Did you know Georgia had her own version of the Grand Canyon? This is an image of Providence Canyon State Park. The deepest part of the 16 different canyons dip 150 feet, and the beauty you see is a direct result of poor farming practices in the 1800s.Providence Canyon State Park is located in Lumpkin, Georgia near the Alabama-Georgia state line and Walter F. George Resevoir. It falls within the confines of Stewart County.
Aren’t the colors amazing? The state park site states that the result of the erosion is several million years of geologic record has been exposed. Minerals have stained the sediments and that’s why we see colors that range from white to various shades of pink, purple, red, brown, yellow, and black.
Providence Canyon is one of the places you can view the very rare plumleaf azalea (it’s found only in southwestern Georgia and eastern Alabama). It blooms from mid to late summer.
Once colonists moved into this area of Georgia they cleared the land and took no measures to avoid soil erosion. By 1850 ditches three to five feet deep had been cut in the land per New Georgia Encyclopedia.
The issue of erosion seems like a bad thing so you might wonder why locals came up with the name Providence. Apparently the name stems from a church named Providence Methodist Church that had been established in 1832. The church and a schoolhouse stood on land that now lies between the main gorges. In 1859 a new church was built across the road from the canyon and is used occasionally today per the New Georgia article.
This is my third Wordless Wednesday foray here at Georgia on My Mind. You can visit with other Wordless participants here.
