For today, we are going back to an article from The Dade County Times, July 21, 1955.
This was a time when there was no interstate and U.S. Highway 11 was dotted with tourist courts, gas stations and places to stop for photos or a picnic. The Georgia Game Park was so new that it didn’t even have that name. It was visited far and wide for its interesting animal collection.
If you wonder why Dade County Executive Chairman Ted Rumley never takes time off unless he or a family member is in the hospital, then you might credit his parents, Ralph and Bea Rumley, with his work ethic. Everybody in that family worked in the family business. Chenille bedspreads were becoming a hot item in those days and Dalton was producing them in home cottage industries. (This was, of course, the technology that spawned the carpet industry.) Young Mrs. Rumley made weekly trips to Dalton and filled up the station wagon with merchandise which sold well.
This article is a reprint of one written about the Rumley business and one of their attractions by the late Myrna McMahan. Enjoy and remember a time when stopping at the Game Park on a Sunday afternoon drive to see a bear or get a bottle of pop was a big deal for families, small or large.
Postcard by Ray Scarbrough of the Rumleys' Georgia Game Park circa 1960.
Rumley Zoo at Rising Fawn
By Myrna McMahan
Tourists driving along Highway 11 near Rising Fawn cannot fail to miss the bright pink signs erected by Ralph Rumley advertising “Pete the Bear” and “the Georgia Hillbilly” along with cut-rate gasoline, a lion, bears, monkeys, coons and a chimpanzee.
All this and more may be seen for nothing when a tourist stops for a bit of leg-stretching at the Bluff View Service Station. Before he climbs back into his car, he has likely bought a souvenir or two, let Junior ride the “buckin’ bronco” and perhaps bought a bottle of pop for Pete.
He probably tipped the old gentleman if he listened to his stories and if he had his gas tank filled up too, he left Rising Fawn minus a few dollars, all of which was what Mr. and Mrs. Rumley planned in the first place.
When the young Rumleys, who are the parents of a small daughter named Beverly, first started in business three and a half years ago, they operated a small one-room Shell station. With the use of a series of signs placed a mile or more down the highway in both directions, they brought in enough business to be able to expand within a short while.
Souvenirs of Every Description
Living quarters were added to the rear of the station and a gift shop was built on the south side of the original building. Souvenirs of every description were arranged in the shop. This added to the colorful, attention-catching pennants which flutter across the highway and on each side of the station, making it an inviting place to stop.
About two years ago, the Rumleys bought a six-month old black bear from a man who got him in Canada. The bear was named Pete and soon learned to drink soda pop. His owners found that if children like anything well enough, their parents have to like it too, or else, so Pete became very popular. The Rumleys also found that they liked animals so well that they bought another bear and not long after that added monkeys, foxes, coons, squirrels, parrot and a talking crow to their menagerie. Recently they bought a lion from a traveling show and a chimpanzee which was the most expensive of all the animals.
H.F. Sullivan billed as “Hillbilly”
The first of May of this year, Mr. H.F. Sullivan was hired to sit in a black and red buggy and talk to tourists. He was billed as the “Georgia Hillbilly” and is quite picturesque with his gray beard and bright blue eyes.
He has been a familiar figure down around Rising Fawn for the past ten years, walking up and down the highway with a sack on his back. The contents of the sack were usually furs or herbs, for Mr. Sullivan is an expert trapper and has worked for years hunting for herbs which he shipped to herb markets in St. Louis.
He lives on top of Fox Mountain alone, except for thirteen dogs which keep him company. One in particular, which he brought from Arkansas eleven years ago, wakes him up each morning at the same time by scratching and pawing at him. Another dog looks after the rest in the pack whenever they get sick or have sores.
Dogs Help In Trapping
The dogs have helped in trapping the muskrats, coons, skunks and minks that Mr. Sullivan earned his living by. Exactly how he catches skunks, Mr. Sullivan declined to say. Fur prices are down now, so he doesn’t plan to trap any more for a while.
He is also known for his ability to catch rattlesnakes without being harmed. He has no fear of them once they are in his sack, but he will not attempt to pick one up until he has tried them by pushing them around with a stick. He says when a rattlesnake has been “fooled around with” long enough, it will quit rattling and try to stick its head into the ground. It is then that Mr. Sullivan slips a sack over it to carry it off. He sold two of the snakes last summer to be used in a brush arbor meeting, one of which bit and killed a man.
The old man was born in a homestead in Missouri and lived in Oklahoma and Arkansas before coming to Dade County. He has farmed, picked cotton on the Delta and trapped furs for a living. A widower, he has a son living in Texas, but the two rarely get in touch with each other.
Walking Habit
He was not able to begin school until he was ten years old and then had to walk three miles to school.
“I got used to walking then, and been walking ever since” Mr. Sullivan declares. It takes him an hour to walk down the mountain and an hour and a half to walk back up.
Since Bowater bought the mountain top two years ago, he is able to catch a ride occasionally on a logging truck. He carries water from a spring to his little house a mile away, so walking takes up a lot of his day.
He was requested to watch for fires by the paper company during the summer months and had to call in about one last year. He says he hasn’t had to since.
Mr. Sullivan expects to cut timber this winter on the mountain along with a little trapping. He plans to stay on in the county indefinitely.
And from the way the Rumleys’ business is going, they plan to stay on, too. The passer-by will find at most any time of the day, cars from any part of the country will be clustered around the station. Mr. and Mrs. Rumley seem to have discovered the secret of attracting business so the only way to go is up. Dade County can always use more business so more power to them.
The young Myrna McMahan was writing feature and historical articles about things of interest around Dade County. This was a practice she started during high school (1947) and continued off and on for almost 50 years. The Dade County Historical Society is in the process of finding and retyping all of Myrna’s works of historical interest. The volunteer typists are moving faster than this researcher can find them. By fall we will be ready to publish an anthology of articles which should be of interest to local residents and genealogy hounds. Look for its publication in time for Christmas gifts this year.
Notes about the Georgia Game Park: the Rumleys continued to be forward thinking and moved their business to a spot at the interstate exit in Rising Fawn to take advantage of the I-59 traffic. As their kids grew up and chose other professions, Ms. Bea sold the business to a franchise, Perkins, which is still a busy operation in Rising Fawn.
One more important note from Donna: Don't forget the Historical Society's Brock
Cemetery Walk on Saturday, May 18, which begins at 4 p.m. Please park at Piney Grove Baptist Church, check in and ride the shuttle. Buses will leave the parking lot at 3:50, 4:50 and 5:50 p.m. Please arrive by half past the hour.
--Donna Street
donnam.street@gmail.com
And a no-so-important note from the editor: I just couldn't exist adding a couple of tidbits about the Rumley Game Park: I talked to Bea Rumley around Christmas and she was reminiscing about what she loaded up the station wagon with from the other side of the mountain in those days--fireworks. She didn't say anything about bedspreads. I believe she said fireworks were illegal then in the contiguous states so she and her husband were able to turn a good profit on them here. Later, they became illegal in Georgia, too, and that was a problem, but that's a story for another day.
And here's another Game Park tidbit. Years ago I talked with a man from Lookout
Mountain who told me that when Ted Rumley was a boy, when he rode around in the family car he always had a monkey riding with him, the way other kids had their dog. That struck me as unbearably cute, I reckon because I have always wanted a monkey. rfw
