Unpaved Paradise

They put up a parking lot, but they didn’t pave paradise. Mark and I discovered this after we parked in the empty lot at Radium Springs, outside of Albany, Ga., and not expecting much, walked towards the stairway at its edge.

Descending the steps, we entered an Edenic garden — lush, green and fragrant — and at its center a dazzling blue pool of clear spring water, which then flowed into a channel carrying it into the Flint River, just out of sight. We were dazzled by the serenity, the natural beauty and the solitude. While we wandered through the garden, we saw only one couple, and had they been Adam and Eve strolling through their grounds in paradise, we would not have been terribly surprised.

Radium Springs, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Georgia, is a hidden gem, but it does not have as many visitors these days. In its heyday in the 1920s, it was an opulent resort drawing flappers and financiers, health-seekers and the horsey set from all over the country to dance in its casino, play golf on its championship course, and bathe in its pure, healing waters.

The “radium” in its name was, in fact, an enticement to lure the health-conscious to this opulent southern playground. Traces of radium, occurring naturally in the spring water, had been discovered in the ‘20s. Until then, the spring had been called Blue Spring. But with healing waters all the rage (think President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Warm Springs 100 miles away) and radium thought of as having mysterious healing powers back then, Blue Spring was re-christened Radium Springs, and wealthy northern visitors flocked to this lovely, exotic place.

The spring had already been drawing visitors for centuries, if not millennia. Its pure waters —70,000 gallons a minute at 68 degrees, summer and winter — flow up from the Floridan Aquifer through underwater caves and form a pool of water cold and transparent. The spring attracted fish and animals and the native Americans who hunted them. 

It attracted Europeans, too, when they first explored the southeastern wilderness in the 1500s, with reports from the expeditions of Ponce de Leon and Hernando de Soto in the 1500s describing the beautiful springs they passed as they explored this part of Georgia. The settlers who came years later marveled at the spring’s depth, clarity and abundance of fish. For generations after, Blue Spring served as the area’s favorite swimming hole, its cooling water a blessed refuge from the brutal southerly summer heat.

However, the discovery of radium turned the spring into a natural resource that could be monetized. Developer Barron G. Collier reportedly invested approximately $1 million in the property, building a casino, hotel, bath houses, cottages, walking and riding trails, and a golf course. The resort opened in 1927. Guests from all over the country took the train to Albany to seek healing and refreshment in the water, fine dining and big band music in the casino, recreation and exercise on the woodland trails. And at the golf course, there was the thrill of competition, too. On June 23, 1927, Bobby Jones played a match against John Kirkwood, a trick-shot artist.  Kirkwood beat Jones that day.

Two years later the stock market crashed and the Roaring ‘20s became a casualty. As the Great Depression set in, fewer and fewer visitors got off the train. Eventually, the resort closed in 1939.

There have, however, been many attempts at revival. The casino, which had been abandoned and moldering for decades, was on the verge of rehabilitation when floodwaters from two devastating storms in the 1990s damaged it so severely that it had to be demolished. Since then, the state and local governments have acquired the property, overseeing its conversion into Radium Springs Garden, which opened as an ecological and environmental park in 2010. Although visitors today expecting restaurants or shops or regular guided tours may be disappointed, there remains the natural wonder of the spring and the physical beauty that has drawn man and beast from time immemorial. 

There are still mementos of the resort from a century ago. The beautiful old stonework, the ladders and stairways bathers used to use, pavilions scattered around the property, the casino plaza by the parking lot above the spring pool, preserve the place’s past visions of its heyday.  

Swimming was permitted until 1994 when Radium Springs served as Albany residents’ most popular swimming hole. Rashelle Minix remembers how good it used to feel when she was a kid to dive in on hot summer days. “It was almost like a community pool that happened to be a natural spring. This was a great, cool getaway. You’re talking about 68 degrees on a 100-degree day,” remembers Minix, a lifelong Albany resident.

Minix would love to see the spring open for swimming again, but in the meantime, she is mighty proud of the outdoor activities mecca Radium Springs Garden has become.

“This has turned into a great outdoor adventure park. They’ve installed exercise equipment right outside the spring gates. On the old golf course, there’s greenspace for kids to practice soccer and football. The place where the golf course clubhouse used to be is now a trailhead for four miles of bike paths. There’s a huge pond stocked with fish, and they have kids’ fishing rodeos out there. You can rent kayaks and get out on the river,” she says.

Folks still gather under the moss swaying from the water oaks, cypress and sweet gum trees for weddings, picnics and family reunions. They leave their cars and their busy lives up in the parking lot. But down here by the spring, they can taste a little bit of unpaved paradise.

Radium Springs Garden is open daily except Mondays. Admission is free.

Seen in our May 2025 issue of Augusta magazine.