Meeting the Rock City Gardens Icon, Bill Chapin
Bill Chapin and Judy Garrison's first meeting at Lookout Mountain Club, Lookout Mountain, Ga.
August 8, 2024 | It was obvious he was at home, dressed in his seersucker pants, straw hat, a dead giveaway of the temperatures on Lookout Mountain, Georgia, blistering. Nearing 100 degrees on this Wednesday afternoon, the heat seems to be the pattern for our barn adventures. The first barn repainting we photographed almost a decade ago took eight hours in identical heat; we stayed in the shade, but the painters were in scorching sun the entire day. Much like the barns, resilient, meeting the heat head on.
Bill Chapin, Meagan Jolley (public relations manager), Jack Glenn (marketing), Len and myself sat around the table at Lookout Mountain Club as Chapin shared with us his history and devotion to Rock City. In 1984, Chapin purchased Rock City from his father (E.Y. Chapin III) and incorporates See Rock City (SRC). He became president in 1986. Today, Chapin is retired; in 2022, his son Doug purchased See Rock City and serves as president/CEO as well as chairman of the board.
Our first meeting lasted about three hours with an invitation from Bill to meet the next morning so that he could show us one of the nearby barns. Following a walk-through of the gardens with Jack Glenn, we met Chapin at Starbucks directly across the street from the garden admission gate.
He took us to the See Rock City birdhouse barn (lower left) located on the property owned by SRC. The only barn to be built like a birdhouse, the ‘Rock City Red’ barn can be seen from the Lover’s Leap observation area, 1,700 feet above sea level. We then followed Chapin to a nearby barn (lower right) that is a possible repainting project in 2024. It’s the first barn to have letters pointing onlookers to SRC on the web.
