Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

At the restaurant in the Dillard Motor Hotel in Clayton, Georgia, a little town in a mountainous northern corner of that state, a yellowed old newspaper clipping has been posted by the telephone for years. The story includes a photo showing two men in an open canoe going through Bull Sluice, a Class V rapids on the Chattooga, one of the South’s preeminent whitewater streams. According to the official classification system of the American Whitewater Affiliation, a Class V rapids consists of “extremely difficult, long, and very violent rapids with highly congested routes which nearly always must be scouted from shore. Rescue conditions are difficult and there is significant hazard to life in event of a mishap.” In the photo, the man in the stern of the canoe looks scared to death, but the man in the bow has a look of grim, Annapolis determination on his face—as if he were smoking out a nest of wasps. According to the story, which is dated sometime in 1972, this was the first run of Bull Sluice in an open canoe, ever. Others have their doubts about that—which is, of course, to be expected on a river with this sort of reputation—but most everyone acknowledges that even if they were not the very first, they were among the first. The man in the stern is Claude Terry, an expert local river runner. The man in the bow is the governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter.