Signs might ID Columbia County-owned parks

The sign should make it clear, county officials say.

Their plan is to have a uniform sign in front of county-owned parks.

"I think when people ride by, they'll say, 'That's a county park,'" said Barry Smith, Columbia County's director of community and leisure services.

The park sign prototype idea went before the county's Community and Emergency Services Committee on Aug. 22. Smith told committee members that each sign would cost about $3,200.

"The sign will basically be about three shades of brown,'' he said.

The committee forwarded the idea favorably, and it will now go before the Columbia County Commission at its next meeting Sept. 20.

Also at the Aug. 22 meeting, committee members approved of naming a Parham Road bridge in Grovetown after the poet Paul Hamilton Hayne, who moved to the Grovetown area in 1866 after his Charleston, S.C., home was looted and burned during the Civil War.

While living in a wooden cottage off Gordon Highway near the Georgia State Medical Prison, Hayne produced three volumes of poetry: Legends and Lyrics in 1872, Mountains of Lovers in 1875 and Poems, Complete Edition in 1882.