January 3, 2007
Just outside of Macon I passed the first historical marker for the trip: the entrance to the William Bartram trail. Here lies a small creek and the remnants of an old mill. From there to Americus the landscape was dotted with peach and pecan orchards, scattered fields of cotton, and even a few large plantings of cactus.
The miles crept towards 80, but no matter how far I went, the story remained the same; run-down small town struggling to survive. Crumbling homes and boarded factories standing as echoes to the past. Somewhere along the line, I though, people made money here, built nice homes, and earned a respectable living. Then it all got sold away to the U.S. interstate highway system, Made in China, or big business agriculture. Nobody comes here anymore.
Today I saw: The home of Samuel Henry Rumph, father of Georgia’s commercial peach industry.
I stayed: At an abandoned cemetery off in the woods on a sideroad on the other side of Americus. Despite the secluded surroundings, traffic on the sideroad ended up being insane, and a dog somewhere nearby barked almost the entire night.
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