Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South

Environmental History and the American South

by Paul S. Sutter

Providence Canyon State Park, also known as Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon,” preserves a network of massive erosion gullies allegedly caused by poor farming practices during the nineteenth century. It is a park that protects the scenic results of an environmental disaster. While little known today, Providence Canyon enjoyed a modicum of fame in the 1930s. During that decade, local boosters attempted to have Providence Canyon protected as a national park, insisting that it was natural. At the same time, national and international soil experts and other environmental reformers used Providence Canyon as the apotheosis of human, and particularly southern, land abuse.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies uses the unlikely story of Providence Canyon―and the 1930s contest over its origins and meaning―to recount the larger history of dramatic human-induced soil erosion across the South and to highlight the role that the region and its erosive agricultural history played in the rise of soil science and soil conservation in America. More than that, though, the book is a meditation on the ways in which our persistent mental habit of separating nature from culture has stunted our ability to appreciate places like Providence Canyon and to understand the larger history of American conservation.

Genres: History, Environment, Nonfiction, Nature

248 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2015

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this an interesting look at the land and its history. The Grand Canyon demonstrates the power of erosion of a mighty river, over aeons; the Providence Canyon however came about swiftly through ill-thought farming practices after homesteaders took over the land from Creek Native people in Georgia. While I've visited the Grand Canyon I'd never heard of this smaller relative. Looking at the craggy, continually eroding gullies of marine sedimentary soil, we have to say that if good farmland was ruined, at least it leaves a pretty and educational attraction. There is also a nature reserve today which includes the plum azalea not found elsewhere.

This book is written with good depth and clarity, and will interest geology and farming students, as well as local historians, tourists to the site; also those pursuing the clash of cultures or environmental despoliation which followed the resettlement of the Americas.