AT A GLANCE

Why go?

Just outside the bustle of metro Atlanta, the Sope Creek Paper Mill Ruins are one of the Chattahoochee River corridor's most photographed landmarks: the moss-and-lichen-crusted stone shell of a 19th-century paper mill, rising castle-like above a tumbling, boulder-strewn creek. Set within Sope Creek Park—a unit of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area near Marietta, Georgia—the ruins reward a short, easy walk with history, waterfall and woodland scenery.↗↗↗

The appeal is the combination of an evocative story and gentle access. The mill was once the largest paper producer in Georgia and supplied paper to much of the antebellum South; Union troops burned it during the Civil War, and today only its walls survive. Numbered signposts, a loop to a glassy pond and a kid-friendly mile-long creek trail make it an effortless half-day escape that feels a world away from the city.↗↗↗