Category Archives: WWALS

Withlacoochee River with water

The Withlacoochee River channel was full yesterday at the GA 122 bridge, near Hambrick Road,
with reference Yellow Dog:


Full channel

Compare to

21 March 2012 (on the left):


21 March 2012

Compare to March

I wasn’t standing in quite the same place yesterday,
because I would have been standing in water.
But you can see the water is much higher than it was six months ago.

Here are

a few more pictures
and

a video.

-jsq

John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee (audio)



Back at the end of March at

a river conference in Roswell, Georgia,
I was interviewed for a podcast.
Here’s

the audio,
and here’s the blurb they included:

John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee

Monday, July 9th, 2012




John S. Quarterman
was born and raised
in Lowndes County, where he married his wife
Gretchen. They

live on the same land where he grew up, and

participate in local community and government.



NPS talks with Quarterman and his observations on starting and
strengthening a Withlachoochee Riverkeeper organization at

Georgia River Network‘s

2012 Weekend for Rivers.

The water organization has since been incorporated as the Georgia non-profit

WWALS Watershed Coalition:



WWALS is an advocacy organization working for watershed conservation
of the Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River
Systems watershed in south Georgia and north Florida through
awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen advocacy.

-jsq

PS: They also recorded

another podcast
which starts out on what may sound like a completely different topic,
but which is actually quite related.

Advanced sheets-Field operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1917

What was your county like a hundred years ago, roads, houses, streams, ponds, and soils? Digital Library of Georgia in association with the University of Georgia Map Library has made available old soil maps from around 1910-1920 online in a viewer that can pan and zoom. Detail of Cat Creek Road, Lowndes County, Georgia in 1917:

Detail of Cat Creek Road

Detail of Cat Creek Road
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Screenshot by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 July 2012.

The soils haven't changed much (Tf is Tifton A soil, for example), but the roads and houses have, and many streams have been dammed for ponds.

They seem to have all Georgia counties. Here's Tift County in 1910 and Cook County in 1931.

-jsq

Owed to Don Davis of the Lowndes County Museum at the 11 July 2012 WWALS Watershed Coalition meeting.