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Text and images by Joe Becker - All rights reserved.

Throughout much of the United States, it’s difficult to get a true sense of the historic. Unlike Europe and much of the rest of the world, America is just too young for a visitor to feel much history, such as one instinctively feels standing at the Acropolis in Athens or the Coliseum in Rome. But here, in the midst of Georgia at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, history permeates the scenery. The same is true for much of Georgia, which is filled with important American historical sites from aboriginal times, colonial days, the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. Georgia boasts 12 sites in the National Park system, nine of which are related to American history. Most are within a day’s drive of Atlanta. Visiting these nationally recognized sites presents the travel photographer with a wealth of visually stimulating and historical opportunities.

The Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park encompasses a broad area of forests and fields in northern Georgia near the town of Fort Olgethorpe. Here, in 1863, Gen. Braxton Bragg led 43,000 Confederate (Southern) soldiers in the defeat of 66,000 Union (Northern) soldiers led by Gen. William S. Rosencrans. (It was one of 80 battles in which the Confederates, who eventually lost the war, triumphed.)

The visitor center is located in an old mansion. It offers descriptions of the battle, and houses a large collection of antique American rifles. The park is filled – at seemingly odd locations – with monuments to regiments from both sides, stacks of cannon balls where officers died, and lines of cannons and mortars, all which can make for interesting photo opportunities.

I found the Andersonville National Historic Site in South Central Georgia to be truly moving. Andersonville, also known as Camp Sumter, was the largest of the Confederate military prisons operating during the Civil War. Today, the prison site is a broad, sunny, grassy field with a few sections of wooden stockade wall. It’s hard to imagine the 34,000 men packed into a 26.5-acre prison area, surviving with little fresh water and poor sanitation. The reality of the prison’s history is more tangible at the National Cemetery, also situated on the grounds. Row after row of white marble gravestones mark the resting place of the 13,000 prisoners who died at the camp. Other sections of the cemetery are reserved for American veterans from other wars. Also at Andersonville is the National Prisoner of War Museum, which tells not only the story of the Civil War prison, but also memorializes American prisoners of war from the Revolution to the First Gulf War. All together, the museum, cemetery, and former prison grounds provide many poignant photographic subjects. A telephoto lens is particularly useful in the National Cemetery for compressing thousands of gravestones into a single image.

Perhaps there is no place in Georgia where history is more alive than in Savannah. The city was founded in 1733 and was America’s first planned city. Its founder, James Oglethorpe, laid out the city in a grid pattern with wide boulevards and 24 squares; 21 of which are still present today. As a major seaport, the city flourished with the cotton trade, especially after the cotton gin was invented on a nearby plantation. Cotton prices for the world were set at the Savannah Cotton Exchange, whose building today houses small shops and restaurants. During the Civil War, Union Gen. William Sherman ravaged and burned Georgia on his way to the sea, but he spared Savannah as a gift to President Lincoln.

That gift has left Savannah with many elegant, historic homes and churches dating from the 1700s and 1800s, which today provide excellent photographic opportunities. Historic churches in Savannah include: the Lutheran Church of Ascension, built in 1741; the First African Baptist Church, the oldest African American church in North America, founded in 1777; and Temple Mickve Israel, the third oldest Jewish Congregation in the United States (1733), whose gothic synagogue was dedicated in 1878. All these buildings, and many more, are found in Savannah’s historic district, an area 20-blocks-long and 12-blocks-wide. The streets and squares of the historic district are lined with grand, old oak trees, dripping with Spanish moss. Each square is distinct, with statues, monuments and gardens. Beautifully restored townhouses and homes are on most every corner. Many serve as bed-and-breakfasts, allowing a travel photographer to sleep and eat in a potential subject. Also of photographic, and historical, interest are the city’s two major cemeteries: Colonial Park Cemetery, with graves dating from Georgia’s colonial days, and Bonaventure Cemetery, made famous by the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Just east of Savannah, at the mouth of the Savannah River, is Fort Pulaski National Monument. This military site has held various forts since 1761. The current fort took 18 years to build, starting in 1829, and stands as a proud monument to the day when masonry forts were the height of military defense. Just 13 years after it was finished, the fort was the site of a Civil War battle during which Union forces bombarded it for 30 hours. The army’s new rifled cannons pierced the fort’s eight-foot-thick walls, and the fort’s commander surrendered. Today, the fort’s brick walls still contain cannonballs from that fateful battle. Besides examining Civil War era military hardware, the enterprising travel photographer can find abundant wildlife on the grounds, including alligators in the fort’s moat.

More modern, but no less important history can be found in Atlanta. This city was the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., America’s most famous civil rights leader. A national historic district named in his honor celebrates King’s legacy. There is an impressive visitor center containing powerful exhibits on American racial segregation and the Civil Rights movement in the States. His birth home, a two-story Victorian, is preserved. Sitting in the well-worn wooden pews in Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King was co-pastor with his father, brought me memories of old news clips of King preaching from that pulpit. Most touching, at least to me, is King’s crypt, set on an island within a series of reflective ponds.

Other Georgian sites of photographic and historic interest include Ocmulgee National Monument, which preserves earthworks created by pre-historic inhabitants of the region; the Jimmy Carter National Historic District in Plains, where the former president still lives; and the old Atlantic Coast Highway (Highway 17) along the South Georgia coast.

I visited in the summer, when the weather was hot and steamy, with afternoon thundershowers. This weather kept the number of visitors low at the historic sites outside of Atlanta and Savannah. Chickamauga Battlefield was quiet and empty, Andersonville was all the more haunting because it was deserted, and the earthen mounds at Ocmulgee were silent with age. More people are about in spring, which is much milder and drier, and offers lots of flowers. Traveling to Atlanta is simple; the airport there is one of the largest in the United States. For visiting sites outside of Atlanta and Savannah, a car is almost essential since there is relatively little public transportation outside the cities.

About the Author

Joe Becker is a free-lance photographer based in Gig Harbor, Washington. Though specializing in travel and outdoor photography of the Pacific Northwest and the western United States, Joe has also shot projects in Europe and Central America. More of his work can be seen on his online portfolio at www.photoportfolios.net and at www.flickr.com/photos/joebecker

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