Welcome to Lake Charlotte Nature Preserve.
In the 1920s, Mount Manor Lake was an area developed by Dr. R. F. Ingram, a prominent Atlanta dentist, businessman, politician, “convicted bootlegger,” and president of the Mount Manor Estates Fishing Club. Miss Charlotte Sage, a wealthy, well-documented Ansley Park debutante of the 1937 season, was Dr. R. F. Ingram’s only granddaughter. For years, her outfits and social “gaieties” were breathlessly chronicled in the Atlanta society pages. Even after Miss Charlotte’s wedding to a naval officer in 1948, the papers continued to cover the celebrity couple.
It's believed the lake was renamed in her honor, but it has been drained for decades now...her name living on despite the lake being gone.
In the 1970s, the City of Atlanta planned to acquire a number of wooded areas around Atlanta's southside with the hope of preserving the tree canopy and creating a network of protected woodland spaces for those who lived in town. One official was quoted as saying “We want areas where you can walk and lose yourself, rather than having to drive two hours to the North Georgia mountains...If we develop good parks and campsites inside the cities, maybe people will stop hating the cities.”
Barely a decade later, the city scrapped the plan (due in large part to the declining interest in urban woodlands following the tragic Atlanta child murders several years earlier) and this land was sold to a private developer who, after a failed attempt to rezone it for industrial development, sold it to Waste Management. You can guess where things were headed from that point; however, plans to extend the nearby Live Oak landfill were met with intense resistance from area residents in the '90s, and those too were eventually shelved.
To protect the land, The Conservation Fund purchased it from Waste Management in December 2019 and it was in turn purchased by the City of Atlanta in April 2020 using funds collected as part of the tree protection ordinance. Lake Charlotte Nature Preserve was the first greenspace acquisition funded through the City’s tree ordinance, which was modified several years ago to allow for both the planting of new trees and the protection of intact, mature forests to mitigate tree loss to new development in the City.
Currently, the primary trail is the old roadway from the north entrance. It's a nice, wide pathway through the trees that passes several old stone structures...remnants of the old houses that used to overlook the lake (which was drained back in the 80s). This trail eventually loops back, but there are other, smaller trailways that run south and - theoretically - meet up with the Southside Park moutain bike trail system to the west.
The cache itself is located far off the beaten path and, in warmer months, will require bug spray and bushwhacking. For now, though, it's a relatively easy trek. Enjoy the old growth forest in this little-known park. Cache on!