E
ven in summer, Lake Martin isn’t just about the water. In addition to hiking, climbing and horseback riding, wagon rides through historic Russell Forest are another offwater activity that recently has grown in popularity. Linda Ingram, manager of The Stables at Russell Crossroads, said birthday parties, proposals, family reunions and private events that include buggy rides on the wooded trails are now booked year-round. The rides, which can accommodate up to 12 adults or 16 children, carry passengers along the scenic Big Way trail, over a wooden bridge with pole rails that once supported piers at an old Kowaliga dock. Rock retaining walls shore up the creek bed there, and picnic tables beckon among the spring wildflowers or fall foliage. Ingram said the tour often leads to Beechtree Hollow, a picturesque picnic site that hosts birthday parties, proposals and cookouts. “The parents will come out and put up decorations for the birthday parties, and we’ll take the kids down there in the big white wagon, drop them off and come back later to pick them up,” Ingram said. She always encourages parents to pack towels for the kids. “The stream runs across the trail, and the kids always play in it,” she laughed.
Beechtree Hollow is popular for adult parties, as well. “We had someone win the silent auction bid for a private party with Chef Rob McDaniel, and we brought them to Beechtree Hollow for a picnic. There were lights in the trees and tablecloths and flowers on the picnic tables. We had a bar set up, and Rob cooked onsite. It was really beautiful,” she said. “We took a young man and his girlfriend in the carriage, and he had a picnic all set up. He was going to propose. We dropped them off, and it was very romantic. They were engaged when we picked them up an hour later.” The tour also includes stops at historic sites where William Benson established a sawmill in the late 1800s and where a charcoal kiln was built in the 1940s to supply a budding tourism population at the lake. An African American entrepreneur, Benson built an earthen dam at the sawmill site, parts of which are still visible more than 100 years later. He also enlisted the support of landowners along a route from the mill to Alexander City to build a railroad for the hauling of lumber and other products, and he established a school where he taught trades and life skills to a generation of young African Americans who found the world a different place than the one in which their parents Trail Boss Stanley Ingram
100 Year Creek flows next to the Beechtree Hollow picnic spot
54 LAKE
SEPTEMBER 2016