Preserve History
Ages ago, part of the 15,000-square-mile band of sandstone beneath this flat coastal part of Georgia was exposed by erosion. Combined with the roaring water of Rocky Creek, a tributary of the Ocmulgee River, and the steady effects of weathering, an environmental anomaly was created, a place where a network of fissures, cliffs and crevices stay cool and moist, juxtaposed with almost desert-like conditions on flat rocks above the fissures.
While this is enough to make Broxton Rocks a site worth seeing, there’s more. Plant life abounds, some not normally found in the coastal region and some growing in unusual ways. Green-fly orchids, for example, which grow on trees, adorn the rock walls at Broxton Rocks. Other rare plants found here include Pineland Barbara-buttons, yellow flytrap, hooded pitcher plant and wire-leaf dropseed.
The preserve has been an important site for as long as people have inhabited the area. Evidence of Paleo-Indian people and early European settlers have been found here, and even today Broxton Rocks is a special place to local residents, who carry on a century-old Easter Sunday tradition here, often referred to as the “falling waters.”
TNC’s Impact
Management at Broxton Rocks includes controlled burns in the winter, spring and early summer, critical to maintaining natural plant and animal communities. We plant longleaf pines, wiregrass and other native herbs to restore natural diversity. The forest area along the trail is being restored to longleaf pine and wiregrass. Our long-term vision is to see most of Broxton Rocks entirely in natural, mature pine woodland by the middle of the 21st century.
