Walnut Mountain is best described by President Jimmy Carter. His little cabin on Turniptown Creek continues to soothe his soul. The resort offers beautiful nature trails, four lakes, community water, olympic size pool, campground, a clubhouse, lighted tennis courts and the wild noisey rushing beautiful Turniptown Creek. You can enjoy the illusion of seclusion but yet be so close to town.

Read what Jimmy Carter has to say about Walnut Mountain below:

Looking out from our little log cabin on Turniptown Creek, which flows out of the Rich Mountain Wilderness, Rosalynn and I behold the breathtaking beauty of another Georgia mountain spring. The mountain laurel—which locals call “ivy”—is bursting forth with its delicate, pale pink blossoms. The waterfalls outside my window are brimming with spring’s fresh rains, rapidly rushing downstream to their rendezvous with the Ellijay River. The hardwood forest surrounding us is clothed in nature’s fresh green habit, and the cool spring air is sweet and clean. Phoebes are building a nest nearby in anticipation of the new life soon to appear. In the stream, rainbow trout chase stoneflies emerging to begin their brief mating flights. Everywhere there is evidence of the renewal of life.

Here in this natural setting Rosalynn and I have found peace and serenity we seldom enjoyed in our earlier years. For us, Washington, D.C., was an extraordinary center of temporal power, international politics, and human sophistication. These mountains are the antithesis of the political and military power embodied in the statehouses of man’s government. Here in the Georgia mountains we enter an earth-centered consciousness where nature’s laws are in charge. Here, we return to the physical source of our nurturing—nature’s management of our air, water, and soil, without which our civilization could not survive. We return also to a great spiritual resource, amidst God’s handiwork.

Our cabin in the Rich Mountains has been a refuge from the press of civic duties. Here, the rumble of thunder over our mountain hideaway has replaced the 21-gun salute in some foreign port of call, and the water music of a trout stream, the sound of public ovation.

Both Hernando De Soto, in the sixteenth century, and William Bartram, in the late eighteenth century, found these Georgia mountains clothed with verdant forests and crystal streams and peopled with the proud Cherokee. Later, Americans of European origin settled far back in the mountain coves, treasuring the solitude and the ability to sustain themselves on the rich mountain soils and forests. Today, our citizens crave these qualities that gave the early Americans spiritual strength and fierce independence. We steal back to the mountains at every opportunity to revel in the pure air and water and untrammeled wildness. This closeness to nature restores us in body and soul. We sit once again by an eternal pool and stare in wonder at the diversity of a forest that has endured the great ice ages—a forest that remembers the howl of the wolf, the bugle of the elk, the thunder of the bison, and perhaps even the cautious footfall of the first humans many years ago.

For over two centuries we have wrested from our mountains the wealth that made our nation strong—mica, corundum, coal, iron, gold, and timber. Our cities have flourished on the water from mountain rivers, filtered and purified by mountain soils. Now is the time for us to acknowledge that we can no longer live without respecting and understanding our mountain forests and the other great ecosystems of the earth which have for millennia supported the habitat of man.

This guide, painstakingly produced by many volunteers of The Georgia Conservancy, opens the door to adventure in a cherished part of our natural heritage. In addition, it introduces the remarkable diversity of mountain environments whose vital functions are powered only by the sun. Here, we stand in awe of divine forces that have shaped our planet. In a remote cove or on a high windswept ridge, thoughts and cares of the modern world drop away, letting us for a little while become children of the earth.

Having known the fine work of The Georgia Conservancy for over 30 years, Rosalynn and I are not surprised that this strong conservation organization has produced another excellent publication for those who enjoy nature’s wonders. As one of the Conservancy’s founding members in 1967, I recall very favorably participating in its annual conferences in the early 1970s. Rosalynn joins me in recommending this valuable guide to all those who seek to discover the natural treasures awaiting them in the Georgia mountains.

New York Times Article

NewsAnalysis ELLIJAY, Ga., Aug. 31 - By going to the top of Walnut Mountain here Tuesday night to reaffirm his political bond with former President Jimmy Carter, Walter F. Mondale dealt with a question that has nagged his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination from the start: How to run for President without running from Mr. Carter? The meeting on the mountain took place over barbecue and apple cobbler in Mr. Carter's log cabin on Turnip Town Creek. After almost two years of political aloofness from the man he served as Vice President, Mr. Mondale apparently has concluded that Mr. Carter could be an asset to him in the South, where a recent poll showed him to be trailing Senator John Glenn of Ohio. He also apparently felt that the time had come to put an end to speculation about strains in their relationship. According to sources close to both men, Mr. Carter was beginning to show some signs of annoyance with Mr. Mondale's efforts in interviews to stress instances in which he had differed with Mr. Carter's policies and actions. Some of Mr. Mondale's aides said today that this was news to them, adding that as far as they know, the subject did not come up Tuesday night.

A SMALL BLUE RIDGE PINE CABIN IS THE CARTERS' RUSTIC RETREAT

By ENID NEMY
Published: July 14, 1983

ELLIJAY, Ga. THE sun filters in through groves of towering white oak and hemlock, and the sound of water is constant as it trickles over the rocks of Turnip Town Creek from a small waterfall and continues for seven or eight miles to the Ellijay River.

It is an idyllic setting, deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern Georgia, cosily close to the Tennessee border. The log cabin, perched alongside the creek, is remote from the main highway, reached by a long, winding, tricky and not particularly good gravel road. The cabin might almost be removed from civilization but for the small building that guards the entrance and the men who appear the moment a vehicle is heard. For this is the second home, the hideaway, of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and for a former President and First Lady, privacy does not preclude the Secret Service.

This is the first season that the Carters have used the cabin, built last year by John Pope, who is in the construction business, and whose wife, Betty, is a cousin of the former President. The design, though basically from a kit, includes an amalgam of details added by the two couples. The Carters and the Popes are joint owners of the 10-acre plot and the cabin, although the Popes live in another house just a neighborly drive away at the top of Walnut Mountain.

''We wanted a simple design, and the only change we made from the original plan was to make the porch 10 feet wide instead of 8 feet,'' Mr. Carter told a visitor as he stretched out on a porch chair and laid aside a paperback copy of Thoreau's ''Walden.'' ''I spend a good deal of time here.''

When he is not on the porch, reading or weaving bark seats for the chairs he makes, Mr. Carter is likely to be in the creek, building a dam or fishing for trout, his Willie Nelson or Levi jeans covered by thigh-high waterproof boots.

The cabin, its exterior made of hand-hewn yellow pine logs from the surrounding area, is a 30-foot square, divided into three rooms and two bathrooms on two floors. It is the second home that almost all people say they want and almost no one ends up with, usually because simplicity gives way to the temptation of adding just a little bit here and there.

''We had to exercise a lot of self-discipline,'' Mr. Carter said. ''I love it because it takes half an hour to clean,'' Mrs. Carter said. The interior floors and walls are also pine, with the walls alternating between smooth-finished wood and hand-hewn logs. Almost all the furniture - tables, chairs, stools, deacon's bench, armoires and beds - was made by Mr. Carter at his workshop in Plains and much of it is of his design.

The hickory and the pine used for the furniture also came from Plains, the hickory chopped from a grove behind the Carter residence there. The pine, dating from 1833, came from the house where Mrs. Carter was born, which was built by her great-great-grandfather.

Mr. Carter, who flinches at the very thought of nails in his furniture, was interested in the old pine floorboards because they too had no nails. ''They came from a great unfurnished attic that in the early days was used to sleep people who came from miles around to attend the annual revival meetings,'' he said. ''These people would all come with their pallets, and the attic could sleep 25 or 30 of them.''

Discussing the workshop tools in Plains, which were a gift from Mr. Carter's staff when he left Washington, he said: ''They couldn't have chosen anything better. I made a lot of the pieces at the same time I was writing my book. I'd work three or four hours on the book and then go into the workshop for two or three hours. It was like a total vacation.''

Mr. Carter is still making furniture, this time for the benefit of the Carter Center of Emory University in Atlanta. His hand-hewn chairs will be put up for auction in October at a charity gala at Sotheby Parke Bernet in New York. The proceeds will go to the center, which will be built in conjunction with the Carter Library and which will concern itself with such issues as peace in the Middle East, control of nuclear arms, human rights, the environment and health care.

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