Road Trip with Historical Side Trips

cw1865

Sergeant Major
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Location
Riverdale, NJ (Morris County)
For a little while I have been travelling the I-75 corridor from South Fl up to TN. On this trip I made it a point to stop off at historical points of interest. Forgive the non-Civil War related ones!

First stop, Lookout Mountain:

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This picture really encapsulates how these heights could command the TN River and Chattanooga itself.

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This is the NY Peace Memorial.

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Billy Yank and Johnny Reb at peace.

Next stop was Atlanta where I stopped at the Varsity for a bite to eat. Been there since 1929. Not quite Civil War but still historical!

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I made this pit stop because for about a month and a half I worked here:

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Currently the tallest building in Atlanta.

Then I was off to Forsyth, GA where I wanted to visit the local microbrewery and to see the unique courthouse there.

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60oz Growler with an IPA sealed to go since I had to drive down I75 and couldn't partake then and there!

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The 1896 red Victorian courthouse is absolutely stunning. They just don't build things like that anymore.

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In the corner of the property were veterans commemorations and I took a quick picture of the Confederate memorial at that location.


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From there I was off for Andersonville. That little water run there was the water supply for the Union prisoners. The stockade actually crossed the stream causing a backup. The soldiers did do their business downstream but the water upstream still got befouled. It takes some imagining because the camp isn't there anymore, but the white stakes are 'stockade/dead line' markers going around the perimeter of the camp so you can extrapolate where the stockade would have crossed the stream.

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A postwar spring. There are signs on the site that the water is not currently fit for human consumption.

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This quoin stone marks a corner of the perimeter.

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This picture gives the best view to have a sense of the scale of the place. Imagine 40k souls in there? Hard to do.

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One corner has the stockade with the deadline and an example of what some of the makeshift tents looked like.

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The cemetery was a sad place of course. 13k+ interred there. Being originally from NJ I will share the NJ memorial here.

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These six are the graves of the 'Raiders' set aside in a place of dishonor away from the rest. Wirz apparently allowed the prisoners to form a group called the Regulators who tried them and hung them.

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Also of note is that there are people buried there who have no connection to the Civil War. I speculate that they could be buried there if they were POWs in another conflict. Due to the pandemic the museum was closed and I couldn't ask any questions. If anybody has any insight into how non-Civil War vets are buried there, I would love to know how somebody like Theodore Roosevelt Hill came to be buried there. And if anybody has any insight into whether there is relation to Teddy Roosevelt, that would also be great to know!

The region around Andersonville still cultivates alot of cotton.

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This is a typical cotton bale which apparently weighs about 500lbs. +/-

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The raw cotton is, as of this writing, selling for approximately $.60 per pound (which apparently is low due to the pandemic), each acre yields about 2-4 bales per year.

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At Exit 101 is this Titan I missile, maintained by the Cordele Rotary Club (pronounced CORD-AIL like the ail is pronounced in the word sail). Kind've a bizarre road side attraction for a gas station. I mean, its not a Mercury rockets, its actually a nuclear missile, the first US ICBM. Also apparently called the 'Confederate Nuclear Missile' from time to time (there is no Confederate symbols anywhere nearby this gas station).
 
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