Summer Tourism Season Gets Trimmed

Here it is the middle of summer ... Dog Days aren't even underway yet ... and guess what: summer vacation is almost over with. The big reason for this, of course, is that schools are changing their schedules. It wasn't many years ago that summer vacation always started before Memorial Day, and if some school had had the audacity to start its fall season before Labor Day no students would have been there because the parents and the kids would be out enjoying the last fling of summer.

There's no doubt this will have its impact on the tourism business in the mountains and lakes of northeast Georgia - this state's highlands and islands region - but it's not the first time we've been through all this. From about 1880 till the 1920's our area was the summer vacation land for people who lived along the coast ... from Charleston to Savannah, Mobile to New Orleans. Families flocked to Northeast Georgia partly because it was cooler than the coast and nobody had air conditioning, but more-so because one was less likely to get the bilious fever. Then some character found out if communities in Florida could control the mosquitoes they could control malaria fever, and Flagler built a railroad to Miami, and it messed up our tourism business in Northeast Georgia.

So, summer vacation is not what it used to be. Last time it was mosquitoes. This time it is school schedules. Reckon what it will be next time?

This is Gordon Sawyer from a window on historic Green Street.