Chattahoochee Nature Center celebrates a half-century

Nature centers were such a new concept in Georgia when the Chattahoochee Nature Center opened in 1976, Dotty Etris remembered taking calls from outraged people who thought they were a nudist colony.

“We really had to educate the community a lot,” said Etris, one of the center’s first employees who would eventually become director of operations and still visits the center regularly.

A half-century later, the Chattahoochee Nature Center is a beloved, well-established draw for locals and tourists alike in Roswell and is celebrating its 50th anniversary with multiple events this week.

The Chattahoochee Nature Center holds annual Halloween Hikes, where folks dressed as animals like opossums greet kids along the way. (Courtesy of the Chattahoochee Nature Center)

The Chattahoochee Nature Center recently wrapped a nearly $10 million capital campaign, enabling the nonprofit to modernize multiple buildings and add indoor capacity to provide more services.

“This year was an inflection point for us,” said Nick DiLuzio, chairman of the center and a forester by trade who first visited the center as a 4-year-old in 1990, learning about turtles. “We could choose to keep doing what we’ve been doing or say, ‘Hey, we have a great opportunity to make the center even better.’ We chose the latter. We want to position ourselves for success for the next 50 years.”

Mariquita Solis, a volunteer at the Chattahoochee Nature Center holds a corn snake on Friday, June 19, 2026. The nature center receives more than 800 injured animals a year and keeps about 100 on site that cannot return to the wild, including bald eagles, beavers, opposums and corn snakes. (Rodney Ho/AJC)

The center enters its 51st year in solid financial shape. It has more than doubled its revenues from the early 2010s, generating $5.3 million in revenue for fiscal year 2024 with assets exceeding $14 million, according to Form 990 reports filed with the federal government. It now employs 162 people, 35 full time. Almost its entire revenue base comes from foundations, donors and fees from programs and events.

“I’m proud of what that center has done,” said Jere Wood, Roswell mayor from 1998 to 2017. “It’s a wildlife corridor, a recreational corridor and an educational asset. It’s an asset not just for Roswell but Fulton County and Atlanta as a whole.”

Wood’s father Roy Wood, an undersecretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior under President Jimmy Carter, worked with Fulton County, local activists and John Ripley Forbes, known as the “Johnny Appleseed” of nature centers, to create the Chattahoochee Nature Center.

The Chattahoochee Nature Center has run popular summer camps on site since it opened. This photo is from 1988, when the camp was called Camp Chattahoochee. In 1993, it was renamed Camp Kingfisher after a common bird seen on the property. (Courtesy of the Chattahoochee Nature Center)

Forbes’ organization, Nature Science for Youth Foundation, which opened more than 200 nature centers nationwide over the years, contributed $95,000 to help acquire a private 6.7-acre tract in Roswell along the Chattahoochee River. It had been home to the American Adventures Club, run by Horace Holden, an avid outdoorsman who ran Camp Chattahoochee beginning in 1961.

A longtime Sandy Springs resident, Forbes was also a driving force behind Atlanta’s Fernbank Science Center, the Autrey Mill Nature Preserve in Johns Creek and the Big Trees Forest Preserve in Sandy Springs. For every project, he had a simple goal: inspire adults and children to get excited about plants, wildlife and the environment.

In its early years, the Chattahoochee Nature Center struggled financially, Etris said. The center’s director, Ken Gibbons, had conjured ways to raise funds, including the 10K Possum Trot, which recently wrapped its 48th annual run.

“There were times we didn’t have money for payroll,” Etris said. “Ken and I would flip a coin. Heads you get paid. Tails, you wait until next week.”

Atlanta naturalist John Ripley Forbes helped create the Chattahoochee Nature Center in 1976. Behind him are some native wild orchids that he saved from development at his Dunwoody home in 1998. (Louie Favorite/AJC)

But over time, management established deeper ties with donors and foundations. With help from Fulton County, the center was able to buy surrounding acres from Holden in 1985 and 1992, maxing out at its current 127-acre footprint.

The center’s summer camps have flourished over the years, seeding future volunteers and employees and teaching thousands of children to embrace nature. Last year, about 58,000 students from 350 schools visited the center along with 59,000 member visits over the past year. Regular hikes are held on its six walking trails and boardwalk and canoe trips on the river.

“A majority of our revenues have always come from programming,” Etris said. “The camps. Birdseed sales. Wildflower sales. They’ve always been really creative coming up with programs.”

One of the center’s most popular attractions, Etris noted, is the Butterfly Pavilion, which was introduced in 2012. It drew 1,600 people for its opening weekend earlier this month.

The center has maintained many of its original tenets, including propagating rare and endangered native plants and rehabilitating birds of prey (owls, eagles, hawks), reptiles (snakes, turtles) and amphibians. The nature center now receives more than 800 injured animals a year and keeps about 100 on site that cannot return to the wild, including bald eagles, beavers, opposums and corn snakes.

The AJC's Sunday "Dixie Living" section" wrote about the 10th anniversary of the Chattahoochee Nature Center in 1986. (AJC file)

“The cool thing about this place at 50 years old is you get all these multiple generations, all with love and an affinity to the nature center,” DiLuzio said, noting that he brings his parents and his young children there.

When DiLuzio joined the board eight years ago, he said another member described the center as a “hidden gem.”

“We’re OK with the gem part,” he said. “We are working hard to make sure we are not hidden.”