Fri, Mar 1 2019 - Red Top Iron Hill Trail / Ghost Campground (View Original Event Details) Trip Leader(s): Holt Ward Participants: Holt Ward, Bob G, Silvia B, Allan, Claudia, Linda H, Rob Herman, Dan C, Janet G, Shirley N, Bette, Bonnie R, Ryleigh Reinhard, Karen, Evy

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Today's hike explored one of the less used corners of Red Top Mountain State Park.  We utilized the Iron Hill trails to reach our objective of hiking through an old abandoned campground that was last used in the late 70's.  We started out the Iron Hill trail, visiting a rather large open pit iron ore mine.  We saw many nearby tailing piles which contained the waste from the iron mining process.  Along the way we saw a Lake Allatoona which was about 7 feet above full pond so much of the land near the normal shore line was in fact under water.  

After several miles, we reached the long finger of land which contained the abandoned campsite.  It much have been quite large in the day as it had 135 designated campsites.  Many broken picnic tables and grill boxes littered the woods as evidence of the busy campground this must have been.  Next we followed a long abandoned road bed all the way to the tip of the finger before bushwhacking for about a half mile.  On the return leg back to towards the parking lot we again saw evidence of the mining operations of Iron Hill that ceased in the 1920's.  Even though rain caused us to cut a bit off the end of the hike since it started raining, we still covered nearly 6 miles.  ~ Holt