Great Day Trips from Atlanta

Back to battlefields

If you head north by northwest, you can backtrack the Union army’s advance on Atlanta during the Civil War. At Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park (www.kennesaw.ga.us), 30 minutes from the city via I-75 and Cobb Parkway, Confederate troops opened the gate to Atlanta after a hard battle. The site has re-enactments and interpretive programs, but also miles of woodsy hiking trails and grassy areas for picnicking. Near Kennesaw is the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, featuring “The General,” a railroad engine used in the Andrews Raid, a bit of Civil War derring-do that was immortalized in the movie The Great Locomotive Chase. A longer haul—about an hour and 45 minutes—up I-75 is Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park (760-866-9241, www.nps.gov/chch), where the Atlanta campaign began. A bloody battle there in September 1863 left 34,000 dead or wounded. Today, it’s a tranquil spot filled with artifacts, a visitors’ center and a museum.

Cherokee people

If you find Native American history more interesting than Civil War history, visit the former Cherokee capital of New Echota (www.gastateparks.org) on state route 225 off I-75, about one hour northwest of town. Inhabited from the 1820s to the mid-1830s, the legislative and legal hub housed, among other things, the Cherokee Nation’s supreme court and a print shop that published a weekly newspaper in English and Cherokee. Replicas of both occupy the 200-acre, state-operated site. You can also see an early 1800s Cherokee tavern and the two-story home of a white pastor that served as church, school and post office in the community’s short life. Further along Route 225 is another place offering a unique view of American Indian life: The Chief Vann House is a two-story, red-brick manor built in 1804 by James Vann, a wealthy half-Cherokee, half-Scot planter, which now houses a collection of period antiques, reproductions and artifacts.

Days of gold

Keeping to historic themes, an hour’s jaunt north via Georgia 400 and US 19 puts you in the city of Dahlonega (www.dahlonega.org), the center of Georgia’s 19th-century gold rush. The old Lumpkin County Courthouse is now a museum devoted to those legendary days, and you can tour the former Consolidated Mine and pan for gold nuggets in the streams of the nearby national forest. But all’s not gold that glitters here. Dahlonega’s historic downtown has a rich vein of arts and crafts from pottery to quilts and wood carvings, books and prints, music and memorabilia—plus good traditional Southern fare like fried chicken, yams and dumplings. Within a half hour of the square are boutique wineries like Wolf Mountain, Frogtown Cellars and Three Sisters. All welcome travelers to sample their locally produced wines.

Driving down under

If the fruits of the earth don’t entice, how about a taste of Down Under in Dixie? Dawsonville (www.dawsonville.com), off 400 south of Dahlonega and the ancestral home of moonshiners, is the unlikely abode of The Kangaroo Conservation Center, where 87 acres are hopping with some 50 kangaroos and other creatures at home in Australia. A preserve and breeding facility, the center offers two-hour habitat tours (reservations advised) spring through fall that put you up close and personal with these marvelous marsupials. The locale also has a hometown hero in NASCAR driver Bill Elliott, “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville.” The Dawsonville Pool Room (www.dawsonvillepoolroom.com) has a collection of motor sports memorabilia and the Former Thunder Road facility now houses city hall plus racing-related artifacts, photos and the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame. You can also get a glimpse of life in the fast lane at northeast Georgia race tracks such as Lanier Raceway and Atlanta Dragway.

Fall for nature

You can get back to nature here, too. The verdant North Georgia hills are laced with sparkling creeks and falls accessible to the casual hiker, such as DeSoto, Anna Ruby and Panther Creek. West of Dahlonega, you can drive or hike to the top of a 729-foot-high Amicalola—Cherokee for “tumbling waters”; a shorter trail winds through the trees to an observation platform near the base of the cliff. Seasonal events at Amicalola Falls State Park (www.gastateparks.org) include a spring flower hike and a fall foliage display. Nearby is Springer Mountain, southern terminus of the famed Appalachian Trail. Drive to the Springer summit and put your footprints on a small portion of the 2,000-mile path that stretches all the way to Maine.

Great gorge

Swinging the compass northeastward, an hour and a half drive up I-85 and I-985/US 441 takes you to breathtaking Tallulah Gorge. In 1970, high-wire star Karl Wallenda stepped carefully across the chasm. Today, the expanded Tallulah Gorge State Park (www.gastateparks.org) offers hiking, rock climbing, picnicking and a visitors’ center recounting local natural and social history.

The Tallulah River, which cut the gorge over thousands of years, was dammed to generate hydroelectric energy in the early 1900s. Three times a year the dam is opened, releasing cascades of water over the once-famous falls—drawing scores of extreme kayakers. A short distance to the east is the Chattooga River, a star in the film Deliverance, and not far north on Route 441 near Clayton is a town called Tiger and an inviting winery called Tiger Mountain (www.tigerwine.com).

Historic home tour

East from Atlanta about an hour and 45 minutes along I-20 are antebellum homes that once were the quarters of leading Confederate figures. Vice President Alexander Stephens hailed from Crawfordsville. His residence, Liberty Hall (www.gastateparks.org), is now a state-run historical site replete with personal furnishings, period pieces and a small museum that concisely portrays the home front during the Civil War. In nearby Washington is the white-columned abode of Stephens’ impetuous wealthy friend, Robert Toombs, who served in both the Confederate cabinet and army. Inside the Toombs Home are family furnishings and a compact museum sketching the times of Toombs.

Getting in tune

About 90 miles southeast of Atlanta is the city of Macon (www.maconga.org), known for its connection with music greats the Allman Brothers, Otis Redding and Little Richard. Today it is home, appropriately enough, to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, which houses memorabilia, costumes and instruments from more than 40 artists. Renowned for its 10-day Cherry Blossom Festival in spring, Macon also claims the magnificent Hay House, the historic Cannonball House and the splendid Tubman African-American Museum. Another worthwhile stop is the Ocmulgee National Monument, where you can see an archeological museum with Native American artifacts, burial mounds and dioramas.

Presidential path

An hour and a half southwest along I-85, alternative route US 27 and state route 85 is Warm Springs (www.warmspringsga.com) where Franklin D Roosevelt took treatments for his polio-crippled legs and where, in nearby Pine Mountain (www.pinemountain.org) he built a cozy retreat called the Little White House (www.fdr-littlewhitehouse.org). The cottage looks very much as it did when he died here in April 1945, right down to the New Deal rug and his unfinished portrait. The neighboring small museum is a trove of photos, admirers’ gifts and personal items, including the leg braces the public never saw. A few minutes away is Callaway Gardens (www.callawaygardens.com) with its dazzling display of azaleas and a stunning butterfly conservatory. Golf, boating, bicycling, hiking and swimming make it a multidimensional playground.

Take no prisoners

Heading two hours south on I-75 and state route 49, you’ll find Andersonville (www.andersonvillegeorgia.com) and its notorious Confederate POW camp. Today, you can see period cannons, stockade replicas, copies of crude huts and Providence Spring, which miraculously bubbled forth with clean water at the height of the misery. Also here is the National Prisoner of War Museum, opened in 1998, an uncommon venue where photos, art, videos and text testify to the suffering and endurance of American POWs in all the nation’s wars.

Words by A Davis