Today was a day for Georgia ghost towns.
I started the day at a place advertised as Fort Morris State Park. When you get there you find that Fort Morris – the Revolutionary War fort – is completely gone, the remains of Fort Defiance from the War of 1812 are barely there and the real story is the ghost town of Sunbury which the fort(s) existed to protect.
Sunbury was the second largest town in Georgia with a port one-third as busy as Savannah. A pretty serious town until the British burned it during the American Revolution, the Federals burned part of it during the Civil War and she finally just gave up the ghost and became one.
Today, Sunbury is under development for more yuppie homesteads. So it isn’t all dead. But the only remnants of the original town are the resting places of the dead in a very creepy cemetery amongst pine trees and spanish moss.
The second ghost town was Frederica. Another place advertised as a fort whose real story turns out to be the absent town. When Oglethorpe founded Georgia and laid out Savannah and Frederica he said Frederica was his favorite town. In time, however, it too fell victim to burning and an eventual loss of purpose and now exists only in the outlines of well-planned streets and tabby foundations with a few bits of military fortifications still standing to remind folks of what once was.
Along the way I stopped briefly in Darien, GA to commemorate the burning of that town by the 54th Massachusetts and 2d South Carolina Volunteers during the Civil War. The guidebook, of course, points out that this was a “controversial episode in the war.” Which is complete bollocks. What black troops wouldn’t take the righteous opportunity to burn anything southern they could get their hands on? Or northern for that matter? Different time, different circumstances.
On to St. Mary’s, Kings Bay Sub Base and the Florida line.