Vogel State Park, a Delightful Get-Away
THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of Union
County, Georgia
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Vogel
State Park, a Delightful Get-Away
It’s
summertime, and we think about vacations, getting away for a week or
more, or
having short one-day trips to enjoy a picnic or relaxation by a lake.
Within Union
County
is one of the most popular get-aways in the state of Georgia. Vogel
State Park, the
second
oldest in Georgia,
is now a year-round attraction. Reservations for cottages and campsites
must be
made well in advance.
By way of information, the only park
older than Vogel in Georgia
is Indian
Springs State Park
near Jackson
in
Middle Georgia. It is believed to be the
oldest state park in the nation.
Acquired by Georgia
in 1825, it became an official “State Forest Park” in 1927. Indian Springs, as the name indicates, has
springs once used by the Creek Indians for centuries as a place of
healing
waters. The Civilian Conservation Corps
during the 1930’s helped to build some of the structures still standing
within
this oldest state park.
The history of Vogel State Park
in Union
County dates back
to a gift of land by
Fred Vogel, Jr. and Augustus H. Vogel who gave an initial donation of
sixteen
acres to the state of Georgia.
The Vogels were in the tanning industry in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
and owned about 65,000 acres of land in the mountain region of Georgia. They used the bark from trees in these
forests for tanwood and tanbark needed for the tanning of leather in
their
factory back in Wisconsin. How the bark was shipped out from the
mountains is another story, hauled by wagon along poor mountain roads
to the
nearest railroad station, Gainesville. When a synthetic tanning acid was developed
and became more readily available, the Vogels no longer needed their
vast
acreages of forest lands. In addition to
the first sixteen acres, the Vogels gave another 248 acres and land at
the
summit of Neel Gap where the Vogels entertained at what they called
“The Tea
Room.”.
When President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt
formed the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 during the Great
Depression to
give employment to young men ages 18 through 25, a camp to house the CCC boys was set up at Goose Creek.
They built the rock and dirt dam on Wolf Creek. The resulting beautiful Lake Trahlyta, centerpiece of Vogel State Park,
was named for a Cherokee Indian maiden whose grave is believed to be at
Stonepile Gap.
At the top of Neel Gap, the old Vogel
Tea Room was incorporated into a lovely rock building called for many
years the
Wal-i-si-yi (in Cherokee, “place of the
frogs”) Inn. The CCC men erected the stone building which,
in
itself, is an architectural delight using native rocks and ceiled with
chestnut
wood, used just prior to the terrible blight that erased the American
chestnut
tree from the mountain landscape. The
building is now a stop on the famed Appalachian
Trail. Many of us can remember
when a delightful
restaurant operated at Walisiyi Inn and was a popular local as well as
a
tourist destination.
Blood
Mountain
towers above Vogel
State Park’s
present 233
acres where walking trails abound.
Legend holds that a war between Cherokee and Creek Indians on
the
mountain before the white man came caused such bloodshed that the ground of the mountain was red with blood, hence the
name.
Vogel
State Park
was named for the leather manufacturers who first gave the land. In the Chattahoochee National
Forest, this second oldest state park in Georgia
is a
tribute to the hard work of the CCC
“boys” and of a president who was a conservationist at heart. One historian, Harry Rossoll, stated that the
CCC was “a massive salvage
operation destined to become the most popular experiment of the New
Deal.” To restore America
to “its former beauty” was
a major aim. Reforestation, road
building, erosion control, and forest fire fighting were all jobs done
by “Roosevelt’s Tree Army” (the CCC).
Today when we take our summer (or
fall, winter or spring) get-away to Vogel State Park,
we can visit
the small museum to the Civilian Conservation Corps in a room of the
main
building. A reunion for surviving CCC “boys” is held annually at Vogel. On July 4 at 8:30 a. m., a ceremonial flag-raising
will pay tribute to
our nation and the freedoms we enjoy in Independence Day services at
Vogel.
As we enjoy the beauty of nature in
the surrounding mountains and the cool waters of the twenty-acre Lake
Trahlyta,
we should pause to remember the hard work of a by-gone era when the
labor was
done without benefit of modern equipment, and when the boys of “the
tree army”
sent home $25.00 of the $30.00 a month they earned to help their
families
during America’s Great Depression.
c2005 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published June 23, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
[Ethelene
Dyer Jones is a retired educator, freelance writer, poet, and historian.
She may be reached at e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708
Cedarwood Road,
Milledgeville,
GA
31061-2411.]
Updated August 31,
2009
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