Providence Canyon Georgia

October 14, 2021

Mike and I

We are heading to Panama City, Florida for a couple days. We left after work Wednesday so when we went through Atlanta it would be less traffic. We stopped in LeGrange Georgia to get a hotel for the night. I remembered about this place and looked it up. Turns out it was pretty much on our way. So we were going to stop here for a couple hours. It is pretty much in the middle of no where Georgia.

The park website says the canyon was created by the erosion of the coastal plain after years of poor farming practices in the 1800’s. It is a crazy unique thing. If you touch the walls of the canyon it basically falls apart. It appears to be mostly sand. Hence the coastal plain I guess.

There are a few things to do here. Walk to the canyon floor and follow the paths around to see all 9 different canyons. Then you could do the loop trail and hike 2.5 miles around or hike the 7 mile back county trail. We decided to just visit the canyon floor and head on down the road to Florida!

Then we walked to some overlooks and got above pics like this one. In any event it was a very cool unusual side trip.

From Google: Providence Canyon lies in a region that was formed by deposition of marine sediments between 59 and 74 million years ago. The soil in the top part of the canyon wall was deposited about 60-65 million years ago, just after the age of the dinosaurs. Its fairly coarse sand is a reddish color caused by the presence of iron oxide. Underneath this formation lies what is known as the Providence Sand, which makes up most of the canyon walls. It’s one hundred and nineteen feet thick and was deposited about 70 million years ago. The upper part of this layer is very fine sand mixed with a white clay. The middle layer is coarse and more colorful, with beds of yellow (limonite) and purple (manganese) deposits. The lowest and oldest layer is a black and yellow mica-rich clay. The bottom of the canyon floor was deposited about 70-74 million years ago, and is orange in color but is poorly exposed and overgrown by vegetation.

It continues to erode. I don’t know what will happen to it in the future but it was a cool thing to explore even if we didn’t get to finish the trails.