Atlanta's Natural Areas: Bull Sluice Lake

by Alan Toney

Nestled in the Chattahoochee River between Sandy Springs and Roswell is Bull Sluice Lake.  This 800 acre lake was created by the oldest power dam in Georgia built at Morgan Falls in 1904.  It drowned a 35-foot waterfall on the Chattahoochee River called Bull Sluice.  As a boy I often dreamed about that waterfall and how beautiful it must have been.  It is gone and the lake that was originally designed to be 45-feet deep has filled with sediment.  All lakes eventually fill with sediment, but this one got a lot of help from decades of poor farming and construction practices across north Georgia.

Engineers grumble at the loss of  "storage capacity" and power boat operators have run aground so often that most have abandoned it for younger lakes.  But quietly the lake has become a wetland.  Today much of it is only 10 inches deep when the river is running low, but it is teeming with wildlife.  Great blue herons, mallards, hawks, Canada geese, and wood ducks are easily seen, and tracks of possum, raccoon, and fox are still found along its banks.

The Chattahoochee Nature Center has built a boardwalk into the lake's marshes,  and the "Gold Branch Unit" of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area offers several miles of hiking trails along its western shore.  Canoeing is still my favorite way of enjoying the area although it can be windy in the spring.

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Last updated: 30 Nov 99