Former Pres. Jimmy Carter is known for his ties to Plains in South Georgia. But few know he also spent time regularly in North Georgia over the four decades following his presidency.

Deep in the woods down an unpaved narrow road near the base of Walnut Mountain in Ellijay, sits a small, two-bedroom cabin where Carter would come to find solitude and partake in one of his favorite past-times, fly fishing. The rapids of Turniptown Creek run just a few feet from the covered porch of the cabin.

It’s been several years since the Carters have been able to make the trip themselves, but their family still visits it.

Wally Stover knows firsthand how much the former President has loved this part of North Georgia. He first met the then-state senator as a teenager when he came to Ellijay to campaign for his first gubernatorial race in 1966. Stover carried Carter’s campaign brochures as the politician handed them out on the Ellijay square.

“I followed him around as a teenager not old enough to vote and have just been privileged to know him all these many years,” he tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.

Stover went on to become a well-known builder and built many homes with John Pope, the husband of Carter’s cousin Betty. Stover says it was Pope who bought the roughly 20 acres along the creek at auction, and then both he and Pope built the cabin to Carter’s specifications in the early 1980s.

“It’s basically just like it was. We’ve had a new roof (put) on it, and it’s been stained outside. But it’s basically just as it was,” he says.

As a trusted friend, Stover is now caretaker of the property when the family isn’t there.

The cabin includes many pieces of furniture Carter made in his woodshop in Plains as well as the one he had built on the site in Ellijay. It includes two chifforobes, a his and hers, where the Carter’s kept their clothes--many of which are still hanging to this day.

“This is all his shirts and jeans here,” points out Stover.

Above the bed, that he also made, hangs a painting by Carter. There are many throughout the cabin by his hand. Stover says over the years his paintings would become the cover of Christmas cards that he and Rosalynn would send out.

The main floor of the cabin also includes a dining table, six chairs, and a lazy Susan that he made as well. He also made a porch swing that’s kept inside and would be hung outside on the covered porch when the Carters were there.

Stover points out the seemingly out-of-place jetted-garden tub in the downstairs bathroom—a gift by Billy Carter. Neither Stover nor Pope wanted to add the big, out-of-character tub to the rustic cabin. But Stover, who calls Jimmy the “Peacemaker”, relented when the former President wanted his brother to feel he had a small part in building the cabin. Billy brought it to Ellijay himself.

Upstairs, there is just one open space with a couple of twin beds, a sitting area, and bookshelves. There also sits a writing desk where both Carter and Rosalynn wrote at least part of many of their books. It looks out a picture window onto Rosalynn Falls--or fondly called Amy’s Falls by Stover.

“Originally it was going to be a window like those on the other end of the room—double hung. Amy wanted a picture window. After a lot of debate, she won,” recalls Stover.

He says Carter, himself, called to ask him to put up the picture window like Amy wanted.

The entire cabin and its contents, seemingly frozen in time, are most unassuming for a former president who taught Stover a valuable lesson in the way he lived his life.

“When we think of success, we think of who accumulated the most money, had the largest yacht, the most elegant and fastest plane. But I think success is what your value is to the people that you love. And so, I submit that his life is the most valuable life of our generation,” he says.

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