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Co-Authors, Lamar Clifton ('46) and Morgan Murphy ('46 & '47)
Book Highlights
History of Albany Landmark
By
Elliott Minor, Associated Press Writer
ALBANY
~ Morgan Murphy
(NOTE: now deceased)
and Lamar
Clifton have worked for years to save the Radium Springs Casino, once a
glittering resort and ballroom that drew tourists and locals to one of
Georgia’s seven natural wonders.
The Casino
opened in the roaring ‘20s overlooking Radium Springs, which normally
gushes sapphire-blue water from caverns linked to an aquifer far below.
A long drought has left the pool surrounding the springs a murky brown
these days, and the hulking white structure may be razed because it sits
in a flood zone.
But even if
the building is destroyed, Murphy and Clifton have preserved its memory
in a 150 page book titled "Skywater" that highlights the history of
Radium Springs.
"This place
for years was the social center of this part of the country," said
Murphy. The 72-year-old retired banker remembers riding his bicycle to
Radium Springs to swim, jitterbug and listen to big bands.
"That’s
where you went to see and be seen - girl watching, boy watching," said
Murphy, the book’s publisher. "They’d have bands out there, the Auburn
Knights, Smiling Ben Shorter from Cuthbert and other regional bands that
played our kind of music, the Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey type of stuff.
A lot of lasting relationships were made out there."
The Casino
provided swimming, golfing and other recreational activities to
generations of Southwest Georgia residents and to Northern tourists
headed for Florida on old U.S. Route 19. The tourist business slowed
down after traffic was rerouted on a four-lane several miles east of the
Casino.
Groups
hosted conventions, reunions, beauty pageants, proms and dances in its
ballroom. An adjoining structure known as the Tree House had a jukebox
for dancing.
Although
rebuilt after a 1982 fire and renovated extensively after it was left
muddy and in disarray by floods in 1994 and 1998, the fate of the Casino
and the Tree House remain uncertain.
Manley
rebuilt the Casino after the 1982 fire and a preservation group headed
by Murphy refurbished it after the floods of 1994 and 1998.
Radium
Springs is one of several "blue holes" along the Flint River’s bottom.
They gush 68-degree water year around. Radium’s water flows into a pool
directly in front of the Casino that feeds Skywater Creek, a tributary
of the Flint.
Blue holes
are significant because they provide habitat for Gulf striped bass, a
large fish that has to huddle over the cool springs to escape the
Flint’s summer temperatures. Biologists say the fish would not survive
without blue holes.
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