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Just south of Georgia 20 in Sugar Hill, there’s a beautiful view of the Chattahoochee River. But it’s tough to get there.
It’s behind a locked gate, down a narrow drive, beyond an abandoned house. You have to leave your car, tromp through the woods and hike up and over a steep hill. But it won’t always be inaccessible, thanks to the city of Sugar Hill, a private land trust and the National Park Service.
Earlier this year, Sugar Hill spent $1.5 million to buy 71 acres along the river from nonprofit The Trust for Public Land. It’s part of 120 acres the trust bought last year; it plans to sell the rest to the National Park Service.
The trust has helped preserved some 18,000 acres along the Chattahoochee over the last 15 years. With the purchase of the Sugar Hill property, there’s now a continuous eight miles of protected land along the river from Buford Dam nearly to McGinnis Ferry Road in Suwanee.
“The Chattahoochee is Georgia’s iconic river,” said Curt Soper, the land trust’s Georgia-Alabama director. “It goes right by the vast majority of the people who live in Georgia. It’s also some of the most desirable land for development.”
Indeed, the Sugar Hill site already might have been carved into 180 residential tracts, if not for the Great Recession. When the price of real estate collapsed, the project fell through, and The Trust for Public Land was able to buy the land.
“It was the recession that saved this property,” Soper said.
But it took the land trust, Sugar Hill and the federal government to preserve it. Except for some new trails, Sugar Hill plans to keep 41 of its 71 acres as-is. It will sell 30 acres along the highway for commercial development.
Though surrounded mostly by highways and subdivisions, the rolling land is carpeted with hardwoods, including many species of oak. White tail deer, Cooper’s hawks and blue herons call it home. The river offers some of the region’s best trout fishing.
City Manager Paul Radford said it will take at least five years to develop the property. He said it eventually will connect by trail to other city parks and perhaps with others up and down the Chattahoochee.
“We’ve been a recreation city,” Radford said. “Our folks like outdoor activities.”
In the meantime, the land trust will sell the property closest to the river to the National Park Service, which operates the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. And the trust’s work isn’t over.
Soper said it hopes to buy another 2,500 more acres of Chattahoochee River land, from its mountain headwaters to as far south as Columbus. Still, the Sugar Hill property is special.
“These opportunities – 120 undeveloped acres along the Chattahoochee River in suburban Atlanta – they’re just not going to come along anymore,” he said. “We had to act.”
» VIDEO: See what Curt Soper says about efforts to preserve land along the Chattahoochee River in Sugar Hill
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