Oconee National Forest OHV
The Oconee National Forest covers 115,000 acres of the Georgia Piedmont in Putnam, Baldwin, Jasper, Greene, Morgan, and Hancock counties, the rolling red clay hill country of middle Georgia centered on the community of Eatonton, birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker and the geographic heart of Georgia's antebellum plantation belt. The Oconee is the smaller and less mountainous of Georgia's two national forests (the Chattahoochee occupies the north Georgia mountains), occupying the Piedmont landscape of gently rolling clay hills, second-growth oak-hickory forest recovering from the cotton farming and naval stores operations that stripped the original longleaf pine landscape, and the streams and reservoirs of the Oconee River watershed. The OHV trail system in the Oconee operates on designated forest roads and ATV corridors through the Redlands and Lake Sinclair districts, providing the primary public-land OHV access in the Georgia Piedmont region, a significant gap in the OHV network between the north Georgia mountain parks and the coastal plain mud parks of the south. The terrain is moderate Piedmont clay hill country: rolling grades, clay-over-granite soil that produces slippery wet conditions and firm dry riding, mixed pine-hardwood forest on the upland terrain, and the creek drainages and beaver pond complexes that interrupt the upland plateau. The Oconee serves the Athens, Macon, Milledgeville, and Augusta markets, providing closer OHV access for central Georgia riders who would otherwise face long drives to the Chattahoochee NF mountain systems or the north Georgia private parks. The Oconee RD office in Eatonton (706-485-7110) manages current trail designations and seasonal access.