Saturday Tricia and I went on a driving tour of some historic sites in the county. One of the highlights of the tour was a private park or picnic spot known as Lovers Retreat which was popular in the 1920’s and 1930’s. One story is that it was closed down after a tabernacle on the property was vandalized.

To get there we first had to drive down a section of the old Bankhead Highway. This was a treat in itself since the road is on private property now and not open to the public. The Bankhead Highway was one of the first “trans-continental” highways, later replaced by US80 and still later by I20.

The picnic spot consisted of a few acres of rolling grassland and shade trees between Eagle Creek and the old highway. A small dam on the creek created a pool for swimming and fishing and a suspension bridge over the creek gained access to the other side where there are huge thirty foot high limestone boulders with numerous narrow “canyons” between them.

The remains of the suspension bridge are still evident but not safe. I walked across over the concrete dam which was a couple hundred feet downstream. It was about a foot wide and water was flowing a couple inches over the top after the recent rains. I got the cuffs of my trousers wet but they soon dried in the sun.

An alternate story of how the place got its name is that a local white man named Lover hid from pursuing Indians in one of the crevices.