If you've heard that Savannah Rapids Park is closed, you've heard half the story. The trails are open. The headgates are open. The kayak and bike rentals are open. The one thing that isn't open is the Pavilion, the banquet hall at the top of the bluff, and Columbia County says on its own facilities page that no reservations will be taken there until construction wraps, with an estimated completion of summer 2027. That's a specific building with a specific timeline, not the 33-acre park that surrounds it.
The mix-up makes sense. Back in the fall of 2024, Hurricane Helene put a tree through the Pavilion roof and flooded it through the fire suppression system, and WJBF reported at the time that the storm forced roughly 230 scheduled events, weddings included, to relocate. Other county parks closed too, including a second spot in Martinez that shares part of the name: Reed Creek Nature Park. That one has since reopened, and it's a completely different address than the falls you're picturing. Sorting out which is which, and what each one actually offers this month, is the difference between a wasted trip and a good Saturday.
Two Places Named for the Same Creek
Reed Creek runs through Martinez twice in local vocabulary. There's Reed Creek Falls, the small waterfall inside Savannah Rapids Park that feeds the head of the Augusta Canal, and there's Reed Creek Nature Park & Interpretive Center, a separate 14-acre facility on Park Lane built around the same creek further downstream. Both are worth a visit. Neither is a substitute for the other.
| Savannah Rapids Park | Reed Creek Nature Park & Interpretive Center | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 3300 Evans to Locks Rd | 3820 Park Lane |
| Size | 33 acres | 14 acres |
| Signature feature | Augusta Canal headgates, the locks, Reed Creek Falls, a recently added Love Locks sculpture | A 0.4-mile boardwalk through active wetland, plus the CSRA Master Gardener's Demonstration Garden |
| Indoor stop | Lockkeeper's Cottage visitor center, Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm | Wetland Interpretive Center, free admission, live animal exhibits |
| Current status | Grounds and trails open daily, dawn to dusk. Pavilion venue closed for renovation, estimated reopening summer 2027 | Reopened after 2024 storm closures, with recurring nature programs running again in 2026 |
The park with the locks is the one everyone photographs. The park with the boardwalk is the one that quietly does the more interesting work, and it's the one people forget exists.
What's New at a Park That's Been Here Since 1845
Savannah Rapids Park has been drawing people to this stretch of river for a long time. Historical records show construction on the Augusta Canal began in 1845, and it took roughly 200 men about 18 months to build the first stage before the headgates opened on November 23, 1846. The Lockkeeper's Cottage still standing near the visitor center dates to around 1890, built for the family responsible for operating the locks that moved cotton and tobacco between the river and the canal.
What's changed recently isn't the history. It's the county's decision to formalize something visitors were already doing on their own. For years, couples clipped padlocks to the railings near the locks as an informal gesture, engraved with initials and dates. Columbia County has since installed a proper Love Locks sculpture on the grounds, giving that tradition a permanent home instead of a guardrail. It's a small addition to a 180-year-old site, but it's new enough that longtime residents who haven't walked the Towpath in a while will notice it.
A Route That Actually Uses Both Parks
A weekend morning built around this corridor doesn't require much planning. It requires knowing the order.
- Start at the Lockkeeper's Cottage visitor center inside Savannah Rapids Park, open Monday through Saturday from 10am to 4pm, and take the short walk out to the headgates for the view of the rapids.
- Follow the Towpath along the canal toward the locks, where the Love Locks sculpture sits near Reed Creek Falls.
- Drive a few minutes over to Reed Creek Nature Park & Interpretive Center on Park Lane and walk the 0.4-mile boardwalk through the wetland. The Interpretive Center itself is free to enter and includes live animal exhibits and a wrap-around porch with rocking chairs facing the water.
- Finish with lunch on Evans to Locks Road, the same road that leads into Savannah Rapids Park.
That last stop is where the neighborhood's quietest institution lives.
Lunch Without a Sign
Cucina 503 has been serving scratch-made Italian food in Martinez for ten years, run by Chef Edward Mendoza, and for most of that decade it has done almost no marketing. In a profile with The Augusta Press, Mendoza put it plainly.
"We don't advertise; we're not on the internet."
That's a strange thing for a chef to say who has appeared in two episodes of Survivorman on Discovery Channel, filmed in Belize alongside host Les Stroud and fellow chef Paul Rogalski, catching conch and lionfish for the cameras. Mendoza also works as a culinary consultant for Aggressor Adventures, training chefs on liveaboard dive yachts, and before Cucina he ran Kitchen 1454 and co-founded Finch & Fifth before selling his stake to focus on his own place. None of that resume shows up on a sign out front. It shows up in the fact that Cucina has held steady on the same stretch of road for a decade without needing to chase attention.
A few years ago, Mendoza added a second concept in the same building. LOCAL takes over the space by day, serving sandwiches, salads, and coffee before Cucina's dinner service begins in the evening. Same kitchen, same address on Evans to Locks Road, two different meals depending on when you walk in. It's the kind of detail that only makes sense once you know both concepts exist under one roof, which is exactly the kind of thing a neighbor knows and a passerby doesn't.
The Garden Part of the Boardwalk
Back at Reed Creek Nature Park, the part visitors tend to skip is the CSRA Master Gardener's Demonstration Garden and adjoining Pollinator Garden, tucked near the wetland boardwalk. It's staffed by Environmental Educators who lead guided walks on request, and the park runs recurring programs, including a Tuesday morning nature session for preschoolers that Columbia County has kept on its calendar through 2026. That kind of steady, low-key programming is a good sign that a park has fully recovered from a closure, not just reopened its gates.
None of this requires much effort to take advantage of. It requires knowing that the padlocks are new, that the boardwalk on Park Lane isn't the same waterfall as the one by the locks, and that the restaurant with no online presence has been quietly good for ten years. That's the difference between the version of Martinez you'd get from a search engine and the version you get from actually walking the Towpath on a Saturday.
If you're a Martinez neighbor thinking about what your home might be worth in a market that keeps changing around parks like this one, or you just want a local's read on the area before making a move, Lanorris Carey is happy to talk it through.
