F.D. Roosevelt State Park Still Runs on CCC Stonework

Georgia State Parks closed Liberty Bell Pool after Labor Day, ending the 2026 swim season at F.D. Roosevelt State Park. The park itself never shut. It still covers 10,874 acres on Pine Mountain, with 43 miles of trail open once the water is no longer for swimming.

Each May the stone basin is the easy headline. The older fact is that a Depression work crew still supplies Georgia’s largest state park, a spring-fed pool with a 48-state floor, and the knob where Franklin Roosevelt ate lunch and looked at the valley.

Liberty Bell Pool Closed After Labor Day

The posted 2026 calendar ran Memorial Day weekend, then Wednesday through Sunday until August 2, then weekends from August 8 through September 6, and it was open for Labor Day. Hours were 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays stayed dark in the core months.

Georgia State Parks sold general admission for $7, seniors 65 and older for $5, children under 3 for $3, and military guests with ID for $6. A family season pass for up to six people was $100. The park is 80 miles southwest of Atlanta, at 2970 Georgia Highway 190 in Pine Mountain, and the office number is 706-663-4858.

That schedule was the summer 2026 swim season, the same stone hole that opened around Memorial Day with weekday hours through early August. Locals still send overheated drivers there first, because the water starts in the mountain, not in a boiler. After Labor Day the basin is off the recreation list, and the ridge goes back to being a hiking park with a famous empty pool in it.

Park officials said the hole reaches 9 feet and holds about 500,000 gallons of spring water. King’s Gap Spring feeds about 175,000 gallons a day into the system, and some of that flow also goes to the town of Pine Mountain. At the spring the water comes out at 50 to 60 degrees. Sun on the stone warms it after it sits in the basin, which is why a July swim is cold at first and then merely cool.

THE 2026 LIBERTY BELL POOL CALENDAR

Georgia State Parks lists the pool as a National Historic Landmark, completed by the CCC in 1942. The deck is native stone and uneven, so the park tells guests to wear swim shoes and not to dive from the edge. Pets stay out. So do outside coolers, and only Coast Guard-approved floats go in the water.

Why the Pool Floor Stops at 48 States

Crews cut some of the lining stones in the shape of the United States as it then existed. Alaska and Hawaii joined in 1959. The map in the floor never caught up, so swimmers still move over 48 shapes that froze before those two stars were added.

A ranger talk from Georgia State Parks puts Georgia first, as the stone you meet outside the restrooms when you step onto the deck. The remaining 47 are a scavenger hunt in the wet rock. The lining is local Hollis quartzite, hauled and set with mortar, which is why the pool looks like a wall that learned to hold water rather than a plastic tub dropped in a clearing.

From above, the basin bends like the Liberty Bell, which is how it got the name. Men on the crew did not show up as masons. In a Georgia State Parks video, one enrollee said they finished the rock work with crushing and placing, under instructors, because the skill on site was labor.

We didn’t know how to build a pool, but we knew how to work. This was all done with labor, mostly wheelbarrows, picks and shovels. They had a few dump trucks, army dump trucks, hauling their equipment in. I believe there was about 20 people working on it at the time I was working. Before we left here in December 1941, we had water in it, had it just about finished, and we’ve been swimming in it. We knew it was an unusual pool.

Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee, Georgia State Parks video

That first water in December 1941 is why some park talks date the opening to 1941 and the state page dates completion to 1942. Both can be true. They swam in an unfinished hole, then the job was signed off the next year as the corps itself wound down.

The Honor Guard That Built Pine Mountain

The Civilian Conservation Corps was created on March 31, 1933, to put unemployed young men on forests, farms, and parks. It lasted nine years and ended on July 1, 1942. Nationwide, more than 3 million men passed through about 16,000 camps. They were paid $30 a month, and $25 of that went home.

Georgia took the program even though Gov. Eugene Talmadge called federal New Deal work an intrusion. Before the corps shut down, more than 78,000 men had been on the rolls in 127 camps, with about 30 to 35 camps running at once. They planted more than 22 million trees, built nearly a half-million erosion dams, and ran more than 3,600 miles of telephone line.

On Pine Mountain the work had a presidential audience. The men of Company 4463, listed as GA SP-13, developed the state park here and served as Roosevelt’s honor guard when he came to nearby Warm Springs for polio therapy. Camp Kimbrough opened in 1935 in Chipley, the town now called Pine Mountain. A park history says picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, mules, and muscle dug the lakes and the swimming pool and raised cabins, an inn, hatchery ponds, roads, trails, and a boathouse.

WHAT THE CCC LEFT ON THE GROUND

• The pool: Liberty Bell Pool, spring-fed, quartzite-lined, still filled from King’s Gap.
• The overnight stock: 21 cottages in the park system now, with CCC stone and log work in the oldest of them.
• The water: Two lakes, including the fishing lake by the campground; swimming is not allowed in Lake Franklin.
• The camp: 115 tent, trailer, and RV sites, plus pioneer camps and 21 backcountry sites.
• The riding: 28 miles of horse trail, with privately run stables still taking guided rides.

A park representative, speaking during the America’s 250th push that put the property in the news in June, said the crews “did all this by hand” and “hand dug this by shovels.” That is the same claim the enrollee made on camera, and it matches the tool list in the state’s own park history.

The western half of the property, once Pine Mountain State Park, was designated a National Historic Landmark District on September 25, 1997. The National Park Service called the collection of rustic buildings one of the country’s best examples of a Depression-era state park, and the New Deal park with which Roosevelt was most closely tied.

Roosevelt Came Here Because He Could Not Walk

Polio struck him in 1921. He made his first visit on October 3, 1924, hoping the warm mineral water at Warm Springs would help. The Little White House site, run by Georgia State Parks, says the springs run about 88 degrees. Swimming did not cure him. It did let him work muscles that would not take his weight on land, and he came back.

Between 1924 and 1945 he made 41 trips. In 1932, still governor of New York, he built the Little White House. He died there on April 12, 1945, of a cerebral hemorrhage while sitting for a portrait. Five days later, on April 17, the park on the ridge took his name. The house is a separate historic site, a short drive from the pool, and it still shows the unfinished portrait, his 1938 Ford with hand controls, and the pools that first pulled him south.

A park representative put the land grab in the same breath as the illness: he came “for curative purposes for his polio,” fell in love with the area, and “wanted to preserve this area, so he created this state park.” Rural Electrification is the policy souvenir people cite most. The physical souvenir is the park that still sells a $7 swim in a hole his corps dug, then a $10 ParkPass to walk the ridge when the swim is done.

THE ROOSEVELT CALENDAR ON PINE MOUNTAIN

1. October 3, 1924: Makes his first trip to Warm Springs for polio treatment.
2. 1932: Builds the Little White House while governor of New York.
3. 1935: CCC Camp Kimbrough goes to work on the Pine Mountain park.
4. December 1941: Enrollees have water in Liberty Bell Pool and are already swimming in it.
5. 1942: Georgia State Parks dates completion of the pool; the CCC ends on July 1.
6. April 10, 1945: Makes his last trip to Dowdell’s Knob.
7. April 12, 1945: Dies at the Little White House.
8. April 17, 1945: The park takes his name.
9. September 25, 1997: The western park is named a National Historic Landmark District.
10. September 6, 2026: Posted weekend hours on Liberty Bell Pool run out, with Labor Day on the calendar.

America’s 250th is the overlay Georgia State Parks printed across its pages in 2026, which is how a 1930s pool became a June news brief again. The anniversary year does not change the stone. It only sends more people to look at it.

His Grill Is Still on Dowdell’s Knob

Dowdell’s Knob sits at 1,395 feet, on a spur that sticks into Pine Mountain Valley. The knob takes its name from Lewis and James Dowdell, Harris County settlers who arrived in 1828. Roosevelt used the rock as a picnic ground. His stone grill is still there, along with a life-size statue, and the park says he cooked for polio patients and for guests who had nothing to do with the hospital.

He liked linen and hot dishes off silver more than a blanket on the ground, and he would sit in a chair or on a car seat set down for him. On April 10, 1945, two days before he died, he had Secret Service drivers take him back to the point. A Georgia Historical Society marker notes he used that last look to think about the United Nations and the fighting on Okinawa and in Germany.

From October 1 through March 31 the knob gate closes at 5 p.m. In the warm months it stays open until 8 p.m. The one-mile nature trail off the top, blazed light blue, drops toward a waterfall near Brown Dog bluff. The 4.3-mile Dowdell’s Knob Loop ties the overlook back into the main Pine Mountain Trail. If you come for the statue and linger on the loop, you need to watch that gate.

The 23-Mile Trail Takes the Season Back

Georgia State Parks now lists the property at 10,874 acres of Pine Mountain ridge, with 21 cottages, 115 campsites, and 43 miles of trail. The named walk is the 23-mile Pine Mountain Trail, blue-blazed from the Highway 27 entrance across from the Callaway Gardens country store to the WJSP tower on Highway 85W. Volunteers with the Pine Mountain Trail Association have built and kept that path since 1975. Side trails take white blazes. A map is sold at the office, and it is not optional on the long loops.

The park stays open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The office runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. except Christmas and the state’s deer hunts. A daily ParkPass is $10. Backcountry sites are reserved one group at a time, so you do not share a pad with strangers. A fire ban is in place at Sassafras Hill and Grindstone Gap because those sites lack water.

DAY HIKES ON THE PINE MOUNTAIN TRAIL

When the pool stayed closed for a full year in the early 2010s, park staff later said visitor numbers fell by about half. Pine Mountain felt it in shops and meals, because the swim is what turns a highway stop into a day. The town and the park already share a spring. In 2012, with opening day close and the basin still short more than 50,000 gallons, the town diverted flow so the hole could open on time. Fire crews had a hydrant plan ready if that had failed.

That is the pattern the 2026 season repeated in quieter form. The corps built a pool that still needs a mountain, a town, lifeguards, and a calendar. Take any piece away and the ridge is still a park, just a less visited one. Put them back each May and the 48-state floor goes under swimmers again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Is It Called the Liberty Bell Pool?

The name comes from the shape of the basin as seen from above, a curving outline meant to recall the Liberty Bell, not from a replica bell on the deck. Georgia State Parks still calls it the largest spring-fed public pool in the state. Cave Springs has a larger spring swimming area, about 1.5 acres with roughly 2 million gallons a day, but that water is run as a swimming lake rather than a pool, which is the distinction the rangers use.

Who Built F.D. Roosevelt State Park?

The Civilian Conservation Corps did the stone and dirt work in the 1930s, and the Works Progress Administration built Highway 190. Robert Fechner, raised in Macon and Griffin, directed the national CCC. Federal law barred racial discrimination in enrollment, but nearly all camps were segregated, and several southern states, Georgia among them, lagged on recruiting Black enrollees until the Labor Department threatened to withhold quotas. An all-Black unit did CCC work at the Okefenokee refuge, not on this ridge.

When Did Franklin Roosevelt First Visit Warm Springs?

He arrived on October 3, 1924, with Eleanor, and was carried from the train to a car. Squirrels on the cottage roof kept him awake that night. The next day he swam, and for the first time in three years he could stand in four feet of water and move his right leg. He stayed about two weeks, swimming daily, then came back almost every year except 1942.

Is the Liberty Bell Pool a National Historic Landmark?

Georgia State Parks prints that label on the pool page and dates the work to 1942. The National Park Service designation from September 25, 1997, is for a district, the old Pine Mountain State Park west of the later additions, listed as NRHP 97001273. NPS described it as a Recreational Demonstration Area built with the National Park Service, the CCC, and the WPA, and as the 1930s park Roosevelt himself watched most closely from Warm Springs.

How Do You Visit After the Pool Closes?

The park stays open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. year-round, with a $10 daily ParkPass, and the office is at 2970 Georgia Highway 190, east of Pine Mountain off I-185 exit 34. Office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days, except Christmas and the DNR deer hunts. Dowdell’s Knob’s gate shuts at 5 p.m. from October 1 through March 31. Call 706-663-4858 before a backcountry night, because Sassafras Hill and Grindstone Gap are under a fire ban when those sites have no water.

The knob gate is already on winter hours. The office still picks up. In the basin, the stone states still stop at 48.