Summerville In Augusta " The Hill "

 

    The section of Augusta, known today as “Summerville”, “The Hill”, or in the past as “The Sand Hill” or “The Sand Hills” is situated in the narrow band of fall-line hills between Georgia’s Piedmont and Coastal Plan regions.  These fall-line hills are the giant sand-dunes of ancient seashore.  The elevation and soils of “The Hill” cause its climate to differ markedly from those of either of the two adjoining regions.  The Hill is both cooler & less humid in the summer and warmer and in the winter than immediately adjacent areas.  Horticulturists and landscape architects marvel at the ability of subtropical plants to thrive in the mild micro-climate of the Hill.  It is from the amazing private gardens of the Hill that Augusta earned its nickname as “The Garden City”.

 

   In the eighteenth century, shortly after the founding of Augusta on the alluvial plain of the Savannah River, (the river bottom area we now refer to as “Downtown), the relatively favorable climate of “The Sand Hills” began to attract Summervillenotice.  In those days yellow fever and malaria, spread by mosquitoes, were the menace.  The dry, sandy soils and lack of standing water on The Hill eliminated the threat of these pests.  Well-to-do Augustans began to close their fine homes along Greene and Telfair Streets for the summer and decamp to the Sand Hills.  Some of these earliest Hill retreats, generally of the famous “Sand Hills Cottage” type, survive near Milledge Road Tellingly at that time Milledge was known
as “High Street”, for the purpose it served in elevating its residents above the unhealthy low-lying areas it overlooked.  Additionally, cooling breezes, never felt downtown, rustled the pine needles on The Hill, helping to alleviate the often oppressive Georgia summer.

 

 

    By the nineteenth century, the growing settlement on the Sand Hill came to be known as Summerville and the new municipality was incorporated as the “ Village of Summerville ” c.1860.  Following the War Between the States (1861-65), a new era began as The Hill was discovered by wealthy northerners who, unlike the Augustans before them, sought refuge not from the heat, but the cold.  These “winter tourists” stayed first in private homes, some of which were gradually expanded into inns to accommodate the growing number of “snowbirds”.

 

 

    By the 1880’s full-scale hotels such as the Bon Air-Vanderbilt and Partridge Inn were completed and the newspapers published daily the names of the hundreds of tourists arriving from every part of the North.  This tourist trade was of enormous economic importance to Augusta .  Some winter tourists began to feel such an affection for their winter home they became “winter colonists”, building stately homes on the Hill.  These were among the wealthiest people on earth at that time, who could have spent the winter wherever they wished.  They chose Milledge, Cumming, Johns, and Pickens on the Hill.

 

 

    The quality and the amazing variety of historic architecture found on the Hill today is due in large part to the winter colonists who came from every city of the north bringing with them a diversity of artistic tastes.  Its somewhat painful for a native of the South to admit, but without a doubt, the finest homes ever built on the Hill were those built by these northern elite who were able “to spare no expense” at the same time Southerners were still struggling to recover from the War.

 

 

    Among the many outdoor diversions enjoyed by the winter guest’s one became preeminent beginning in the late 1890s and to this game Augusta today owes all of its fame in the wider world.  It was not happenstance that Bobby Jones, an Atlantan, chose to build the golf course of his dreams in Augusta .  The Hill was already possessed of three renowned championship golf courses, had hosted successful professional tournaments, and with four major tourist hotels was well established as the premier golfing resort in the south if not the country.

 

 

    Following World War II the advent of air travel and the notion that a sun-tan was a thing to be desired led the Hill’s winter visitors further south.  Happily, the Hill is left with an exceptionally fine nineteenth and early twentieth century architectural legacy, its famously temperate climate, and several of the best golf courses in the world.

 

 

Today an increasing number of Augustans are rediscovering the Hill as a refuge – not from yellow fever, malaria, or the Chicago winter, but from the automotive madness of a Washington Road commute as well as from the oppressive architectural sameness of Augusta ’s western suburbs.  

 

Information provided by Summerville - www.summervilleaugusta.org 

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