Warm Springs is the birthplace of rural electrification, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt had everything to do with that. But the area and its geological attributes held a greater significance for the man affectionately known as “FDR,” for it inspired a determination that the former president of the United States clung to until the day he died in his beloved Middle Georgia haven.
It was the warm, healing water—which maintains a constant 88-degree temperature year round—that lured Roosevelt to nearby Bullochville in 1923. Two years earlier, the former vice presidential candidate had been stricken by polio. His move to the small town spurred a touching and remarkable faith. When a reporter from the New York Post asked FDR what he hoped to achieve through therapy, the vehement reply was, “I’ll walk without crutches. I’ll walk into a room without scaring everyone half to death. I’ll stand easily in front of people so they’ll forget I’m a cripple.”
Roosevelt was already determined to overcome this obstacle. He spent winters in the warm waters of the Florida Keys and endless hours soaking up sun. He hired doctors and therapists and read everything he could on the subject. That was how he heard about Louis Joseph, a young man formerly crippled by polio and restored to good health by the waters flowing from Pine Mountain, which gathered in fissures deep underground and bubbled up two miles away at Meriwether Inn.
So Roosevelt and wife Eleanor boarded a train bound for the small station at Warm Springs, where a sizable crowd waited to greet them. Gliding down a makeshift ramp in his wheelchair, fedora set back on his head and cigarette holder at a jaunty angle, FDR had a handshake for everyone before being driven to the inn. The ramshackle building, described by one writer as a “multistoried monstrosity of the worst Victorian design,” appalled Eleanor, but her husband saw only potential.
The Little White House
For the first seven years that Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Warm Springs for polio treatments, he stayed in various rental cottages. While Governor of New York, he oversaw construction of his own six-room white clapboard home on the north slope of Pine Mountain. Finished in the spring of 1932 at a cost of $8,738.14, the Little White House has been carefully preserved much as FDR left it. The casual style and furnishings reflect his desire to relax during his many visits to Warm Springs.
When Roosevelt won the 1932 election, the Little White House doubled as a presidential retreat. FDR often entertained high-ranking officials and foreign dignitaries here. He also saw first-hand the concerns of his rural neighbors. Within the walls of this house, Roosevelt conceived many of the visionary programs that lifted the country out of the Great Depression.
It was here, during his 41st visit to Warm Springs, that President Roosevelt died. He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, while having his portrait painted by Elizabeth Shoumatoff. No brush strokes were added after his death. When the Little White House opened to the public in 1948, Mme. Shoumatoff’s "Unfinished Portrait" became a focal point of the tour.
Geocache placed with permission of the Park Manager.