Highway 441 has gone through five iterations in its long history. It started as a centuries-old Indian trail that ran the length of what became Rabun County. The trail was “improved” into a single lane dirt road following the county’s founding in 1819 and then converted into a toll road later in the 1800s. 441 became a paved, two-lane road by the late 1920s. Amid public protests in the late 1950s, the road was rerouted through the southern portion of the county and widened into a four lane (well, mostly) highway that we know today. While 441 has morphed into different forms over the years, one thing has remained constant; every version has followed roughly the same route through Rabun County.
The Rabun Gap, the largest natural passageway through the southern Appalachians that extends north for over 20 miles from Clayton to Franklin, North Carolina, has been used as a transportation corridor for thousands of years. Mississippians and Cherokees had been traveling through this mountain gap centuries before the first English explorers visited the area in the 1700s. Indians were not the only travelers using the gap. During the Anglo-Cherokee War of 1759-1761, British troops from South Carolina marched through the Rabun Gap to fight Cherokees in western North Carolina.
Locust Stake Road
After Rabun County was established in 1819 on land forcibly ceded to Georgia by the Cherokees, that north-south Indian trail became the main passageway into the county for Scots-Irish and German settlers migrating from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Rough, rutted and impassable in wet weather, the trail was in such bad condition that the Georgia legislature appropriated funds in 1827 to improve it into something approximating a road. The north end of the road at the North Carolina border was marked with a locust stake, causing the road to be known as the Locust Stake Road.
By the early 1840s, people from neighboring counties accounted for much of the traffic on the road, but they contributed nothing to the road’s maintenance. To make all users pay for upkeep, the Georgia legislature in 1845 chartered the Rabun Turnpike Road Company, which converted the Locust Stake Road into a toll road. One tollgate was located at Crane’s Ford on the Tallulah River at present-day Lakemont, the other at the North Carolina state line. Tolls varied from one dollar for a wagon team of six horses, mules or oxen to two cents for each head of hogs and sheep. The toll road company was disbanded in 1887, and the road deteriorated badly over ensuing years.
Improved Dirt Road from Atlanta to Asheville
By the second decade of the twentieth century, work was underway to build an improved dirt road from Atlanta to Asheville, North Carolina. In its January 15, 1915, edition, the Atlanta Constitution reported that the road from Atlanta through Habersham County “has been graded, widened and in every way made a first-class highway. Topsoil has been put on practically the entire distance.” The article continued: “There is a link of some 35 miles from Tallulah Falls to Franklin (N.C.) which would be all that is necessary to complete a fine highway from Atlanta to the North Carolina city…All that is needed is a little cooperation upon the part of the authorities in Rabun County, Ga. and Macon County, N.C.”
In its May 21, 1915, issue, the Atlanta Constitution reported that Judge Frank Smith, Rabun County’s Judge of the Court of Ordinary (chief executive) was working with Georgia’s road supervisor and the engineering department of the University of Georgia to improve the north-south road running through the county. The road “has been graded from Tallulah Falls to Lakemont, and the road to Wiley is being made over by the convict force (chain gangs).”
Contracts Let to Pave 441
Certain portions of the road were relocated, the Constitution continued, to bring “the mileage down to the distance of the (Tallulah Falls) railroad—a considerable reduction…By three picturesque falls on Tiger Creek and through the valley of the Little Tennessee, the road runs—scenery as fine as is to be found east of the Rockies… and the efforts of the Georgia county have contributed to the interest of the county in which Franklin, N.C. is located to carry the work still further.” Despite these improvements, travel on the dirt road remained difficult, if not impossible, in wet weather. This problem was addressed in 1927 when contracts were let to pave the road.
The concrete paving was done in three stretches: from Tallulah Falls to Tiger, from Tiger to Mountain City, and from Mountain City to the North Carolina state line. According to the May 12, 1927, edition of the Clayton Tribune, “The stone base (of the road) is being put down eight inches deep and nineteen feet wide.” The contractor for the stretch of road from Tiger to Clayton is “putting down their (rock) crushers and building trackage from the quarry to the crusher…the rock will be delivered to the crusher by tram cars and when crushed will be loaded direct to the trucks and carried to the road.” The machinery was able to crush enough stone to build a mile of road per week.”
Paving Clayton’s Main Street
Reporting on the progress being made from Tiger to Clayton in its October 20,1927, issue, the Clayton Tribune wrote, “The contractors skipped a short distance through the main portion of town (Clayton) in order to give the city officials more time in which to make preparations to have the full width of the Main Street paved…It is hoped that arrangements will be made so as not to have just a part of the street paved and the balance left in the mud.”
Paving was completed in 1928 and little more was done to the road for more than two decades. It showed. An editorial in the Atlanta Constitution from March 25, 1954, proclaimed that 441 “from the (North Carolina) state line near Dillard south is old, crooked, narrow and rough. The traveler can close his eyes and tell when he enters Georgia…It deserves a surface in keeping with the scenery.” It also was true that the existing two-lane route winding through the countryside was unable to handle growing volumes of tourist traffic.
New 441 Bypasses Lakemont, Wiley, Tiger and Clayton
The push for improvements to 441 bore fruit in 1955 when surveying began for the project, but proponents got more than they bargained for. Instead of improving the existing route of the road from Tallulah Falls to Clayton, the state planned to build an entirely new and straighter four-lane highway that bypassed Lakemont, Wiley, Tiger and Clayton. The uproar from affected locals could have been heard in Atlanta.
The owner of a motel and drive-in theater in Tiger was quoted in the August, 1956, issue of the Clayton Tribune as saying “the new proposed route three miles east of Tiger will bankrupt the southern half of Rabun County…It is true that we are in need of a new highway because U.S 23-441 has become very popular, but we people in the tourist business, those who have residences along the highway and farmers with cultivated fields want it to stay along the same lines that it is presently located.”
Clayton Will “Dry Up on the Vine”
The reaction from Clayton business owners was no less strident when they learned the new 441 would bypass the town. “Persons opposed to this new route,” wrote the Clayton Tribune, “say Clayton will dry up on the vine.” However, the opposition could not refute the fact that an improved 441 running through downtown Clayton could not handle the additional traffic that the road would bring. Backers of the bypass said, “…on busy days and in the summer, it takes 10 minutes or more to travel the half mile through town.”
State highway officials had the last say in the matter, asserting that protests over the new route were pointless. In the November 13, 1958, edition of the Clayton Tribune, a “high ranking official” stated, “The new route is set, approved by the federal government, which will not pay for their part of the highway if it does not follow the best route,” meaning the one incorporating the bypasses. Construction on the new 441 was completed by the early 1960s.
Clayton Finally Connected to 441
As feared, progress came at a price. The “downtowns” of Lakemont and Tiger withered into wide spots on what became Old 441, while Wiley simply disappeared. However, things turned out differently in Clayton. Robert H. Vickers, Rabun County’s Judge of the Court of Ordinary, led the effort to connect East Savannah Street with the new highway. At that time, the street dead-ended at a knoll upon which stood the Bleckley House hotel. In 1964, Vickers had the hotel moved to a new location, the knoll graded down and East Savannah extended to 441. This access is credited with saving downtown Clayton, which otherwise would have been isolated from the main tourist route through northeast Georgia.
The new highway transformed Old 441 into a meandering byway from Clayton to Tallulah Falls, tracing the path of an ancient Indian trail and the route of the long-gone Tallulah Falls Railroad. Except for locals, the road is largely forgotten, which is unfortunate considering the history that occurred along this traffic-free route through the rolling countryside.
This article by Society member Richard Cinquina was originally published in the Laurel of Northeast Georgia in August 2024.
