The untold saga of the Ichawaynochaway Creek

Flowing through sparsely settled country in Southwest Georgia, Ichawaynochaway Creek is small in size, but since 1997, it has played an outsized role in shaping Georgia’s boating laws.

Between 1992 and 1997, a pitched battle was fought to keep the locally beloved  Baker County creek open to the public. It pitted a lone local sportsman with a seventh-grade education against one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the state — the Woodruffs of Coca-Cola fame.  

Along the way, 34 kayakers were arrested and hauled to Baker County jail, other protestors ceremoniously dumped Coca-Cola — Boston Tea Party-style — into the creek and three local residents famously floated a raft holding a goat and a bale of cotton down the creek to prove it was a “navigable” stream. 

It was all for naught. 

Georgia Supreme Court’s November 1997 decision in Givens v. Ichauway closed 14 miles of Ichwaynochaway Creek to the public and empowered other stream front property owners across the state to similarly stop boating down so-called “non-navigable streams.” 

After the Ichauway decision, the public’s right to boat, muddled by ambiguous state laws and conflicting judicial decisions, became even more uncertain.  

“The judicial history is a muddled mess,” said Craig Pendergrast, an attorney who was involved in other pivotal stream passage cases in the 1990s. “It would be very helpful for the General Assembly to clarify and provide the courts with additional guidance.” 

That was the intent of a special Georgia House of Representatives Study Committee on Navigable Streams that convened last fall. Tasked with providing guidance on where Georgians have the right to boat, fish and hunt on the state’s streams, the committee punted, recommending no changes or clarifications to existing state laws. 

During the committee’s proceedings, the Ichauway case was presented as Georgia’s “seminal river passage case,” but the nature of the case might ultimately say more about inherent inequities in the state’s judicial system than it does about boating rights.

Baker County Sportsmen Still Sore 

Baker County sportsmen are still sore about the case. As they see it, the state, and a wealthy landowner, wrested from them a boating, fishing and swimming hole enjoyed by generations. 

Wayne Carter, who dumped his Coke Classic in the creek during the “Ichauway Coke Party” protest, said, “I don’t see why that creek cannot be opened. That creek was there long before they were even alive.” 

“They” is the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. When the Coca-Cola magnate died in 1985, the fate of his 29,000-acre quail hunting plantation was left to his Foundation. 

Baker County is home to large sporting plantations, the legacies of wealthy industrial barons who purchased property as retreats in the early 20th century. 

In a county where jobs are scarce and where 26 percent of the population lives in poverty, these legacy plantations own about 22 percent of the county’s land. They are also among the county’s top employers. 

As one resident noted, Baker County is the “richest poorest county in the state.” 

So, in 1991, when the Woodruff Foundation established the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway and began chasing boaters and anglers off the creek, it created a stir. 

The Center feared that boaters would inadvertently or intentionally damage research equipment along the creek. Center director Lindsay Boring told a local judge during court hearings: 

“I have to secure those boundaries and keep people out of there before we put $40,000 worth of instruments in there — not wait for someone to float down that stream and put a bullet hole through the middle of them.” 

In March 1992, at the request of the Jones Center, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) declared the 14-mile run of creek through the Jones Center a “BOAT KEEP OUT ZONE.” 

Into this controversy stepped Carroll Givens, a man who grew up fishing Ichawaynochaway Creek. Though his formal education ceased in seventh grade, he learned young how to frame houses and parlayed his skills into work as a contractor. Later, he opened Catfish Carroll’s restaurant in Newton. 

He died a folk hero in 2015 — a redneck Robin Hood whose notoriety in fighting against the landed gentry won him election to the Baker County Commission. 

In 1992, Givens organized the float in which 34 boaters, hailing from three different states, were arrested.

In 1993, he staged the “Ichauway Coke Party.” As protestors poured cans of Coca-Cola into the creek, they waved banners that read: “Down With Coke, Drink Pepsi or R.C.!” 

“If we don’t do something, they’ll be closing creeks all over Georgia,” Givens prophetically told reporters at the scene. 

The Jones Center insisted that Ichawaynochaway was a non-navigable stream under state law and because the Center owned both sides of the creek, it had the right to block passage. 

State law provides that stream-front property owners along non-navigable streams own the streambed and are “entitled to the same exclusive possession of the stream” as they have on any other part of their land. 

The law further defines a navigable stream as one that “is capable of transporting boats loaded with freight in the regular course of trade either for the whole or part of the year.” 

Ichawaynochaway Creek, Navigable? 

Though much smaller than the Flint River it feeds, Ichawaynochaway Creek is still sizeable, typically about 100 feet wide with a mean annual flow of about 700 cubic feet per second (CFS). 

Its size and historical uses all point to its meeting the state’s definition of navigable. 

Historically, it was used to transport freight of all kinds. In 1831, the Georgia legislature appointed commissioners to oversee the creek, noting that the creek was “navigable for a considerable distance” and “highly important to the good citizens” of Baker County. In 1836, they followed that legislation with an appropriation of $1500 for the “navigation of the Ich-a-way-notch-i-way.” 

Even a 2007 Jones Center study of the creek references these historic uses. The report noted: “In many Coastal Plain streams, pre-cut timber, lost more than a century ago during river transport, contributes to the extant large woody debris pool.”

Barry Shelton, a Baker County native who worked at the Jones Center, said the creek should be classified as navigable. He spent parts of seven years conducting research there, much of it from a johnboat on the creek.

Now a bioengineer in Seattle, Washington, he contests the notion that public use of the stream would interfere with the Center’s research, noting that during his time working there, no long-term monitoring equipment was left in the stream.

The Goat Float

Givens and his cronies, who met weekly for poker and drinks at their private “L.D. Club” in Newton, were determined to prove the creek’s navigability. 

In May 1993, Givens and two other men launched a 4-foot-wide by 16-foot-long wood and Styrofoam raft, loaded it with a 500-pound bale of cotton and a goat and floated down the creek. Said Givens of the float that landed him in jail, “The goat was better company than the two men.”  

The odd choice of a goat was meant as a message to the state government that declared the creek off-limits to the public. 

“The goat was a symbol of the government because the government will eat anything,” said Carter, who helped build the raft. 

Facing charges of criminal trespass in Baker County court, Givens and his lawyers put the state’s definition of navigable streams on trial, and the goat float won the day. A jury agreed that the stream was navigable and found Givens not guilty.

The Jones Center then sought a permanent court order prohibiting Givens from floating the creek. Baker County Superior Court Judge Willard Chason obliged their wishes. 

Arguments presented by Jones Center lawyers before Judge Chason were extensive, backed by nine material exhibits and multiple witnesses, including an expert on modern-day commercial navigation. Givens’ attorney introduced no exhibits during the day’s proceedings and called only one witness — Givens himself.  

The testimony of Ichauway’s commercial navigation expert — that the creek couldn’t float a modern 245-foot-long, 35-foot-wide barge drawing seven feet of water — proved pivotal. Givens then appealed to the state’s highest court. 

Justices reject ‘Goat Float’ 

Like Judge Chason, Georgia’s Supreme Court justices seized upon this question of navigability and, in particular, the lack of evidence presented by Givens to prove that Ichawaynochaway Creek was navigable. 

“His deposition shows this testimony was inadmissible hearsay based upon the statements of others and upon documents that were not introduced,” Justice P. Harris Hines wrote. “Nor was any admissible evidence presented to show that Givens raft replicated the… manner of any craft used in the regular course of commerce in the past.”

The justices also embraced the testimony of Ichauway’s expert witness, accepting a modern-day test of navigability, and ruled for the Jones Center. 

Not all the judges agreed. Justice Norman Fletcher and Justice Carol Hunstein dissented. 

“The issue, in this case, is whether the public has a statutory or common law right of passage on the Ichauwaynochaway Creek because it is, or was, capable of navigation,” wrote Justice Fletcher, “The majority opinion misconstrues the statutory definition of navigable stream under state law and ignores the public’s right to use interstate waterways under the commerce clause of the United States Constitution.” 

The dissenters dismissed the testimony of the navigation expert: “If we were to adopt the property owner’s position that the modern standard of commercial navigation controls, it would be difficult to find any river or stream that is navigable in the State of Georgia.”

“The creek through Ichauway’s property was used in the past to transport agricultural products…the creek can still carry boats loaded with freight commonly used in the regular course of trade in the nineteenth century, as illustrated by the raft used in the Goat Float.” 

The dissenting justices further pointed to the Georgia Supreme Court’s 1849 decision in Young v. Harrison which guaranteed the public the right of passage down even streams that were privately owned if they were “susceptible” of “use for common passage.” 

Finally, the dissenters asserted that federal law trumps state law. 

Seven months prior to the court’s Ichauway decision, a federal judge in the District Court of North Georgia ruled that since Douglas County’s Dog River floated canoes and kayaks, it met the federal definition of “navigability.” Notably, Dog River has a mean annual flow of about 90 CFS, a flow volume of just 12 percent of Ichawaynochaway’s 700 CFS annual average volume. 

The fall out

“It was endless pockets. That’s what beat me,” Givens would later tell his daughter, Lynn Givens Phillips. Givens’ resources simply couldn’t match those of the Woodruff Foundation. In 2023, the Foundation distributed $189 million in grants and claimed $3.9 billion in assets. 

Some legal observers have asserted that the outcome in this case was a forgone conclusion, given the wealth and influence disparity between the two parties. 

Nearly 30 years after the fact, Justice Fletcher, the dissenter who served as Chief Justice from 2001-2005, tends to agree. 

“Givens did not have the resources to present the proper evidence, and that’s created a hell of a mess,” he said recently, “The reason Givens lost is he did not present enough admissible evidence. And, I’m afraid to say it, but he lost because of who owned the land and who owned the purse strings.” 

In the years that followed the verdict, high-end, commercial trout fishing operations and landowners on the Soque and Chattahoochee rivers in North Georgia have shooed boaters off portions of those waterways, as have other property owners around the state — all pointing to Ichauway as justification. 

“Until the Ichauway decision, boaters understood they had the right to pass down even the state’s smallest floatable streams. That right of passage was enshrined in state law from Georgia’s beginning,” said Dan MacIntyre, a Georgia Canoeing Association member and attorney who assisted in filing an amicus brief in the Ichauway case. “Now, we have landowners asserting that streams long used by the public can be made private.”  

In the 2024 legislative session, Rep. James Burchett, the powerful House Majority Whip and a Waycross attorney tried to bring clarity by introducing a bill that named portions of 64 streams as navigable. During hearings, Burchett explained that boaters wishing to travel streams not on the list (those implicitly deemed non-navigable) should first seek permission from every landowner along their proposed route. 

The measure met intense opposition and never advanced. Instead, it lead to the creation of the House Study Committee on Navigable Streams.

Recreational boaters now decry the committee’s “do nothing” report. 

“We’re still living in the dark shadow of the flawed Ichauway decision,” said Rena Peck, Georgia Rivers Executive Director, “It leaves small businesses and popular tourist destinations at risk of being shut down at the whim of a single property owner. Baker County residents know firsthand the consequences. We don’t want other communities to suffer the same fate.”

But, legislators remain reticent. Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch urged the House committee to protect “private property rights” and keep the status quo. “I don’t see a need for a change,” he said. 

Legislators have tried to clarify the state’s ambiguous boating laws for 35 years. During the 1989-90 General Assembly session, Sen. Ken Fuller of Rome took up the cause in response to harrowing incidents encountered by recreational boaters. 

In 1987, a resident shot at boaters at a popular whitewater rapid on the Chattahoochee situated beneath his weekend cabin in Habersham County. A similar incident occurred on the Etowah River in Floyd County. 

Fuller’s bill asserted the public’s right of passage on “any stream… which is capable for the whole or part of a year of transporting one or more persons in any boat, canoe, raft or other floatation device.”

The Senate easily approved the measure, but in the House, it ran into Speaker Tom Murphy. The powerful legislator owned property bordering the Tallapoosa River and was not a fan. 

The Ichauway case soon followed, and since then, Georgia’s vague laws on boating, fishing and hunting rights on streams have led to even more controversy. 

Most recently, property owners along the Flint River in Upson County filed a lawsuit to force the DNR to prohibit anglers from fishing the popular Yellow Jacket Shoals section of that river. 

DNR ultimately settled the lawsuit, agreeing to stop public fishing on the Flint in front of their property. 

That settlement prompted Gov. Brian Kemp to push through a bill during the 2023 legislative session that declared that Georgians had the right to boat, fish and hunt on all of the state’s navigable streams. 

Since then, the old debate — well-known by Carroll Givens, the Jones Center, and the people of Baker County — has been stirred. What exactly is a “navigable” stream? And, what are the public’s rights on streams, both navigable and non-navigable? 

Carter, Givens’ friend who helped build the goat float raft, still laments the loss of what he considers part of the community’s cultural and natural heritage. 

Now separated from his beloved stream for more than three decades, he said, “I’m not angry, I’m just disgusted. They’d [the Center] have a lot more favorable recognition in Baker County if they’d let us have access to it.” 

Then the grandfather’s thoughts turned to his offspring. 

“Every child needs to grow up having access to go fishing,” he said. “I’ve got a five-month-old grandson. I’d like to someday take him down Ichauway… if I’m still living.” 

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Joe Cook is a 1988 graduate of Berry College where he studied communications and agriculture. Between 1996 and 2016, he served in various capacities with the Coosa River Basin Initiative/Upper Coosa Riverkeeper in Rome, including serving 10 years as executive director and riverkeeper. Since 2005, he has worked with Georgia River Network as Paddle Georgia Coordinator, organizing and leading paddle trips that introduce more than 600 people to Georgia’s rivers annually.