Type "Buckeye Park" into a search bar and you'll get two different answers depending on who's asking. Anglers want directions to the boat ramp. Everyone else wants to know where the Redneck Games are. Both questions used to have the same answer. They don't anymore, and the gap between them says something about how a small town holds onto a story after the story moves on.
Buckeye Park sits off Buckeye Road, a short drive from I-16 in East Dublin. It's open every day from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., admission is free, and on a normal Saturday it looks like what it is: a public boat ramp on the Oconee River, five stocked ponds, a scatter of picnic tables, a community house available for private rentals, and softball and football fields tucked along the edge. Cast off the bank for bream and crappie, launch a boat for catfish and largemouth bass, or just claim a picnic table for the afternoon. None of that requires knowing the park's other history.
But the other history is the reason the name shows up on national trivia lists.
How a Radio DJ's Joke Became a National Punchline
In 1996, when Atlanta won the bid to host the Summer Olympics, some in the national media joked that a games hosted in the South would basically be run by rednecks. Mac Davis, general manager of local radio station WQZY-FM "Y96," decided to take the joke literally and stage a real one. He expected maybe 500 people to show up at Buckeye Park. He got 5,000, about twice the population of a town that today still sits at roughly 2,500 residents.
The Summer Redneck Games ran on exactly the kind of events you'd guess from the name: the Mud Pit Belly Flop, Bobbin' for Pig's Feet, Redneck Horseshoes played with toilet seats instead of horseshoes, the Hubcap Hurl, and the Armpit Serenade, where contestants performed songs using nothing but the sounds they could produce under their own arm. A local nicknamed L-Bow carried a torch made from a stack of beer cans to light the ceremonial barbecue pit and open the festivities. Winners got a trophy: a half-crushed, empty beer can, mounted.
It worked as a story past the point anyone in East Dublin probably expected. Good Morning America covered it. So did Life, Maxim, MTV's Road Rules and Real World Challenge, The Tonight Show, and network crews from ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, and Fox. For close to two decades, a patch of riverside park land in a town most of the country had never heard of became a punchline with an actual address.
The Games Ended in 2013. The Confusion Didn't.
Organizers pointed to declining revenue and attendance when they called off the games in 2013. Around the same time, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division had also raised concerns about bacterial contamination in a creek near the site and in the Oconee River itself. City officials were clear that the water quality issue wasn't why the games ended, but the timing meant the two stories got tangled together in a lot of retellings.
For a decade, that was the end of it. Then, in September 2023, a version of the event came back under a new name: Redneckin' 4 Jesus. It was organized by Randy Tidwell, who had once served as a mascot for the original games, alongside George Chamberlain III. Tidwell had gone through years of drug addiction before finding his way to Faith Christian Assembly in East Dublin. As Randy Tidwell told 13WMAZ:
"I used to redneck for drunks, and now I'm rednecking for Jesus."
The revival kept the bones of the original event: the mud pit belly flop, bobbing for pigs' feet, redneck horseshoes, a toilet lid toss, hubcap hurl, and a seed-spitting contest, with car shows and cornhole added on. It runs annually every July, with a $25 registration fee for RVs that want a spot on site.
Here's the part that trips people up. It doesn't happen at Buckeye Park.
The current event is held at a property called Field of Faith, roughly eight miles east of downtown on Highway 80, past East Laurens High School, then a turn onto Snellbridge Road toward Peachtree Road. That's private church-affiliated land, not the public park where the original games ran for seventeen years. Someone driving out to Buckeye Park expecting the mud pit and the hubcap toss in July will find a boat ramp and five quiet ponds instead.
Two Places, One Story
If you're trying to sort out where to actually go, it breaks down cleanly:
- Buckeye Park (Buckeye Road, East Dublin): the public riverside park, free admission, open daily, built for fishing, boating, picnics, and ballfield use. This is where the original Redneck Games ran from 1996 to 2013.
- Field of Faith (off Snellbridge Road/Peachtree Road): the current site of Redneckin' 4 Jesus, held every July, organized through Faith Christian Assembly, with a small RV registration fee and a family-and-faith framing distinct from the original event's tone.
Both places carry a piece of the same story. Only one of them still hosts it every summer, and it isn't the one most people assume.
What the Split Says About the Town
There's something fitting about a town keeping its actual park and letting a legendary event drift eight miles down the road under new management and a new name. Buckeye Park never depended on the Redneck Games to be useful. Long before the mud pit and the hubcap hurl, it was already a place with a boat ramp and stocked ponds, and it remains that after the cameras left. The legacy event, meanwhile, found a second life somewhere else entirely, carried forward by someone who grew up inside the joke and decided to keep the spirit going on his own terms.
For a town of about 2,500 people that once drew more visitors than residents to a single Saturday event, that kind of quiet continuity is its own small statement. The fish don't care what year it is. The ponds are still stocked. The boat ramp still opens at 7 a.m.
If you're new to East Dublin, or you've lived here long enough to have opinions about which landing is better for catfish, Buckeye Park is worth knowing on its own terms, not just as a punchline with a Wikipedia page. And if July rolls around and you want the mud pit experience, you now know to head toward Snellbridge Road instead.
Grand Real Estate keeps an eye on the parts of Dublin and Laurens County that don't show up in a listing description, because knowing where the boat ramp actually is matters just as much as knowing what's for sale down the street. If you're curious what your own corner of East Dublin is worth these days, get your instant home valuation and see where you stand.
