: story that most visitors completely ignore as they rush past
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: the ruins on their way to feel the spray of
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the water.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Which leaves us with a final thought to mull over
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the next time you visit a place like this. When
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: a profound human tragedy is physically tethered to a place
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: of stunning natural beauty, does the landscape inevitably wash away
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the history? Are we, as modern visitors, complicit in erasing
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the past when we point our cameras strictly at the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: water and frame out the ruins? Or is it simply
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: human nature to want to look away from the darkness,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to turn our backs on the terrible things we do
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to each other, and just let the spray win? Thank
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: you for joining us on this exploration on the Red
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Solo Traveler podcast.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: See you next time. Thank you.