The Beaver crew + Papa and Yaya (my dad and stepmom) journeyed south on a cool, overcast Sunday morning. So far this weekend, we had already hit one park on Lake Thurmond and two parks on Lake Hartwell. Now, it was time to visit a state park on yet another lake on the SC/GA border.
Welcome to Calhoun Falls State Park, located on Lake Russell. The lake itself gets its name from Richard Russell, Jr., a Georgia politician from the 20th century (and a quick Wikipedia skim of his bio shows me that he had similar political views to many other white, Southern politicians at the time).
I didn’t realize this until we got to the park, but the lake itself wasn’t created until 1984. My dad (who had just moved to SC from Mississippi the year prior) said he remembers the lake filling up once they completed the dam. He said that instead of clear-cutting all the trees beforehand, they filled the lake part-ways up. Then, they had boats go around and cut down the trees at whatever level that was. That would have been neat to see.
I learned also while there that unlike Lake Hartwell and Lake Thurmond, private development along the lake is not allowed, so boaters can enjoy looking at wilderness while on the lake, instead of people’s houses or businesses.
The state park gets its name from the nearby town, which gets its name from a geological feature that was on the Savannah River, before the lake was dammed. Apparently, there were some rocky shoals at this point (the ‘Falls’), and the ‘Calhoun’ part gets its name from John E. Colhoun/Calhoun, who was the prominent SC politician John C. Calhoun’s first cousin. Like many people in this part of the state, they were of Scotch-Irish descent.
We didn’t spend a lot of time here. The weather wasn’t conducive to any swimming, and while they had a nice beach volleyball court set up, the sand was wet. Since we were going to be on the road all day, that would not have made for happy campers!
One thing we hadn’t seen in any other parks was a little boat slip where some people have their (mostly home-made) house boats docked. People sure were creative in making these house boats, including stripping a pontoon boat down to just the bottom deck, then plopping an outdoor storage shed (aka tiny house) on top. I mean, if that’s what you want…
We were hoping to catch a glimpse of a fox squirrel, as my dad said they saw two the last time they were here. We didn’t see any, though we did see a couple of osprey nests built on some poles/markers out in the lake.
Then it was back on the road down towards McCormick to catch the two other parks located on Lake Thurmond. First up was Hickory Knob State Resort Park. And yes, you read that right. The word ‘resort’ is in the title. Read about it here.
Beavers in the Park 