No man of his day accomplished more in the nature of everlasting
benefit for the state in which he lived than the late John P. Fort
did for Georgia.
He was a man of vision--a dreamer--but with the energy and the faith
and the resourcefulness to push ahead, explore his vision, and make
his dreams come true; and in the doing of which he made of himself a
notable public benefactor.
Especially thankful should south Georgia be for the very
revolutionizing of the health conditions of that section which he
did so much to bring about.
South Georgia was once afflicted with a malarial condition which
seriously impaired the many advantages of that part of the state.
The development of the country had been held back through generation
after generation, despite its fertility and adaptability to
agriculture, simply because of malarial conditions.
John P. Fort turned his attention to the problem.
"It's the water," he said. And he set himself the task of finding a
remedy.
With no guide save his reason and determination, he managed somehow
to bore a hole into the earth more than five hundred feet deep;
and was rewarded by a stream of pure, life-giving water. That was
Georgia's first artesian well; and, as he says in a remarkable
letter to Alfred C. Newell, written in October, 1907, and reproduced
in the magazine section of this issue of _The Constitution_:
"The well has furnished drinking water during the summer time
mostly for a circular area of ten or more miles in diameter for
twenty-six years, parties coming in wagons with utensils to
convey the water away for drinking purposes."
That well, still flowing undiminished, proved the rejuvenation of
South Georgia. It was followed by the boring of hundreds of others,
and the result is that to-day residents of South Georgia are as free
from the taint of malaria as are those of "the hills of Habersham."
The genius of the man again was manifested when, sensing the
possibilities of the timber resources of south Georgia swamps,
always before his day looked upon as worthless and inaccessible,
he managed to get capital interested, and, under his guiding hand,
the cypress lumber production of the state became one of its great
industries.
What he did for the fruit--especially the apple--industry in North
Georgia is known to every man at all conversant with the state's
development.
A lake in the southern part of the state covered acres of fertile
soil. Generation after generation of men had found no means of
drainage. Fort found one. He studied the geological formation of the
country, applied the knowledge he had gained by his artesian well
operations, and reasoned that probably the lake could be drained--as
no man ever had drained a lake before--from beneath. So he exploited
his theory, bored a hole straight downward in the center of the
lake; and the waters ran out, leaving the bed ready for the plow.
"The inhabitants of the pond were left on the muddy bottom," he
writes to Mr. Newell, "among which was a large alligator. A strange
and wonderful sight to behold!"
And thus he spent his useful, constructive, busy life; doing
original--often daring--things, all for the good of mankind and the
development of his country.
It is exceedingly gratifying too, that, unlike most men whose names
illuminate the pages of our history, Fort lived to see his good
works, or many of them, fructify. He was honored in life, and was
appreciated for what he had done; but with the passing of time that
appreciation of him and his life work will grow, and the future
generations will honor and revere his name, it is safe to predict,
more pronouncedly even than do we who were contemporaneous with him.
As time goes on undoubtedly the real greatness, the constructive
genius of Fort will become even more generally recognized than it
is to-day. The value of his great service to the community will
become more apparent in the future than it has in the past; and he,
in the sphere of practical scientific achievement and agricultural
and industrial development, will be given rank in history along with
Sidney Lanier, in poetry; Alexander H. Stephens, in politics; and Le
Conte in science.