If you drive Roswell Road often enough, you've passed the entrance to Big Trees Forest Preserve without knowing it was there. The trailhead sits next to the Fulton County government annex building, tucked behind what looks like just another parking lot, and the preserve inside is 30 acres of first-growth forest that most Sandy Springs residents have never walked. That's not because the city hides it. It's because Sandy Springs residents have been trained by years of programming, event announcements, and City Springs foot traffic to think of "the park" as one place. It isn't. Sandy Springs has two entirely different park systems operating inside its borders, and fall is the season that makes the split obvious.
Two Departments, Not One
Morgan Falls Overlook Park, Big Trees Forest Preserve, and Lost Corner Preserve are all run by the City of Sandy Springs Recreation and Parks Department. You register for events there through the city's own system, the rules are set locally, and the calendar fills up every September and October with festivals the city itself is producing.
East Palisades is different. It's a unit of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, which means it's federal land patrolled by National Park Service rangers, not city staff. The leash law there isn't a suggestion. Dogs must stay on a six-foot leash at all times, including in the water, and violating it can bring a federal fine. There's no city registration page for East Palisades because the city doesn't run it.
Park | Who runs it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
Morgan Falls Overlook Park | City of Sandy Springs | Local event registration, rentals through Murph's Surf, dog park access |
Big Trees Forest Preserve | City of Sandy Springs | Free, unstaffed, no events calendar |
Lost Corner Preserve | City of Sandy Springs, with Friends of Lost Corner | Community garden and cottage rentals managed locally |
East Palisades | National Park Service | Federal leash enforcement, ranger patrols, no city programming |
Knowing which column a park falls into changes how you plan around it. The city parks are where the fall calendar lives. The federal unit is where the maintenance news lives, on a completely different timeline.
The Preserve Behind the Dealership
Big Trees Forest Preserve is the quietest of the four, and it's quiet by design. The park was assembled starting in 1990 through a partnership between the Southeast Land Preservation Trust, Fulton County, the State of Georgia, and the City of Sandy Springs, and it became the first Fulton County park admitted to the Old Growth Forest Network, a national registry of protected mature forests.
Three named trails cover the property: Spring Hollow, Jackson Overlook, and the Backcountry Trail, which at roughly three-quarters of a mile is the longest loop in the preserve. Walk the Backcountry Trail and you cross two pieces of Sandy Springs history most residents don't know exist. One stretch follows the old grade of the Bull Sluice Railroad, which once hauled construction material to the Morgan Falls hydroelectric dam. Another follows what was the original Roswell Road, a wagon trail from the 1800s that the modern four-lane version you drive every day was named after.
A Farm With Two Owners Since the 1800s
Lost Corner Preserve, at the corner of Brandon Mill and Dalrymple Roads, is 24 acres that spent most of its life as a working farm. The property dates to the mid-1800s and has had only two owners since Native American habitation of the land, a continuity that's rare for anything inside the Perimeter. Today it holds a community garden, a greenhouse, an apiary, and a renovated cottage that can be rented for gatherings of up to 49 people, all managed in partnership with the nonprofit Friends of Lost Corner.
The walking loop is short, under a mile, and the surface is fine gravel rather than dirt or asphalt, which makes it one of the more comfortable options in the city for anyone pushing a stroller or walking with a dog on a warm afternoon.
The Park With a Ranger, Not a Rec Department
East Palisades is where Sandy Springs residents go for the version of nature that doesn't feel curated. The trail system there is rugged, mostly dirt, with rocky sections and real elevation, leading to bluff overlooks of the Chattahoochee and, at its northern end, a bamboo grove with stalks reaching 30 feet that has become one of the most photographed spots in the park. Near the Whitewater Creek parking lot, a stretch of riverbank locals call the dog beach gives off-leash dogs a place to wade, though the leash rule technically applies until the moment paws hit water.
Down the river at Island Ford, the same National Park Service unit that anchors CRNRA's Sandy Springs headquarters, the trail system reopened on July 1, 2026, after a multi-year restoration completed under the park's Comprehensive Trails Management Plan. That's the kind of update that never crosses a city newsletter because it isn't a city project. It's a federal one, and it's easy to miss unless you follow the Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy directly.
Morgan Falls Is the Loud One
Morgan Falls Overlook Park is the one everyone already knows, and for good reason. It opened in 2010 as the first new park built after Sandy Springs incorporated, and it's the only one of the four with a seasonal outfitter on site. Murph's Surf Paddle Shack rents kayaks, canoes, and stand-up paddleboards right at the water's edge.
On August 15, 2026, the park hosted the inaugural Sandy Springs SUP Showdown, a six-mile out-and-back paddle race on Bull Sluice Lake produced with Murph's Surf and Catalyst Sports, which brought adaptive kayak athletes into the competition. It's the kind of event that only happens at a city-run park, because it required city staff, city permits, and a city partnership to pull off. You won't see anything like it at East Palisades, and that's not a knock on East Palisades. It's just not that kind of park.
What's Actually on the Fall Calendar
This is where the jurisdictional split matters most for anyone planning a weekend. Every fall event on the books this year is happening at a city-run location, because the city is the one producing them.
Fall Fun for All kicks off the season on Thursday, September 18, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at the pavilion at Morgan Falls Overlook Park. It's a free, registration-required event built specifically to create an inclusive experience for residents with physical and developmental disabilities, with carnival games and family activities.
The following week brings the Blue Stone Arts & Music Festival, a two-day event on Friday and Saturday, September 25 and 26, spread across the City Springs district along City Green and Blue Stone Road. Now in its fourth year as the successor to the former Heritage Sandy Springs Festival, it's free to attend and includes two music stages, an artist market with more than 60 vendors, an emerging artist gallery, and a kids and sports zone. Friday's headliner is alternative rock band Nicotine Dolls, playing what organizers describe as their final US show before an international tour. Saturday closes with singer-songwriter Allen Stone. New this year is Squonk's Joy Machine, an interactive multimedia performance where the audience helps power the show. The weekend also brings back the Blue Stone 5K-9, a fun run open to dogs and their owners on the course.
October brings the return of OktoberFEAST to City Springs, blending Bavarian food traditions with a Southern twist, including a returning performance from The Swinging Bavarians. Spooky Springs closes out the season as the city's Halloween event.
None of this touches East Palisades or Island Ford. Those parks will look the same in October as they do now, minus the crowds, since fall is widely considered the most comfortable season to hike there once the summer heat and humidity break.
A Practical Way to Use the Split
If you've lived in Sandy Springs for years and only ever set foot in Morgan Falls Overlook Park, you've been using a quarter of what the city and the federal government maintain inside city limits. The fix isn't complicated. Treat the city parks, Morgan Falls, Big Trees, and Lost Corner, as your calendar parks, the ones worth checking for events before you go. Treat East Palisades as your escape valve, the one that doesn't care what week it is and won't have a registration form standing between you and the trailhead.
This fall, that split is easy to test. Register for Fall Fun for All or walk the Blue Stone Arts Market on September 25, then the next weekend, skip the crowd entirely and drive to the Whitewater Creek lot at East Palisades before 9 a.m., while the small parking area still has space and the bamboo grove is quiet.
Knowing your own neighborhood this well, down to which trail crosses a 19th-century wagon road and which agency answers your phone call about a downed tree, is the kind of local fluency that tends to matter again the day you're ready to sell. If that day comes, Byce Homes built its practice on exactly this kind of neighborhood-level detail, paired with builder-grade knowledge of what a Sandy Springs property is actually worth. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk.
