FDR's Legacy: Warm Springs, Pine Mountain & Columbus

Franklin Roosevelt first came to Warm Springs in 1924, drawn by reports that the town's warm 88-degree mineral springs had helped a polio survivor regain partial use of his legs. Roosevelt had contracted infantile paralysis three years earlier, at age 39, and had been searching ever since for some path back to physical strength. He found in those spring-fed pools a buoyancy and warmth that he claimed genuinely strengthened his paralyzed legs, and he returned again and again — eventually 89 times between 1924 and 1945 — making Warm Springs a second home. In 1927 he established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation to bring other polio patients to the waters, financing their treatment out of his own pocket before the institution grew into the seed of what would become the March of Dimes. In 1932, before he had won the presidency, he built himself a modest six-room cottage of Georgia pine on the hillside above town — plain and unpretentious, with a broad porch suited to a Southern summer, costing just $8,738. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt was sitting in the cottage's living room for a portrait by the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff when he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He lost consciousness within minutes and died that afternoon, less than a month before Germany's surrender ended the war in Europe he had spent twelve years preparing for and fighting. The Georgia cottage was the one he had chosen for himself, not Warm Springs's grand resort hotel but a simple dwelling suited to the private man behind the public figure. The Little White House has been preserved almost exactly as it was that day: the unfinished Shoumatoff portrait still stands on its easel, the small card table where Roosevelt was sitting remains in position, and his wheelchair — the lightweight kitchen chair he had modified for mobility — sits nearby. The warm spring itself, still flowing on the property, is accessible along a short path through the woods, and the simple pool where FDR exercised with other polio patients has been restored. Lucy Rutherfurd, the companion with whom he had maintained a long and complicated friendship, had arranged the portrait sitting and was present in the cottage when he collapsed.

Adjacent to the Little White House, the museum holds the unfinished Shoumatoff portrait that was on the easel when Roosevelt collapsed — seeing it in person, the paint still wet in the artist's imagination, has an eerie immediacy that photographs cannot capture. The centerpiece of the car collection is FDR's 1938 Ford Phaeton convertible, hand-controlled so that Roosevelt could drive himself unassisted through the Georgia countryside — a freedom he cherished deeply and exercised regularly on the rural roads around Warm Springs. On display alongside the car are his leg braces, the heavy iron contraptions he wore to simulate the ability to stand, and the wheelchair he had engineered from a kitchen chair for its lightness and maneuverability. Exhibits trace the history of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation for polio patients he established in 1927, the predecessor institution that grew into one of the most successful charitable organizations in American history.

Callaway Gardens was created in the 1950s by textile magnate Cason Callaway, who transformed 13,000 acres of worn-out farmland on Pine Mountain into a resort and conservation landscape of extraordinary variety, including over 700 documented varieties of native azalea. The Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center, opened in 1988 and dedicated to the founder of Days Inn Hotels, is the largest glass-enclosed butterfly conservatory in North America: a soaring glass structure maintained at a tropical 80 degrees year-round and filled with more than 1,000 live butterflies representing over 50 species, all in continuous, unhurried flight through lush tropical plantings. Outside the conservatory, the surrounding English Walled Garden, the walking trails around Mountain Creek Lake, and the beach and water facilities of Robin Lake make Callaway a surprisingly complete destination — equally suited to a family with young children or a couple looking for unhurried walks through a beautifully maintained landscape.

The National Infantry Museum is a 190,000-square-foot facility opened in 2009 on grounds adjacent to Fort Benning — now redesignated Fort Moore — the largest U.S. Army infantry training installation in the world and the base that has trained virtually every American infantryman since World War I. The museum's permanent galleries trace the history of the American infantry soldier from the Revolutionary War through the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, making the case that the foot soldier with a rifle has remained the decisive instrument of American land power across two and a half centuries of warfare. Among the most striking exhibits is a full-scale reproduction of a World War II street battle in a German village, with building facades, rubble, and the sounds of combat recreated at immersive scale; nearby, a Medal of Honor gallery presents the stories of 478 recipients in individual display cases, each one a compressed biography of extreme valor. Outdoors, a substantial collection of combat vehicles, artillery pieces, and aircraft spans the range of American military hardware from field guns of the 1860s through Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters. The Global War on Terror memorial on the museum grounds provides a contemplative counterweight to the military hardware inside. With over 30,000 artifacts in its collection and free admission, the National Infantry Museum is one of the largest and most comprehensive military museums in the United States.

Upscale casual dining in Columbus's revitalized Uptown district along the Chattahoochee RiverWalk, The Loft at Brickyard serves a broad American menu in a warmly converted industrial space well suited to a midday break between the museum and the river.

The Chattahoochee RiverWalk is a 15-mile linear park built along the west bank of the Chattahoochee River through the heart of Columbus, making it one of the longest urban riverfronts in the eastern United States. The river at Columbus forms the state line between Georgia and Alabama, and the RiverWalk — developed in phases from 1992 to 2012 — has been the backbone of the city's downtown revitalization. The whitewater section below the historic textile mills is particularly dramatic: the natural rapids here, recently opened for kayaking, rafting, and zip-lining as part of an ambitious riverfront redevelopment, are among the longest urban whitewater rapids in the world, a fact that surprises most visitors who expect a calm river walk.

The Springer Opera House opened its doors in 1871 as the finest theater in interior Georgia — a claim that was not merely boosterism but a straightforward description of a building that attracted the leading theatrical talent of the Gilded Age to the small city on the Chattahoochee. Edwin Booth, America's greatest 19th-century actor and the elder brother of John Wilkes Booth — Lincoln's assassin — performed on this stage, as did the singer and actress Lillie Langtry, the humorist Will Rogers, and President Woodrow Wilson before he entered politics. The building's ornate Victorian interior, with its original cast-iron box seats, horseshoe balcony, and elaborately painted proscenium, was nearly demolished in the 1960s when the theater had fallen into disuse; it was saved by a determined preservation campaign and meticulously restored through the following decade. Governor Jimmy Carter designated the Springer Georgia's State Theatre in 1971, and the intimate 763-seat house has been presenting live performances continuously since then — excepting the years of World War II — making it one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the American South.