Update 2025-09-13: Updated format, fixed typos, and added a map.

Barber Pool, former spring, Saunders Park, Valdosta GA, E.R. Barber, Coca-Cola, Sugar Creek, Withlacoochee River

Floridians worried about springs drying up: it already happened to this one. A sad channel with no flow in Saunders Park once was a large and famous spring-fed pool, remembered by many in Valdosta, Georgia, both those who went there and those who were refused.

Flow channel, 2017-09-16, 15:45:07, –jsq for WWALS 30.8337195, -83.2929070

It’s not hidden history: the house of the former owner of Barber Pool is on the National Register of Historic Places and is the headquarters of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, on the main drag, Ashley Street, just north of downtown Valdosta. That house was built by E.R. Barber, the first Coca-Cola bottler outside of Atlanta, an inventor, and the man who built Barber Pool on River Street, fed by an artesian spring. The house was willed to the citizens of Valdosta by his daughter, Ola Barber-Pittman.

Here’s what Barber Pool looked like in its heyday.

Slide

Thanks to Sherry Owens, who posted them in answer to my query in the facebook group “If you grew up in valdosta ga you remember when…,”.

House

Sherry Owens said she got them from the same facebook group when somebody else posted them earlier.

Big

Each picture is stamped Lowndes County Historical Society and Museum, and I thank the Museum for keeping these pictures.

Why

Why did the spring dry up? As recently as a few years ago, people remember at least a trickle coming out of it, but nothing like enough to feed a pool of that size.

The answer is known to everybody: overpumping. Drinking wells in Valdosta, Lowndes County, and as far away as Jacksonville deplete the groundwater, all the way down to the Floridan Aquifer. The water table sinks, and springs dry up.

History

Why is it called Saunders Park when it used to be Barber Park and before that Barber Pool? Because black people were not permitted to swim in that pool, and decades later various people objected to the name of the park.

Kenna Walsh, Valdosta Daily Times, 9 November 2006, Barber Park issue nearing an end,

VALDOSTA — The decision to rename Barber Park has hovered around Valdosta City Councilmen for nearly two years. Tonight, Councilman Joseph “Sonny” Vickers will try to put to rest an issue that has caused an uprising in the community since it was introduced in 2005. Vickers plans to introduce tonight a motion to rename Barber Park in memory of John W. Saunders, the first African-American county extension agent appointed in Lowndes County and founder of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Ham and Egg Show.

The story goes into quite a bit of detail on the issue. In it, Sonny Vickers [(1942-07-02 – 2022-06-16)], who could not swim in that pool because he is black, and who is still on the Valdosta City Council, says he thought Mr. Barber was a product of his times. The story confuses Ola the daughter with E.R. the father, but other than that seems to be fairly accurate. I am not expressing any opinion on that old issue, since I didn’t know the Barbers, other than that John W. Saunders is a fine namesake for the park, and Lowndes County continues to have one of only two (or maybe now the only) Ham and Eggs Shows in the entire U.S. [And it’s gone, too, now.]

Now

Here’s the Barber-Pittman House as the current home of the Chamber:

Barber-Pittman House –Valdosta Chamber

More pictures of the sad state of this dry spring now are on the WWALS blog and on the WWALS facebook page.
https://wwals.net/?p=68416

It’s on Sugar Creek, upstream from the Withlacoochee River.

Map: Barber Spring in the WWALS map of the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT)

What You can Do

You can help stop these sinking water levels.

• Lobby the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) for a water budget and caps on withdrawals in the North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan (which SRWMD and SJRWMD passed last January despite numerous public comments objecting), and in the Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) plans.
• Georgia’s Suwannee-Satilla Regional Water Planning Council finished this year its five-year update of its plan, and you can keep an eye on how that’s going. The Georgia plan at least has goals beyond economic development:

  “The goal of Suwannee-Satilla’s Water Development & Conservation Plan is to support the region’s economy, protect the public health and natural systems, and enhance the quality of life for all citizens.”

• Oppose phosphate mines.
• Oppose fracking.
• Support solar power, which is rapidly closing down coal plants and soon everyone will see in bright sunshine that fracked methane pipelines are also obsolete.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

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