Brown's Mill Battlefield (Coweta County, Georgia)

 

When a new hike that I had never done popped up on the Meetup schedule, I decided to take advantage of checking out a new trail. Brown's Mill Battlefield is a small park near Newnan, GA and commemorates a Civil War battle that took place here on July 30, 1864. From my research, a Union cavalry column launched a raid to sever Confederate communication and supply lines in the region. However, they were defeated by forces under General Joseph Wheeler. This defeat contributed to forcing Sherman's siege of Atlanta.

In the days leading up to the hike, my friend that manages the Meetup group was injured and had asked me to lead in his absence. I was more than happy to help him out. I arrived about twenty minutes before the scheduled start time to get a lay of the land and plan out my route. This trail system is meant primarily for mountain bikes and consists of several interweaving trails cutting back and forth on each other. But with a map on my phone and a good sense of direction, I had a pretty good plan put together in my head as the hikers started arriving. As usual, we did a quick round of introductions and I explained the plan. With that, we hit the trail.

The first thing I noticed was that the trail colors on the marker posts differ from those on the map. I soon realized that the blue trail was actually the maroon trail on the map. That's an unfortunate piece of coordination by the park administration. We made our way okay though, as we crossed a power-line swath multiple times along different trail routes. 

Eventually, I wanted to make my way to the outskirts of the park and began heading that way. Suddenly, though an unexpected lake came into view. I was expecting to see a small pond, but further along the trail. This made me question my perceived location on the map. Pushing forward we followed a use trail along the shore of the lake and eventually got into an area where the trail just vanished. I still had a good sense of direction and knew how to get us back, but it required a little bushwhacking. That normally wouldn't be an issue, but we had to pass through a section of thick thorn bushes. I warned everyone to be careful and just as I did, ended up slicing my finger open on one of the sharp little devils. Once we got back to a clearing, I took a minute to clean it and put a bandage on it. Nothing serious, but it was bleeding a bit and needed to be cared for. 

From there, we eventually found the correct trail and covered the outskirts of the park, including the expected small pond. The larger lake we found did not appear on any map we had available. From there, we road walked a bit to get back to the main hiking trail and encountered a fenced marker commemorating the battle. It actually looked more like a tombstone, but after researching it a bit, I discovered there wasn't anyone buried here and it simply marked the battle. The print had unfortunately been heavily worn and made it difficult to read on site.

Once the parking lot came into site, I explained our current mileage and that I was going to do another section, but that everyone was welcome to make their own choice: return to their car or continue hiking. Three of the fifteen or so hikers decided to join me. We followed the red trail, which is wide and well marked. It added an additional mile or so to our total distance, which reached about 6.7 miles by the time we returned to the parking lot. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. While the trails were nice and well maintained at this park (other than the surprise lake and trail color issue), it's one of those parks where they've cut trail for the sake of cutting trail, instead of having a trail that actually leads somewhere. This my not favorite type and I will likely not return, but it was great to get outside and enjoy some fresh air and good company.