Swampland Opera
This building once housed Swampland Opera in Toomsboro, Georgia.
"In 1975 Joe Boone, a former Georgia House of Representatives clerk and member of the prominent local Boone family of lawyers, politicians, and newspapermen who owned much of Toomsboro, cleaned up an old store in the middle of town as a place where he and his friends could gather and play country and gospel music. Mills sat in on piano on opening night. Boone called it the Swampland Opera House, and within weeks people were coming from nearby counties to have a steak at the restaurant next door and set up folding chairs at the theater for Saturday performances. Admission was anything you cared to put in the hat. An annual Syrup Festival, named after the local sorghum syrup mill, grew around the music venue in the 1980s and 1990s. Even after Joe Boone died in 1996, a group of locals formed a nonprofit to keep the show onstage."
"But by the end of the century, the vacant properties were too expensive to maintain, and the remaining Boones, now living in Tennessee, were ready to divest their holdings. In November 2000, the opera house, the hotel, the restaurant, the train depot, the syrup mill, the cotton warehouse, the bank, and several other buildings all went up for auction." From Atlanta Magazine Article found at www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/toomsboro-f....
Swampland Opera
This building once housed Swampland Opera in Toomsboro, Georgia.
"In 1975 Joe Boone, a former Georgia House of Representatives clerk and member of the prominent local Boone family of lawyers, politicians, and newspapermen who owned much of Toomsboro, cleaned up an old store in the middle of town as a place where he and his friends could gather and play country and gospel music. Mills sat in on piano on opening night. Boone called it the Swampland Opera House, and within weeks people were coming from nearby counties to have a steak at the restaurant next door and set up folding chairs at the theater for Saturday performances. Admission was anything you cared to put in the hat. An annual Syrup Festival, named after the local sorghum syrup mill, grew around the music venue in the 1980s and 1990s. Even after Joe Boone died in 1996, a group of locals formed a nonprofit to keep the show onstage."
"But by the end of the century, the vacant properties were too expensive to maintain, and the remaining Boones, now living in Tennessee, were ready to divest their holdings. In November 2000, the opera house, the hotel, the restaurant, the train depot, the syrup mill, the cotton warehouse, the bank, and several other buildings all went up for auction." From Atlanta Magazine Article found at www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/toomsboro-f....