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The public way onto Lake Blue Ridge: a small sand beach, 42 forest campsites and a ramp, in a village that used to run the county.
Photo: Thomson200CC0
Lake Blue Ridge has around sixty miles of shoreline and almost all of it is either national forest with no road to it or private frontage behind a cabin gate. Morganton Point is the answer to the obvious question that follows: where can somebody who is not renting a lake house actually get in the water?
It is a Forest Service recreation area on a point of land jutting into the eastern end of the reservoir, about twenty minutes from Blue Ridge, run by the Blue Ridge Ranger District of the Chattahoochee National Forest. There is a small swimming area with a sand margin, a boat ramp, picnic tables under hardwoods, a short trail that follows the lakeshore, and a campground of forty-two sites, some of them close enough to the water that you can hear it from the tent.
The village behind it is worth a minute of your attention. Morganton was the seat of Fannin County until 1895, when the railway town of Blue Ridge took the courthouse and Morganton quietly stopped growing. That is why a place of this size has a name that appears on every map of north Georgia and why the road signs point to it at all.
The practical thing to know is the lake's annual cycle. TVA draws Blue Ridge down through the winter and refills it in spring, so the swimming area is a proper beach in July and a longer walk across exposed lakebed in March. Campground season follows the same logic, opening in spring and closing in autumn.
For a cabin party this works best as a half-day: swim, eat at a table under the trees, put a kayak in off the ramp. It is not a resort and there is nothing to buy.
From Blue Ridge, take GA-515 east towards Morganton and turn off in the village towards the lake; the recreation area is signed from the highway. Allow around twenty minutes.
The final approach is a paved forest road down onto the point, with a gravel overflow area. It is manageable in any car, unlike most of the forest roads in this county.
The day-use area and the campground loops have separate parking. On hot summer weekends the day-use parking fills by late morning and there is no overflow beyond the verges.
There is no public transport, and no taxi or rideshare presence you can rely on getting back. Drive.
The designated swimming area sits on the sheltered side of the point, with a modest sand margin rather than a long beach. It shelves gently for the first stretch and then drops off, which is the standard shape of a flooded river valley: you are swimming above what used to be a hillside.
There are no lifeguards. This is a national forest site, and supervision is entirely yours.
Water temperature is the surprise. Blue Ridge is a deep reservoir fed by mountain water, and it stays cool well into June. July and August are the comfortable months. In May people get in and get out again quickly.
Underfoot the bottom is sand near the shore and then silt and old rock further out, with the occasional submerged stump in the drawdown zone. Keep an eye on children in the shallows in spring and autumn, when lower water exposes debris that is comfortably deep in midsummer.
The point also collects a breeze, which is pleasant in August and makes an early-season swim feel colder than the thermometer suggests. Bring towels you do not mind sitting on damp red clay with.
Forty-two sites under mature hardwood and pine, with tables and fire rings with grills, spread across a low peninsula. Some sites sit directly above the water, and those are the ones that go first.
It is a Forest Service campground, which sets expectations correctly: vault or basic toilet facilities, drinking water taps, no hook-ups of the kind an RV park provides, and no shop. The nearest groceries are in Morganton village or back in Blue Ridge.
The season runs roughly spring to autumn, with the campground closed through winter. Exact opening and closing dates move year to year, and both dates and fees are published on the federal reservation system rather than set locally, so check before you plan around it.
Book ahead for any weekend between Memorial Day and the end of October. The lakeside sites in particular are reserved months out for the leaf season, which here runs through the second half of October.
If the campground is full, this remains a usable day-use area; the beach, ramp and picnic ground are separate from the camping loops.
The ramp here is one of the few public launches on Lake Blue Ridge, which matters because the alternative is a marina slip or a private dock.
It suits trailered small craft, kayaks and canoes. In the drawdown months the usable length of the ramp shortens, and at the lowest water it can become awkward for anything on a trailer. Paddlers are fine year-round; you just carry further.
The lake fishes for largemouth and smallmouth bass, walleye and panfish, with the smallmouth fishery the one anglers travel for. Local boats work the standing timber and the steep rocky banks along the national forest shoreline, and the eastern end near the point has plenty of both.
A Georgia fishing licence is required. Because the reservoir crosses no state line, you do not need the Tennessee licence that the rivers further north can require.
The lakeshore trail from the day-use area is short, flat and worth walking before you leave: it gives you the wooded, building-free view of the reservoir that the cabin listings all use.
Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Thirty-three hundred acres of cold green water with national forest around most of it, and a level that TVA moves by dozens of feet a year.
1.5–8 hoursFree to look at and to fish from public land. Recreation areas and ramps may charge.2.1 mi away
Photograph: Thomson200
A 167-foot earth dam from 1931 that made the lake, chilled the river below it and set the rhythm of the whole county.
0.5–1 hoursFree. No visitor centre, no tours and no facilities at the dam.1.9 mi away
Photograph: Chief Mass Communication Specialist Scott Curtis, U.S. Navy
The lake's main rental and fuel point, sitting near the dam on a reservoir whose level TVA changes by dozens of feet a year.
2–8 hoursBoat rental, fuel and slips are charged. Looking at the lake is free.1.8 mi away
Photograph: Thomson200
Around 106,000 acres of public land in Fannin County alone, almost none of it signposted, gated or supervised in the way visitors expect.
2–8 hoursFree to enter. Developed campgrounds and some day-use areas charge a fee.6.4 mi away
Photograph: USFWS
Where this place fits into a day, and the pages that plan one.
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Yes. Morganton Point has the main public swimming area on the lake, on the sheltered side of a wooded point about twenty minutes from Blue Ridge. There are no lifeguards, so supervision is yours. The water is cool well into June because the reservoir is deep and mountain-fed; July and August are the months it reads as warm. At lower spring water levels the beach is smaller and the walk to the water longer.
Forty-two, spread through hardwood and pine on a low peninsula, with tables and fire rings with grills. Some sit directly above the water and those book out first, particularly for October weekends. It is a Forest Service campground rather than an RV park, so expect basic facilities and no shop. Reservations go through the federal booking system and the season generally runs spring to autumn.
Yes, and it is one of the few public launches on Lake Blue Ridge, which is otherwise ringed by national forest with no road access and private docks. It suits trailered small craft, kayaks and canoes. During the winter drawdown the usable ramp shortens and launching a trailered boat can get awkward, though carrying a kayak down remains straightforward at any level.
Because it used to run Fannin County. Morganton was the county seat from the county's early days until 1895, when the courthouse moved to Blue Ridge, the newer town that the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad had created in 1886. Morganton stopped growing at roughly that point. The recreation area takes its name from the village, and the village keeps a place on the map that its population no longer explains.