Tallulah Gorge State Park
Georgia
Many of Georgia’s famed natural attractions lie on the coast, but if that is all you see, you’re missing out on one of the best canyon complexes this side of the Mississippi.
Tallulah Gorge State Park centers around the two-mile-long gorge but spreads for nearly 3,000 acres over the northeastern corner of the state, less than two hours from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The park’s most popular hike is its most challenging, a steep 3.5-mile round-trip that includes sliding down a waterfall and swimming in the pool at the bottom; the hike is capacity controlled for just 100 people a day. But groups can also opt for the easier hike to the floor of the gorge from the Hurricane Falls Overlook, home to the park’s main interpretive center, which interpretive ranger Jonathan Bast calls “the crown jewel of the park.”
“Upstairs, we explore the 1800s and the Victorian era, even up to the modern era and construction of the dam; but downstairs, we have a nature theme that includes a life-size diorama of animals from the area that are stuffed,” he said. “People always ask if we killed them, but they have mostly been hit by cars. Kids can just look at it for half an hour. It’s at least 30 feet long, and we have a walk in the middle to symbolize the gorge with animals from the dry side on one side and the moist side on the other.”
