The land that presently comprises Bent Tree was formerly owned by the marble baron Sam Tate. It was part of the Tate Mountain Estates. Sometime around 1930, Sam Tate had purchased around 10,000 acres between Marble Hill and Burnt Mountain, including the land that is now called Mount Oglethorpe.
If you are an avid reader of Edie Stephens’ website, www.benttreevoice.com you may have found information on Tate’s Dude Ranch. Her inclusion of Don Wells’ research is pretty thorough regarding the history of our land before, and up to, Bent Tree. The Dude Ranch’s precise location is unknown, but speculation places it somewhere on the fairway of hole 6 of our golf course.
Several years after the dude ranch was built, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp formally named Camp Tate was built on the dude ranch site. In 1933, around 200 men from around Georgia were stationed here as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s program to give jobs to those men experiencing hardship from the Great Depression while working on forestation, building roads, dams, planting trees, etc.
The Work Project Supervisor of Camp Tate was E.C. Perrow, a local teacher, farmer, and all-around renaissance man. Having obtained a doctorate from Harvard University in literature, he eventually settled in Talking Rock and for years was the county surveyor of Pickens County.
According to a 1933 Inspection Report of Camp Tate that I obtained from our National Archives, while there, he taught the young men of the camp various classes in reading, writing, arithmetic, French, civics, sociology, forestry, engineering, mechanics, and English composition and grammar.
One of those men, Thomas Faircloth, reminisced about the camp quite fondly. He described the camp as initially comprising an old farmhouse that doubled as the camp’s headquarters, a barn whose loft held a third of the men’s sleeping quarters, and a ground level that held the shower for all of the men. The rest of the men slept in tents between the house and the barn until a dual-purpose barracks/kitchen was built later. Eventually, a gymnasium was built that doubled as a dance hall that held monthly dances where local musicians would come and play for the men.
The camp would send out trucks to pick up local girls from Marble City and Tate to provide the men company. Many others would show up on their own as the word eventually got out. Thomas felt greatly supported by the local community and stated that the entertainment reminded him of what our USO would do for soldiers overseas.
Another of the camp’s soldiers, Henry Jordan, was the son of a preacher from the Georgia town of Americus, whose organization eventually evolved into Habitat for Humanity. The work done by the men of the CCC was a wonderful training ground for such acts of philanthropy. The men from Camp Tate eventually built roads into Burnt Mountain and up to Mount Oglethorpe using small hand shovels and a Caterpillar bulldozer. And sometimes, when the going got too tough, they even used dynamite.
Bent Tree has a fascinating story, much of which has been told, and some of it yet, is still shrouded in speculation and mystery. I look forward to sharing with you the surprising facts I uncover in my research and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
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