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  Land Acquisition Meeting Thanks to the efforts of Lands Chair Jim Hunt, we have good news from this front. On August 16, 2002, Jim and Jack Wynn met with Mr. Ben Schwanda, Real Estate Manager for the Plum Creek Company at his office in Watkinsville. Plum Creek now owns the land managed by Georgia Pacific for many years. Jim had talked to him briefly beforehand about our group, and he had been told that they generally do not donate land. After we told him about the Friends and our need for a location for the Scull Shoals Educational Center, with a museum-visitor center and several additional educational and research buildings, he said that the Plum Creek Company would sometimes sell land at below market prices as a way of supporting public projects such as ours. We told him that we were looking for a 14-15 acre parcel at the intersection of Macedonia Road and Scull Shoals Road (FR1234), as the nearest accessible location to the old mill town, adjacent to paved roads and electricity, and he said that sounded reasonable to him. We are to present him with a management statement, maps showing the land we are interested in, and request to buy that parcel. He will then pass it to the president of Plum Creek for approval, and we should hear from them in a couple of months. We will be holding a Board meeting on Sunday afternoon September 15th at 2:00 pm in the Activities Room of the Episcopal Church in Greensboro, to vote on the purchase of the land, and if accepted, to find ways and means to raise funds to buy the land. All Friends members are invited. October Planning Retreat The Friends Board will need to have a Strategic Planning Retreat sometime in October to lay out plans for organizational goals and ways and means of accomplishing them. This needs to be on paper before we can go to foundations to fund those goals. If you have suggestions for a date or dates and a good location where we can meet and concentrate for an extended period of time (one or two whole days), please let Jack or one of the Board members know right away. Spanish-Language Recreation Guide The Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests have published a Recreation Opportunity Guide for many years. It gives maps and directions to the campgrounds, trails, and other recreation areas all over the Forests in Georgia. Within the past 15 years, the influx of Latinos into northern Georgia has been dramatic. The Chattahoochee-Oconee Forest Interpretive Association (COFIA) decided last year to update the guide, have it translated into Spanish and publish it for the National Forests. The translations are done, and layout of the new guidebook is underway. The guidebook committee soon discovered that there were no available photos of Hispanic families using the National Forests. After a short discussion with several principals, COFIA decided to host a picnic at Scull Shoals for a couple of Latino families, during which they would be toured around the village, along the trails, and down by the Oconee River for photographs of them doing all sorts of activities. This would produce some goodwill for the forests and a great source of publicity photos for the Recreational Area Guidebook and may other future uses. On Sunday, August 18th, the Pedro Vega family and the Miguel Rivera family gathered for a fantastic fajita grill lunch, a village tour, and lots of photographs. COFIA Board member Philip Jordan of Monticello did the principle slide pictures, while Becky Bruce and Jack Wynn made additional digital images. Watch for the new Guia Recreacional para los Bosques Nacionales de Georgia, carrying photos of the Vega and Rivera families at Scull Shoals coming soon to a visitor center near you! Hunt History of Scull Shoals The late Mrs. Carolyn Hunt of Madison was contracted by the Forest Service to write a history of the community in the late 1970's. She did an amazing job, but when the writing was done, there was no money left to edit and publish the document. It has been "on the shelf" since then, and not easily available to the public. Because of the 380+ page size of the typescript, simple photocopying is expensive and cumbersome. For several years, some of the Friends have been wrestling with ways to get it scanned into a digital format, edited and indexed. Stacy Culpepper made a valiant effort, but the data was unfortunately lost in a computer crash. Since then, Ellen Whitaker and Jack have been working on pulling out name lists so some one who was looking for family connections could find them. This has not been completed, but over 450 names have been listed so far. Recently, with encouragement by Mrs. Patsy Harris and the East Georgia Genealogical Society (EGGS), we have begun to scan and clean up the text by optical character recognition (OCR) page by page. It is a long process, since the text was typed on several different typewriters, and none of the copies are completely clear and clean. Once the scanning and OCR operation is completed, we will need to find a good editor who can prepare the book for publication, with indexes and table of contents and incorporated photographs, maps, and so on. Any volunteers? There are several possibilities for publishing the book so that it can be a money-raising project for the Friends. There are even grants available for this type of publication. The history of Scull Shoals will never be a page-turning best-seller (it's no bodice-ripper!), but certainly can more than cover its costs. We can get it into local and regional libraries and into the hands of researchers who are looking for historical and genealogical data on 19th century Greene County and especially Scull Shoals. New Slide Talk Available We now have a new slide talk for civic, school, and church groups about the history and archaeology at Scull Shoals. If your group wants to hear about and support Friends of Scull Shoals, please contact Jack Wynn at 770-536-2564, or e-mail notes to mfjtwynn@bellsouth.net South Loop Trails Nearing Approval The long-awaited South Loop Trails, which have been laid out and checked for botanical and archaeological conflicts, now await the final approvals. It should be possible to work on them this fall, when the weather cools off. With the final word from the Ranger, we will announce Work Days for the trail building teams. Thanks for your patience! Hunt Works Hard for Habitat Jim Hunt has already helped the Habitat for Humanity construct four houses in Greene County since he became Head of Habitat for Humanity in Greene County. He and the group are already beginning on a fifth house in the county! That's five families, each with a great new place to live, that they helped build and can be most proud of owning. Congratulations to Jim for a fine job, well done! Handicap Access Trails Downtown In response to requests by Friends (and the Americans with Disabilities Act - ADA), Friends and the Forest Service will be designing and constructing hardened surface trails around the downtown Scull Shoals area. Before they can be built, however, we will have to make sure they will not cover or disturb any underground resources. We have a proposal in to the Forest Service for Friends volunteers to conduct metal detector and ground-penetrating radar surveys of the proposed routes of these downtown trails, and to do whatever archaeology is needed before they are built. If a building foundation or other major feature appears in the planned "right-of-way" of the trail at that stage, we can simply move it over, to allow that feature to be interpreted or protected, as needed. We hope to begin work with the surveys this fall and get all the preliminary work done before the surfacing is begun. We are looking for surface materials that will be in keeping with the 19th century appearance of the village, yet be hard enough to support wheelchairs and withstand flooding. Several "paving" materials have been suggested and will be investigated. These include a new material made in Georgia of shredded tires that is supposed to look like bark chips, not float away -- and have a 40,000 mile guarantee! Aerial Photo Discoveries A recent trip to the Science Library of the University of Georgia turned up some old air photographs of the Scull Shoals area. On a close examination of the 1942 air photos, several standing buildings are shown. The Warehouse had four walls, but no roof in 1942. Adjacent to it are the ruins of the Superintendent's House. Farther to the south, the Two-Chimney House (Manager's House) can be seen, apparently with its roof still intact. Also noted in the downtown area are one or two other buildings, including the large barn-like structure we have come to call "Ellen's Barn," again with the metal roof intact. Several other structures appear on the old photographs, all of which were previously thought to have been removed within the first year or so of government acquisition of this land, in 1935-36. Thus, several were still standing longer than expected. This may be why the remains are in better conditions than expected. The next effort will be to match scales between these old air photos and the modern topographic maps, and try to re-locate any of the other buildings seen in the photographs. It was possible to make high-resolution scanned images from the old photographs, so we will be able to manipulate scales as needed. Old Family Photos and Records Do you have any old family photos that might pertain to Scull Shoals? Are there any old trunks in the attic or out in the back shed with letters, record books, diaries, or pictures of family members who lived at or visited in Scull Shoals while any of the buildings were still standing? Please look and see today! Often pictures of family members show them standing in front or beside buildings, wagons, animals, or landscape features that can help us reconstruct what the village looked like. Besides that, the photos show what the people looked like and how they dressed and traveled. We urgently need photos and any written records of the old town. Please ask around among your families, to see what you can find! Any records you find that you would allow us to photograph or scan would be handled with utmost care and either copied in your home or returned to you in pristine condition! Please notify any of the Board members or call Jack Wynn 770-536-2564 or e-mail me at mfjtwynn@bellsouth.net Changes of Command Within the past few weeks, we have received notice of several changes within the Forest Service that directly effect our operations. District Ranger Barnie Gyant of the Oconee National Forest office near Rock Eagle in Putnam County, has moved to the George Washington-Jefferson National Forests in Virginia. Forester Jim Stang is the Acting Ranger until a permanent Ranger is appointed by the Forest Supervisor. Lack of a District Ranger and having many staff members out fighting western fires are putting strains on the remaining staff, including Stang, and the other assistant rangers, like Biologist Liz Caldwell and Forester Mike Tipton. Also this month, Chattahoochee-Oconee Forest Supervisor Clara Johnson announced that she will return to the National Forests in Mississippi. There she will work with the State and Private Forestry programs in that state. Ms. Alice Carlton, Deputy Forest Supervisor on the combined George Washington-Jefferson National Forests in Virginia, will serve as Acting Forest Supervisor in Gainesville until a permanent appointment is made by the Regional Forester in Atlanta. This transition will take place in August. Porta-Johns at Scull Shoals Year-round By an internet and telephone poll conducted in July, the Board approved the support of a rental porta-john at Scull Shoals Mill Village year-round. We will get a much better monthly rental rate under a yearly contract than we were getting on a month-by-month basis. This is a public service we can provide for the visitors to the historic area, whether they are there for the history, fishing, hunting, or hiking and sight-seeing, we are providing for their comfort. Finding a comfort station at the end of a three-mile gravel road has been much appreciated by all who have used it! Highway and Interpretive Signs Plans for the new directional signs on GA Highway 15, Macedonia Road and Scull Shoals Road have been somewhat delayed by the freeze on spending for this year. The spending freeze is due to the enormous costs of fighting the western fires. The same freeze will also affect the smaller interpretive signs we planned for Downtown Scull Shoals. We had suggested that we share the costs of those signs between the Forest Service and the Friends. This was not yet approved by the Board but was simply a preliminary agreement that has yet to be accepted by either the Friends or the Forest Service purchasing folks. Mitch Cohen is working on designs for the interpretive signs at the Supervisor's Office, but nothing has been completed as yet. For information or to contribute to this newsletter, contact Editor Jack T. Wynn. 3052 St. Charles Avenue, Gainesville, GA 30504, 770-536-2564 or mfjtwynn@bellsouth.net Won't you join the Friends of Scull Shoals? Do you have a friend or relative who would like to support the educational programs of the Friends? Then ask them to join us by logging onto our website, contacting one of our officers or Board members, or dropping us a note at the Post Office Box 295, as noted above. Back to the top of this Page  |
