Wormsloe State Historic Site
Colonial tabby ruins, museum exhibits, trails, demonstrations, and a dramatic live-oak approach interpret the Jones estate and Georgia’s early colony.
Places and wildlife — page 58
Browse Explore’s field guide to destinations, wildlife, art, and the natural world. Open a discovery for practical details and background.
New Echota State Historic Site
Original and reconstructed buildings, the Cherokee Phoenix print shop, council house, Worcester home, and museum interpret the Cherokee Nation’s government before removal.
Chief Vann House State Historic Site
The 1804 brick mansion, cantilevered stair, period rooms, grounds, and exhibits interpret James Vann, Cherokee wealth, plantation slavery, violence, and dispossession.
Dahlonega Gold Museum State Historic Site
Inside the 1836 courthouse, mining tools, coins, geology, courthouse rooms, and film interpret the first major U.S. gold rush and the town built around it.
Jarrell Plantation State Historic Site
Farmhouse, cotton gin, sawmill, cane press, barns, engines, and household spaces preserve a family agricultural complex operating from the 1840s into the twentieth century.
Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation State Historic Site
Museum exhibits, an oak-lined walk, family house, silver, outbuildings, and marsh landscape interpret a rice plantation and its later dairy era.
Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters
Regency architecture, a bridge stair, formal rooms, intact slave quarters, work yard, and surviving haint-blue ceiling make household power spatially legible.
Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace
Family rooms, decorative arts, art made by Juliette Gordon Low, Girl Scout history, and servant spaces connect one woman’s life to gender, disability, class, and civic organization.
Old Fort Jackson
Brick ramparts, powder rooms, artillery, harbor views, and demonstrations preserve Georgia’s oldest standing brick fort along the Savannah River.
Johnston–Felton–Hay House
The 1850s mansion combines a dramatic cupola, curved stair, painted finishes, ventilation, plumbing, and service systems created for Macon’s wealthy Johnston family.
Pasaquan
Seven acres of painted walls, temples, figures, pathways, costumes, and symbols form the visionary environment created by Eddie Owens Martin, who renamed himself St. EOM.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park
Earth Lodge floor, temple and burial mounds, wetlands, museum collections, and trails document more than 12,000 years of human presence along the Ocmulgee River.
Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site
Six mounds, village area, defensive ditch, Etowah River setting, museum objects, and iconography preserve a major Indigenous political center occupied between about 1000 and 1550.
Kolomoki Mounds State Park
Large platform, burial, and ceremonial mounds, museum excavations, lakes, and forest preserve a major community active roughly 350–750 CE.
Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge
Blackwater trails, peat islands, cypress forest, prairies, alligators, cranes, pitcher plants, and dark-sky camps make one of North America’s great wetlands legible.
Cumberland Island National Seashore
Undeveloped beaches, maritime forest, marsh, Dungeness ruins, Plum Orchard, wildlife, and layered Indigenous, African American, and estate histories fill Georgia’s largest barrier island.
Brasstown Bald
An observation tower, museum, steep paved path, shuttle, and expansive views from 4,784 feet expose Blue Ridge ridges, watersheds, weather, and cultural geography.
Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area
Bare monadnocks, seasonal solution pools, red diamorpha, quarry remains, PATH trails, Flat Rock, Vaughters’ Farm, and Panola Mountain form a cultural and ecological mosaic east of Atlanta.
Atlanta Botanical Garden
A canopy walk, Fuqua Conservatory, orchid center, edible garden, woodland, children’s garden, and changing installations make plant form visible from multiple heights and climates.
State Botanical Garden of Georgia
Native flora, themed gardens, conservatory collections, trails, pollinator work, and university research occupy more than 300 acres along the Middle Oconee River.
Gibbs Gardens
Japanese garden, daffodil fields, waterlilies, hydrangeas, woodland paths, ponds, and manor-house landscape spread across hundreds of rolling acres.
Callaway Resort & Gardens
Azalea Bowl, butterfly center, lakes, trails, chapel, beaches, golf, and seasonal events spread across a very large Pine Mountain landscape.
Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens
Camellias, bamboo, palms, heritage plants, Mediterranean and rose gardens, orchards, and an historic bamboo farm reveal what thrives in humid coastal Georgia.
Georgia Aquarium
Whale sharks, manta rays, belugas, sea lions, sharks, penguins, freshwater species, and major habitat systems occupy one of the world’s largest aquariums.
Zoo Atlanta
African elephants, great apes, reptiles, pandas, birds, and conservation programs fill a compact Grant Park campus with historic roots and modern habitats.
Georgia Sea Turtle Center
Rehabilitation tanks, treatment windows, interactive exhibits, field research, nest monitoring, and released-patient stories connect individual turtles to coastal systems.
Amicalola Falls State Park
Stair routes, accessible overlooks, mountain forest, lodge views, and the strenuous Approach Trail connect a major waterfall to Springer Mountain and long-distance hiking culture.
Cloudland Canyon State Park
Rim overlooks, long stair descents to Cherokee and Hemlock Falls, Sitton Gulch, sandstone cliffs, caves, and backcountry trails create very different visits.
Tallulah Gorge State Park
Rim trails, suspension bridge, staircases, five falls, hydroelectric history, and permit-only gorge floor expose geology and managed river flow.
Providence Canyon State Park
Eroded canyons, multicolored sediments, forest regrowth, rim views, and canyon-floor trails reveal severe nineteenth-century agricultural erosion rather than an ancient western gorge.
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.
Appalachian Trail — Georgia
Springer Mountain, Blood Mountain, gaps, shelters, rhododendron tunnels, and repeated climbs form the southern end of the Appalachian Trail.
Sweetwater Creek State Park
Creek rapids, forest trails, the burned New Manchester mill, reservoir paddling, and Civil War history create a rugged landscape close to the city.
Fort Mountain State Park
Summit trails, CCC fire tower, unexplained stone wall, overlooks, lake, forest, and mountain-bike routes spread across the western Blue Ridge edge.
Black Rock Mountain State Park
Roadside overlooks, Tennessee Rock Trail, forest, lake, cabins, and steep access roads occupy Georgia’s highest state park.
Vogel State Park
Lake Trahlyta, waterfall trail, CCC structures, Blood Mountain access, cabins, and forest loops make one of Georgia’s oldest state parks both approachable and demanding.
Jekyll Island Historic District & Trails
More than 20 miles of paths link maritime forest, marsh, beaches, the historic club district, Horton House, and modern conservation facilities.
Pigeon Mountain Salamander
A large woodland salamander occupies moist cracks, caves, and talus on Pigeon Mountain in Georgia’s northwest corner.
Altamaha Spinymussel
A large freshwater mussel with one to several shell spines survives only in the Altamaha River basin.
Cherokee Darter
A small olive-and-black fish with breeding color lives in clear Etowah River tributaries above the Fall Line.
Etowah Darter
A slender darter with vivid blue-green and orange breeding color occurs only in the upper Etowah River system.
Ocmulgee Skullcap
A perennial mint with blue-violet flowers grows on shaded, mature hardwood slopes and bluffs in central Georgia.
Hairy Rattleweed
A federally endangered perennial with dense cobwebby hairs and yellow flowers survives in open longleaf-pine flatwoods in two Georgia counties.
Georgia Plume
A tall shrub or small tree bears upright clusters of four-petaled white flowers on sandy ridges and sandstone outcrops.
Franklin Tree
A small tree with white camellia-like flowers and red autumn foliage was known in the wild only along Georgia’s Altamaha River.
South Carolina State Museum
Art, cultural history, natural history, science, a planetarium, and an observatory occupy the vast former Columbia Mills building beside the Congaree River.
Columbia Museum of Art
European painting, Asian art, decorative arts, modern work, and changing exhibitions meet in compact galleries opening onto Boyd Plaza.
International African American Museum
Nine galleries, a family-history center, and the African Ancestors Memorial Garden interpret African origins, Atlantic crossings, slavery, resistance, Gullah Geechee culture, and worldwide influence.