Opened in January 2009, Tellus is home to one of only two digital planetariums in Georgia. The 120,000-square-foot museum also includes Science in Motion, a journey through the development of motorized transportation. Tellus replaced the Weinman Mineral Museum, a 9,000-square-foot museum.
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Athens, Ga., was once home to Navy Corps Supply School, which was located in the city’s Normaltown neighborhood from Jan. 15, 1954, until 2011. In 1990, as a tribute to the school, the Athens community placed a 4,000 pound, haze gray anchor in the median of Broad Street. The anchor for a destroyer ship was apparently donated because its bent shaft left it unusable for naval purposes.
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The Dillard House is perhaps best-known for its seemingly endless southern cuisine and hospitality. Formerly a boarding house, the restaurant touts itself as one of the original farm-to-table restaurants in Georgia. The Dillard House continues to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner family-style daily. Its cuisine is adapted from recipes handed down from Dillard family members and chefs. Family owned and operated, The Dillard House offers 90 hotel rooms, four cottages and 20 rental cabins at Chalet Village.
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The largest aquarium in the world is home to tens of thousands of marine animals. More than 10 million visitors have passed through the aquarium since it opened in November 2005. Highlights include great hammerhead sharks, four beluga whales and four whale sharks, which call a 6.3 million gallon tank home. In 2011, the aquarium launched a daily Dolphin Tales show.
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The Old Rock Gaol in downtown Greensboro was built about 1807 after the Superior Court of Greene County recommended a substantial jail be built. The jail, patterned after European bastilles, was built with using granite from a local quarry. With walls that are two feet thick, the jail has the distinction of being the oldest standing masonry jail in Georgia. The jail was used until 1895. Open by appointment, visitors can see where executions by hanging took place. Hangings were legal in Georgia from 1735 to 1924.
The Pace House in Vinings, Georgia, dates to after the Civil War. Before the war, Hardy Pace, operator of Pace’s Ferry, built his home in what was then called Vining’s Station. Federal troops, pursuing Confederate forces as they abandoned Smyrna, occupied Vining’s Station from July 5-17, 1864. Union Gen. William T. Sherman used Pace’s house as his headquarters and planned the siege of Atlanta. After federal troops left Vinings, the house served as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the Atlanta fighting, but because it was infected with disease, it was burned to the ground. Following the Civil War, Solomon Pace, Hardy Pace’s son, returned to find the homestead in ruins. Sometime between 1865 and 1874, he built a new home here, using whatever could be salvaged.
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Located at the intersection of Finley and Dearing streets in Athens, Ga., The Tree that Owns Itself is an oak tree that has been willed to itself. As the story goes, in about 1890, UGA Professor William H. Jackson willed the oak tree and the land that surrounds it to the tree to protect it in perpetuity. While the original tree fell during a windstorm on Oct. 9, 1942, the oak that today stands at Finley and Dearing streets is actually an offspring of the original and is known as the Son of The Tree that Owns Itself. It was planted on Oct. 9, 1946, by the Junior Ladies Garden Club in the exact same spot.
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Crews building the Western & Atlantic Railroad from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tenn., faced a number of natural obstacles. None, however, were as foreboding as Chetoogeta Mountain. What workers built was a 1,477-foot-long engineering phenomenon that has stood the test of time. Work on the tunnel started on July 15, 1848, and the first train rolled through the tunnel on May 9, 1850. The railroad actually started rail service between Atlanta and Chattanooga in the 1840s. The tunnel remained in service until 1928 when a new tunnel opened a few feet away to accommodate larger trains. For years, the older tunnel sat unused, and eventually fell into disrepair.
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Tunnel Hill Cemetery was established on June 26, 1876.
Ty Cobb has a tough legacy, to say the least. He is one of the greatest players to ever take the field. He holds the all-time career batting average record with a .366 average, and he was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 as part of the inaugural class. The Ty Cobb Museum in his hometown of Royston, Ga., puts Cobb in an interesting light. The museum helps tell the story of Cobb and how he helped shape his home town, an impact that is felt even today.