Big Trees Forest Preserve: Sandy Springs' Old-Growth Pocket Forest
Wedged between subdivisions and a busy Sandy Springs corridor, a small stand of unusually old trees survives along a creek — protected not by any government agency but by a group of neighbors who decided it was worth saving.
Published July 6, 2026Big Trees Forest Preserve is easy to drive past without noticing. It sits on a modest footprint tucked behind ordinary Sandy Springs streets, with no dramatic entrance sign or visitor center to announce what's inside. What it protects, though, is genuinely unusual for this close to the city: a stand of tulip poplars, oaks, and beeches that were never cleared, some of them old enough to have started growing well before the surrounding subdivisions existed.
How the preserve came to exist
Like Fernbank Forest across town, Big Trees exists because a specific piece of land escaped the clear-cutting that shaped most of the region's second-growth forest. The difference here is who ended up protecting it. Rather than a museum or institution taking on the property, a local nonprofit made up largely of volunteers acquired and maintains the preserve, running it without paid rangers or a large operating budget. That model shapes almost everything about the visitor experience — modest infrastructure, handmade signage, and a noticeably personal feel compared to a county or state-run park.
The boardwalk and creek trail
A wooden boardwalk carries most of the trail through the wetter sections along the preserve's small creek, keeping visitors off the soft ground and protecting tree roots from the compaction that foot traffic causes over time. Volunteers built and maintain the boardwalk themselves, and it shows in small, deliberate touches — hand-lettered interpretive signs identifying notable trees, benches placed at spots where the canopy opens up enough to look straight up at the oldest trunks. The full loop is short, walkable in well under an hour, which makes the preserve a realistic stop for a lunch break rather than requiring a dedicated half-day trip.
What makes the trees themselves notable
The canopy here reaches heights that are unusual for an intown Atlanta forest remnant, the product of decades without logging or major storm damage clearing out the oldest individuals. Tulip poplars, in particular, can grow tall and fast in the right conditions, and several specimens in the preserve reach well above the surrounding subdivision rooflines. For anyone who's only seen the region's typical second-growth pine-and-hardwood mix, walking through a stand where the trees genuinely predate the neighborhood around them is a different experience entirely.
A model other neighborhoods have tried to copy
Big Trees has become something of a reference point for other Atlanta-area groups trying to save small forest fragments from development — a working example that a handful of committed volunteers can acquire, maintain, and interpret a natural area without waiting for a government agency to act. That doesn't mean the model scales easily; sustaining volunteer energy over years is harder than the initial fundraising push to buy the land. But as a case study in community-driven preservation, it's one of the more cited examples in the metro.
Visiting
The preserve has no admission fee and relies on donations and membership support instead, so a contribution at the trailhead box helps keep the boardwalk in repair. Parking is limited to a small area, which keeps visitor numbers naturally modest most days. Because the trail is short and shaded, it holds up reasonably well even in summer heat, making it one of the more comfortable warm-weather forest walks in the northern part of the metro.
Education programs built around the trees themselves
The preserve runs guided walks and school-group programming centered on tree identification, forest ecology, and the history of how this particular parcel escaped development, giving visiting groups a more structured introduction than a self-guided walk alone provides. Volunteer docents lead many of these sessions, extending the same grassroots, community-run character that built the boardwalk into the preserve's educational mission as well. For families with kids curious about trees but not ready for a longer hike, this preserve's short loop and hands-on programming make it a more approachable introduction to forest ecology than a larger, more remote natural area would be.
What sets it apart from Atlanta's other small forest fragments
Metro Atlanta has a scattering of small forest remnants tucked into otherwise developed areas, but few combine old, tall trees with the kind of dedicated, single-purpose stewardship organization that Big Trees has. Many similar-sized fragments exist as leftover buffer land attached to a subdivision or a utility easement, managed passively if at all. Big Trees is actively interpreted, actively maintained, and actively fundraised for, which is a meaningfully different level of care than most forest fragments this size receive, and it shows in the condition of the boardwalk and the visible age structure of the canopy above it.