These are great stories about great places. My "duck club" is mostly devoted to fishing nowadays but "Ocean Pond Fishing and Hunting Club" has been around since the 1890s. The clubhouse was built in 1904. The water includes 5 natural lakes and marsh totaling some 750 acres. Most of the land has been sold over the years because it was too expensive to hold. The birds are mostly ringnecks or woodies, but I've shot some of about everything over the last 50 years I've hunted Ocean Pond.
The early members traveled from Macon and Valdosta by train to Lake Park and were ferried from the railroad station to the clubhouse by a small steam-yacht. There are pictures of the steam boat and the premises in the clubhouse. My grandfather bought his share in 1919 when he settled in Valdosta after returning from France after WW-1.
The clubhouse and it's cooks/caretakers are famous in Georgia for fine cuisine. Fishing is outstanding.
The main lake drained itself in 1993 when a sinkhole went out. I walked the lake bed while it was dry and found old sunken cypress plank boats in perfect shape, lots of arrowheads, tons of anchors, two old tackle boxes complete with old wooden lures, a dugout conoe dateing back to Indian days and numerous other Indian artifacts.
One of my sons needed a science project at the time and he and I went to one area where I had found the bottom covered with what I thought were Indian pottery shards. We picked up a bucket of pottery pieces for the science project and noticed that most of the pottery was glazed with a green finish on the inside. It turned out that this was Spanish Olive Jar instead of Indian pottery. I discussed the find with our local University archeologist and the find led to the rediscovery of a Spanish Mission which was known from Church archives in Spain but the location of which had been unknown. The mission dated from the 1500s but had been "lost" for 400 years.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought this might be of interest...Geo
