Juliette, GA is a little mill town on the river that was mostly abandoned when they filmed the movie Fried Green Tomatoes there. In the background you can see the old 7 story grist mill, built around 1900 as I understand. The town is now a tourist destination with little shops, etc. The mill was cleaned out and run as an antiques mall for a few years but is empty now again. Looks like this currently:
If you know the film, the opening shot is them pulling an old Ford up out of the water by the bulwark you see here. The other side of the bulwark is about a 25' drop to the riverbed.
Years ago when I was a teenager we used to go hang out at the dam here, way before the movie.(In the movie they walk across the dam.) There was a way into the mill but it was mostly boarded up. At the tim much of the machinery was still inside in ruins - belt drive and shaft systems that ran the water power all over the mill, heaps of stuff. There wer holes in the floor that went through multiple stories, not a safe place. The most interesting thing I found was handwriting. There were two giant galvanized tubes that ran through a couple stories, and on the back side you could still read things written on them in pencil in a very old-style hand. Mostly it was dates and events - things like "So cold the river froze solid, January 12, 1910" or "boarding house across the river burned last night, August 15th, 1917" I never got a chance to go back and transcribe them, and cameras were a little more of an issue back then.
The best part is they tore all that out and scrapped it to make it an antique market.
