The creek’s sandy beach-like banks are perfect for getting an up-close view of the water. Wildlife seen here includes deer, fish, frogs and birds – including Great Blue Heron – songbirds and hawks.

The park is named after insulation manufactured here which was sold under the trade name Zonolite. When South Fork Conservancy planners looked downstream of Emory University, a 12-acre stretch of creek bank leaped off the maps. It turned out to be a long-neglected industrial wasteland contaminated by asbestos and overgrown by kudzu and invasive plants. In 2010, property owners teamed with Conservancy volunteers to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force the polluters to clean up the waste. Three years – and $2 million later – the land was free of any detectable asbestos traces. The complex grading and ecological restoration design by Sylvatica Studio’s Susan Stainback created a sloping meadow with a pond, which cleanses rainwater before it reaches the creek.

The trailhead is located on Zonolite Place, near the intersection of Johnson Road and Briarcliff in DeKalb County.  Limited parking is available. The park is surrounded by green space and close to Morningside Nature Preserve and Herbert Taylor-Daniel Johnson Park.

NICKEL BOTTOM GARDEN

In a dusty file folder in a Zonolite office, the floodplain was referred to as NickelBottom. Garden enthusiasts seized on the name as a perfect reminder that rich bottom land is best for gardens. The current CSX railroad tracks laid in the 1880’s  separated this area from east-west routes toward what is now Buckhead.  Oral history suggests a community of freed men and women may have lived here in the early 20th century and named it Nickel Bottom.