Grant To Build Two Viewing Decks At Prater's Mill Nature Loop

  • Thursday, April 8, 2021
  • Mitch Talley, Whitfield County Director of Communications

Along the banks of Coahulla Creek between 166-year-old Prater’s Mill and Coahulla Creek High School, you never know what kind of wildlife you might see. 

Maybe a blue heron community where newborns stretch their necks into the air awaiting food. 
Perhaps a red headed woodpecker tapping out staccato sounds. 

Or any one of the many other endangered, threatened, and unique species that call the area home.

To help visitors enjoy seeing the variety of animals and plants that populate the area, the Prater’s Mill Foundation recently received a $2,938 grant from the Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division to build two wildlife viewing platforms along an expanded Coahulla Creek nature loop.

“Prater’s Mill has always valued history and now to be able to value the natural surroundings, too, it’s exciting,” says Greg Bruner, a past-president and current Prater’s Mill Foundation board member who is spearheading the project. “I know greenspace is a priority in the county’s master plan, and that’s what we’re tapping into here  - creating a space for current and future generations on behalf of the county.”

Bruner is working closely with Whitfield County Buildings & Grounds, which will be pouring the footers for the two decks, expected to be approximately 12 feet by 12 feet.

“One of the platforms will be on the water’s edge,” Bruner said. “It won’t be a fishing pier in that we want to be very environmentally responsible.”

The second platform will sit high on a knoll, overlooking the Coahulla Creek bottom there, with a 270-degree view down on the creek valley below, he said.

“We want to get up above the brush,” Bruner said. “It’s kind of open there anyway. It’s been logged so it will be equivalent of somebody that doesn’t hunt being able to go out in the woods and get up in a stand and be able to observe wildlife and nature in all its glory from a vantage point above the vegetation.”

In the coming weeks, he plans to meet with Buildings & Grounds Director Chuck Fetzer “to get the ball rolling” but  “beyond that, we also want to get the community involved.”

Bruner especially thanked the Boring Trust for kick starting the project by donating  to the county about 60 acres between Prater’s Mill and nearby Coahulla Creek High School. Other community philanthropists have also since stepped forward to support the effort, including $1,000 from the Prater’s Mill Foundation and $1,000 from  Shaw Industries and $500 from the Limestone Valley Resource Conservation and Development Council for educational signage along the trail. Also planning to offer their volunteer efforts are members of Friends of Prater’s Mill, Peach State Antique and Tractor Club, and Boy Scouts of America. 

But Bruner says anyone in the community is invited to join the effort by calling him at 706-264-3952.

“Once we have the footers in place,” he said, “we want as much community involvement as possible for the actual construction and assembly of the structures, whether it’s scouts or clubs or industry or any interested citizens. We want to really reach out to the community and get them involved in building these decks because at the end of the day, we want this to belong to the citizens of Whitfield County and for them to feel very much part of the place. So as we develop this back there, there’s going to be a lot of opportunity for volunteerism, and we’re excited about that.”

Bruner points out that the county already has parks that focus mainly on physical activities, like Edwards, Westside, and the new Riverbend under construction in the southern part of the county.

“There are two types of parks,” he said. “There’s a park like Edwards where you’ve got a lot of ballfields and tennis courts and sporting activities, which are great and grand. But there are also parks where you want to just go and find  yourself and lose yourself, if  you will, in the quiet and the natural surroundings. That’s more what this is, more of a sanctuary to find peace rather than an activities type of park.”

The foundation has reached out to Southern Adventist University for help in making the trail a “kind of nature center experience where as you hike the trail, you learn as you go.”

SAU Outdoor Master’s Education student Cheryl Craven has already helped map out the expanded Norma Gordon Natural Loop, which will be more than twice the length of the original trail built in 1978 by eighth grade students in Gordon’s science class at North Whitfield Middle School and improved upon in 2006 by John Bruner, whose Eagle Scout project included construction of foot bridges making the trail passable 99 percent of the time and greatly increasing public usage.
“Right now, Cheryl is working on the education component of the trail,” Bruner said. “Ultimately our goal is to make this an extension of the classroom for Whitfield County schools, where as they’re studying plant life or outdoor biology or stream biology, even the Indian history potentially, they could use this as a place to go and we would have volunteers to walk through and explain what they’re seeing. There will also be signage along the way where it could be self-guided as well.”

The expanded trail will begin and end at a trail head near Prater’s Mill. “Today, that loop is only about two-thirds of a mile long; with the new property, it’ll be a two-mile experience,” Bruner said.
While he hopes construction will begin as soon as May, he says it’s not too early even now for visitors to begin enjoying the area. The expanded trail has already been marked with pink flags, he said, “and I’d love to get people out there walking right now.”  He suggests wearing boots or visiting during a drier period since the area is prone to flooding along the creek banks.

The trip will be worth it, he assures visitors. “One of the interesting things back there is right now there’s a Great Blue Heron rookery where they have a community nesting site,” Bruner said.

“There are 13 nests up in the trees above Coahulla Creek. That’s the kind of natural beauty that’s back there.”
 
The $2,938 grant from the Department of Natural Resources to the Prater’s Mill Foundation is one of six projects to be funded by the Wildlife Resources Division funds during 2020.

The grants program, funded by the Georgia Nongame Wildlife Conservation Fund, helps develop and enhance wildlife viewing options, with an emphasis on State Wildlife Action Plan species and habitats – a comprehensive strategy to conserve these animals, plants, and places before they become rarer and costlier to conserve or restore.

“To Protect, Preserve, and Present the Serenity of the Coahulla Creek Ecosystem for Future Generations” is the main goal for the nature preserve at Prater’s Mill, according to Greg Bruner, a Prater’s Mill Foundation board member overseeing the project.

Coahulla Creek is one of the top 10 high priority watersheds in the Southwestern Appalachians/Ridge & Valley ecoregion, he said, with high priority habitats at the site including cane breaks, mesic hardwood forests, red maple/black gum swamp and streams.

Bruner says the foremost benefit of the project – which will include construction of two viewing decks along the expanded nature trail during 2021 – “is to educate visitors of the importance to protect fragile ecosystems and their respective habitants.”

Examples of priority species found at the site include the federally endangered Southern Clubshell, federally threatened Trispot Darter and Finelined Pocketbook, as well as the Mountain Shiner, Coosa Darter, Alabama Rainbow, Coosa Crookshell, and Bald Eagle. An active Great Blue Heron rookery can also be observed from the trail, with 13 nests high in the sycamore branches overhanging the creek.

Thanks to a grant from Shaw Industries, the signage standard that already identifies the Red Headed Woodpecker on a trail between Coahulla Creek High School and Prater’s Mill will be adopted along the entire 1.8-mile trail length to call out endangered, threatened, and unique species.

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