Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area
Multiple river units offer shoals, forest paths, historic mill traces, paddling, fishing, and wildlife along 48 miles of the Chattahoochee.
Artwork inspired by Nell Choate Jones
The Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area protects a long urban corridor where rocky shoals, floodplain habitat, palisade cliffs, and surviving mill traces reveal overlapping ecological and industrial histories. Because its widely separated units preserve different parts of that story, the recreation area is better understood as a network of distinct river landscapes than as one conventional park.
Choose a unit according to the experience you want—woodland walking, fishing, paddling, wetlands, shoals, or historic remains—and study its access points before setting out. Anyone entering the river should check Buford Dam release information, since generation can quickly change cold-water levels and affect crossings or boating. For one-way travel, identify a legal take-out before driving.
- Island Ford shoals
- Rocky river shallows
- Palisades cliffs
- Steep urban cliffs
- mill-race traces
- Industrial traces remain
Quick guide
- Best planning tool
- The unit map matters more than the park name because access points are widely separated.
- Urban surprise
- A nationally protected river ecosystem persists within metropolitan Atlanta’s roads and neighborhoods.
Choose one river reach, not the whole park
- Pick by purpose
- Select shoals, wetland, history, fishing, or a shaded walk before choosing the unit.
- Check the release
- Upstream dam generation can raise cold water quickly and alter crossings, boating, and fishing.
- Read the corridor
- Notice floodplain, bluff, tributary, and suburban edge instead of viewing the river as isolated scenery.
- Protect the water
- Wear a life jacket on the river and treat summer water temperature as a real hazard.
Good to know
Pick one named unit and one direction of travel; the map scale otherwise disguises long road transfers.
Notice these
- Island Ford shoals
- Palisades cliffs
- mill-race traces