The city of Dahlonega in northern Georgia banks on being known as the site of the first U-S gold rush. They draw millions of dollars a year from the tourists who flock there.
But now officials of a city just west of Atlanta Villa Rica claims it’s home to the first gold rush.
Local mine owner in Dahlonega Tammy Ray isn't buying it. "They might have been the first place that found gold, but they’re not the biggest gold rush. I mean, because they can’t prove they were the first."
While Villa Rica has street signs boasting its claim, Carl Lewis who works at the city owned gold museum is quick to downplay any rivalry with Dahlonega. "We ain’t in competition with them at all. I would rather ours be called the Georgia Forgotten Gold Rush."
The Dahlonega mine owner says she's not worried about losing tourists to Villa Rica.
As summer tourism gears up, expect higher fees and fewer services at Georgia's parks and historic sites. 12 percent of employees will lose their jobs, most of those left will be furloughed, five parks will limit access, and 12 historic sites will cut operational days. The state Department of Natural Resources is making the cuts to cope with a nearly 39 percent reduction in state appropriations and a 24 percent projected loss of revenue.
AP/CHRIS VIOLA National Park Service resource manager John Fry tells the story of the one-room First African Baptist Church on Cumberland Island. The church was the site of the wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in 1996 and is the most popular spot on the island's north end.(Photo: Chris Viola/AP)
Fry mashes the brakes and curses under his breath as a pack of wild hogs scurries across the narrow dirt road, where spiky palmetto fronds claw at both sides of his National Park Service pickup.
It takes nearly an hour to drive the bumpy 13-mile Main Road on wild CumberlandIsland. Fry's truck passes within inches of burly live-oak branches drooping overhead. Backpackers hiking the route are forced to step off and let him pass.
"We lose a lot of mirrors and windshields here," says Fry, the Park Service's chief resource manager for the island, nodding toward the twisted mount for the truck's missing passenger side mirror.
Getting around has never been easy on CumberlandIsland, a federally protected wilderness off the Georgia coast that's larger than Manhattan. Reachable only by boat, and off limits to most wheeled vehicles, the island's inaccessibility made it the ideal spot for John F. Kennedy Jr. to ditch the prying paparazzi when he married Carolyn Bessette here in 1996.
For more than 25 years, government rules have required most of the 43,500 visitors who come each year to explore the island on foot. But under a mandate from Congress, the Park Service plans to change that early next year by offering daily motorized tours in spite of the tough terrain and cries of protest from environmentalists.
Fry says the tours will dramatically boost visitation to remote areas few tourists get to see.
Critics say the change threatens to spoil the island's primitive tranquility.
"The very last of anything is always the most precious, and there are no other places like CumberlandIsland," said Will Berson, a policy analyst for the Georgia Conservancy. "We think wilderness is an important idea that is incompatible with running people in jeeps through the area."
Cumberland Island. (Images: New Georgia Encyclopedia) Though wild horses graze on its marsh grasses, alligators lurk in its freshwater ponds and rare sea turtles nest on its pristine beaches, CumberlandIsland also has a long human history.
Park Service ranger Pauline Wentworth says she often hears visitors, particularly senior citizens, say they wish they could take a bus or van tour.
Most, she says, have a particular destination in mind: "They want to see the church where JFK Jr. got married."
The FirstAfricanBaptistChurch, built in 1937 for black servants on the island, is a tiny clapboard building with a torn and faded rug on the floor and handmade pews with splintered edges and corners.
The Greyfield Inn shuttles guests there almost daily in the bed of a pickup. Those tours and monthly Park Service van tours were targeted years ago in a lawsuit by environmentalists.
A judge ruled the Park Service had no authority to shuttle visitors through the designated island wilderness. The inn, on the other hand, could continue giving tours with a special permit.
Congress intervened in 2004 with a law removing Main Road and two others from the wilderness designation that protects the surrounding forest. The same law ordered the Park Service to provide daily tours. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican, got the measure passed as part of a larger spending bill.
"The way it was, only an 18-year-old backpacker could walk the 13 miles up the trail to see some of these historical sites,"Kingston said. "This island is not paid for by some of the taxpayers for some of the people. I don't think John Q. Taxpayer should have to walk 13 miles to see Plum Orchard."
Heated opposition has prompted the Park Service to move cautiously - too slowly, in Kingston's opinion - in the four years since Congress changed the law. It wasn't until September that the Park Service released a study outlining its tour plans.
The Park Service has been collecting the required public comments on the proposal from hearings in Atlanta and in St. Marys, the island's nearest inland neighbor. Berson of the Georgia Conservancy said it's unlikely any criticism will delay tours from starting in early 2009.
Several tourists visiting CumberlandIsland on a recent weekend said they favor motor tours for disabled and elderly visitors, but on a much more limited basis than Congress has prescribed.
Bill Parsons, 55, of Cornelia, Ga., was showing friends around the mansion ruins near the ferry dock and recalling his hike to the secluded north end for a camping trip five years ago.
"I didn't see anybody for three days. It was splendid - that's what I came here to do," Parsons said. "I don't want it to be a theme park, no Disneyland. There's already that stuff."
An elegant museum in Cartersville's modest downtown has become a surprising sanctuary for Western art collectors.
The Booth Western Art Museum is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a display of 37 pieces of Western art called Western American Art South of the Sweet Tea Line II.
Executive director Seth Hopkins said the idea is to show seldom-seen Western art from around the South. The exhibit includes works from from 74 private collectors, museums and galleries around the region.
Several other Western art collections are based at the museum, which was founded by an anonymous family to showcase the unique art.
"Wouldn't it be cool to collect a lot of Western things together and show the public that there are a lot of people in the South who are interested in Western art and collect it?" said Hopkins, summing up the idea behind the collection.
The 35,000 square foot exhibition spans 150 years of history and a stylistic range of art.
In one display, two neon-color cowboys sit on blue and red horses outlined in pink, before a backdrop of purple mountains. In another, a black and gray solemn Native American stares into the horizon. Bronze men are frozen mid-air during a Cherokee ball game.
"It is always a struggle to convince people that is it worth the drive to come see this place," said Hopkins. "But this kind of show, I think, is the one that nobody can come and be disappointed."
He calls the Sweet Tea exhibit the museum's most ambitious show to date.
In 2005, the museum held a similar show displaying art mostly from Georgia collectors and museums. This year's collection includes renderings from Russian, German and Canadian artists.
The exhibit also happens to be a nice mixer for Western art collectors in the South.
Bill Brogdon, 66, said he had no idea two other collectors lived within a mile of his suburban Atlanta home until Hopkins organized an art tour of the three collections.
"It is a little bit unusual in this part of the country to collect Western art," Brogdon said.
Now Brogdon's Earl Biss oil painting joins the other vivid landscapes on display for Sweet Tea, which is on display until Nov. 30.
About 40,000 people view the museum's art work annually, but marketing director Kathy Lyles said she hopes a new gallery will bring more visitors to see the art — and kindles greater friendships among collectors and artists.
"We have wonderful relationships with the artists in our museum and the collectors," Lyles said. "And plenty more to come."
Whale shark and friends at the Georgia Aquarium. (Dave Bender)
It might have been the setting for a “Jaws” movie.
Six snorkelers wading like ducks in a row, cruising just below the surface of the water while watching exotic fish dart beneath them. It was all very peaceful, until the mysterious whale shark appeared out of the deep blue.
The whale shark is one of the most perplexing and elusive creatures in the ocean, still largely a mystery even to the marine biologists who have dedicated careers to studying the creatures.
But here, in the confines of the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta, it’s impossible not to see the giant whale sharks — particularly when you’re in the middle of their fish tank.
It’s also somewhat hard to avoid them: The creatures seemed more intrigued by the visitors, often lumbering toward them like a slow, curious locomotive.
The guests were circling the world’s largest fish tank through the aquarium’s “Swim With Gentle Giants” program, which plucks six snorkelers and six divers into the 6.3-million-gallon fish tank each day.
The visitors are treated to close-up encounters of roving bands of sting rays, sleek hammerhead sharks, enormous grouper and countless other species. But the puzzling whale sharks were the real draw — and for good reason.
The aquarium is the only one outside Asia to house the whale sharks, and the only one in the world to offer tourists a chance to dive with the creatures. The program’s directors pitch it as an innovative and safe way to help visitors better understand animals they’d otherwise never see.
“An immersion experience is the ultimate way of connecting people and animals,” said Bruce Carlson, the aquarium’s chief science officer.
“It’s a real opportunity for us to expand ways for people to get to know the animals here at the aquarium and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our visitors to see animals they’ll probably never get a chance to see in the wild.”
But the ambitious program has raised concerns from critics who worry that dangling legs and curious tourists could stress the habitat of the whale sharks and thousands of other animals that share the massive tank.
“There’s a chance these animals can become stressed because of the increase in the amount of people in their environments,” said Lori Marino, an Emory University biologist who studies whale biology. “Not only can it affect their physical health, but their mental health. And we don’t know how much stress this puts on the animals or how they could respond.”
The Georgia Aquarium is one of the few places that have ever attempted to house the creatures and the only one in the United States.
So far their record is spotty: Two of the whale sharks have died since the aquarium opened in 2005. But the aquarium has invested in research projects on the whale shark in Mexico and Taiwan.
And the facility is quickly making a name for itself in the research community for its whale shark work, thanks to divers who have already logged thousands of hours feeding and studying the massive animals.
Carlson said he gave the go-ahead to the new program because the dives have so far had “no effect on the whale sharks’ behavior.”
“We’re the experts on that, and we can make the judgment because we probably spend more time with whale sharks than anyone criticizing us,” he said.
“Most people who have contact with them have probably had a minute-long experience in the ocean. You have to trust our judgment on that. We’ve gotten to understand their nature, and we feel quite confident that our presence is not affecting them.”
