10 Most Unusual Places in Georgia You HAVE To Visit
1. Broxton Rocks
Broxton Rocks are the largest exposure of sandstone found in the Altamaha Grit and expands about 4 miles. Broxton Rocks sandstone layers were formed due to erosion. What’s really unique about Braxton rocks is that it is home to many endangered plants and animals. Some of the endangered plants that are located here are the Greenfly Orchid, Georgia Plume, and the Fameflower which brings color and beauty to the area. Some of the endangered animals that are located in Broxton Rocks are the Bachmans Sparrow, Pileated Woodpecker, Gopher Tortoise, and the Indigo Snake.
2. Cumberland Island
Cumberland Island is Georgia’s largest and southernmost island. The island consists of undeveloped beaches, forests, and marshes. The island also has over 9,800 acres of wilderness where deer, squirrels, raccoons, armadillos, boars, alligators, and even feral horses roam. The island was home to many famous people including Andrew Carnegie, brother of Thomas Carnegie, who was an industrialist in the steel industry. The heir to the Carnegie family gave current ownership of the island to the National Parks Foundation’s control.
3. The Tate House
The Tate house is located in Tate, Georgia and is made of beautiful pink and white marble. The house was built for Samuel Tate in 1923 by Walker and Weeks, who were architects in the neo-classical era. The Tate house was made with the marble supplied by the Tate’s Georgia Marble Company and is often referred to as the “pink palace”. Inside the house is marble floors and mural wallpaper. The Tate house is a popular place for weddings and special events.
4. Providence Canyon State Park
One of Georgia’s natural seven wonders is located in the city of Lumpkin and it resembles the Grand Canyon in Arizona. This natural wonder was formed due to poor farming techniques and years of erosion. Visitors can stay at the top of the canyon and look down from the edge or they can go down into the canyon via stairs. This natural wonder also is home to a rare plant called the plumleaf azalea.
5. The Lunch Box Museum
In Columbus, Georgia, there is a museum filled with nothing but metal lunch boxes. The museum is owned by Allen Woodall Jr. and features over 2,000 lunch boxes. These lunch boxes include everything from Superman to King Kong lunch boxes. Some of the lunch boxes are so rare that Woodall has replicas of them and the real ones are locked away at home. It is a very exciting place to go if you want go back in time and feel like a kid again.
6. Habitat For Humanity’s Slum Theme Park
The Habitat for Humanity’s headquarters is in Americus, Georgia and it shows what the nonprofit organization does for people in poverty. The headquarter explains what they do, but, they also let you experience what they want to get rid of. The organization built a theme park showing what poverty is like all around the world and what they hope to eliminate. The theme park is self guided and walks you through different parts of the world. There are even signs in some places saying “deadly insects” to show that some places like Africa, have insects that cause horrible diseases. At the end of the tour there is an open field with trees, flowers, and plants around little houses. This “mini-utopia” shows what the organization wants to achieve.
7. Tank Town USA
Usually you have to be trained to drive a tank, however, for a price you can drive tanks and crush cars in Morgantown, Georgia. The tanks are actually not tanks, instead they are FV432’s which are armored carrier cars used in the British army because the United States army does not sell operational armor to the public. Learning how to drive one takes about 3o seconds and once inside the view is panoramic. The fee for driving the vehicle is 5o dollars, which includes the driver and a passenger, but if you want to crush a car it costs 500 dollars.
8. Little White House
In Atlanta, Georgia there is a house that is exactly identical to the White House in Washington D.C. Fred Milani fled from Iran to the United States in 1979 and built a successful real estate company. After becoming wealthy, Milani built himself and his family a replica scale model of the White House. Milani built this replica as a tribute to the democracy of the United States of America. Inside the house has a few replica rooms such as the oval office which has a desk similar to the one in the presidential office. There is also a replica of the Lincoln bedroom with the copy of the emancipation proclamation hanging up on the wall. After the housing market bust in 2009, Milani had to put his house up for sale for 10 million dollars. Unfortunately, in 2011, the house foreclosed.
9. Georgia Guidestones
In Elbert County, Georgia there are giant slabs of stones with different languages of writing on them. Nobody knows who put them there, but a mysterious person under the name of R.C. Christian hired Elberton Granite Finishing Company to build the structure. The structure has 10 guidelines or rules in 8 different languages, including English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. To the left of the stone there is a tablet that states the astronomical features of the tablet and an apparent time capsule buried 6 feet below the monument. Also, on the tablet it says “Let these be guidelines to the age of reason” and around it has 4 different ancient writing languages including Babylonian, Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian.
10. Dawson Forest
Dawsonville has many things to do such as the outlet malls or Amicalola falls, but deep in the forest there is something many people don’t know about. Inside Dawson Forest there used to be a nuclear aircraft laboratory used during the Cold War. It was a United States Air Force facility named air force plant #67 in which they were trying to design nuclear aircrafts. The entrance to the actual plant is underground, however the entrances have been buried. The only thing that remains left is the nuclear cooling building, which has an entrance that is completely sealed shut and large amounts of radiation around the area.
