Take a hike this weekend at the beautiful Amicalola Falls. This park has 12 miles of beautiful trails with scenic waterfalls everywhere you turn. Enjoy the weather and take in nature at this historic site close to where you live:
"As far as a hiker is concerned, Amicalola could be Cherokee for hiking instead of "Tumbling Waters" (its actual meaning). This almost 1,000 acre park features 12 miles of completely integrated trails that can form a number of loop trails, and is the start (or end, depending on how you look at it) of the 2,108 mile Appalachian Trail. In addition to camping and a lodge, Amicalola Falls manages the "Hike Inn", a hiker's lodge that requires a 5-mile trek.
About the park
The first written account of the falls, by William Williamson as he explored the Cherokee Nation in anticipation of Georgia's Sixth Land Lottery includes dramatic testimony to the difficulty of the climb. Halfway up he quit.
The land was divided and given to settlers that year. Three years later Andy Jackson's administration negotiated the corrupt Treaty of New Echota, finally forcing the Cherokee from their land illegally in 1838 in an episode now known as the Trail of Tears (another Trail of Tears page)
So rugged and remote was the land in the vicinity of the falls that even the hardy settlers who pushed west did not stay here. Deep inside the valley a Cherokee woman lived until the 1850's, known only to nearby settlers.
Although the tallest falls east of the Mississippi, the park was not developed until the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club needed a new terminus to the Appalachian Trail in the 1950's. The old trail to Mount Oglethorpe had been repeatedly bisected and threatened by commercial development. Springer Mountain seemed like the perfect place to create a new end to the footpath that connected America's East Coast. Amicalola Falls State Park was created to give hikers a starting point near a major road. "
Plan your next day trip here: http://www.georgiatrails.com/
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