By 1959, the Tallulah Falls Railroad was nearing the end of its run that began in 1887. Passenger service had long since been discontinued. Freight traffic was anemic. Debt in the millions of dollars was piling up. While the TF was still running, a writer for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine took what he
When Rabun County was founded in 1819, the local supermarket was the family farm. People ate the vegetables they grew, the animals they raised, the game they hunted and the fish they caught. Surviving in the isolated mountains of northeast Georgia was no easy task. Pork, squirrel and venison were favorite meats. Vegetables were eaten
Geography is a key factor shaping the development of a country or region. As an island nation, England turned to the ocean and became the world’s greatest maritime power by the eighteenth century. American pioneers saw the endless flat expanses of the Great Plains and turned it into the country’s breadbasket. On a still smaller
The September 2021 newsletter includes photographs from the re-opening event as well as the new displays in the museum. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2021 Sept Vintage Rabun
Clayton, GA—May 20, 2021—The museum of the Rabun County Historical Society in downtown Clayton will reopen to the public on June 11 following its extensive, year-long renovation. The museum’s hours of operation are 11-3, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The Society’s newly renovated museum brings to life the rich and colorful history of Rabun County and
Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the U.S. presidency in 1933 at the depth of the Great Depression. National unemployment stood at a staggering 25%. FDR’s landslide election was a plea for help from a desperate and demoralized nation. Upon being sworn into office on March 4, 1933, FDR launched what became known as “The Hundred Days,”
Rabun County built four courthouses between 1824 and 1908 even though the county was sparsely populated, poor and isolated from the world. One more went up in the mid-1960s. This total does not include the oak tree that served as the county’s first hall of justice. When Rabun was established in 1819, the population of
The topics in the June 2021 edition of the Rabun County Historical Society’s Vintage Rabun newsletter are: Clayton’s Vintage Hotels Museum Re-opening Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format: 2021 June Vintage Rabun
Rabun County was remote and isolated, populated by subsistence farmers scratching out a living on hardscrabble mountain land. The Tallulah Falls Railroad opened Rabun and the surrounding region to the outside world. The TF also brought badly needed jobs. Working on the TF involved backbreaking labor for paltry wages, typically about one dollar per day.
Corn has been the main crop of Rabun County farmers since the first white settlers arrived over 200 years ago. Gristmills were built by Rabun farmers to grind the county’s corn harvests into meal for bread, grits and hominy. The output from gristmills also was used for something more potent than Johnnycakes. Virtually every Rabun
The earliest white settlers, Scots-Irish from Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, arrived in northeast Georgia in the late eighteenth century. They farmed the land to survive, but those settlers were not the first to raise crops in the fertile valleys and river bottomlands of what would become Rabun County. Already living in the north Georgia
The topics in the March 2021 edition of the Rabun County Historical Society’s Vintage Rabun newsletter are: Update on museum renovation Trestles of the Tallulah Falls Railroad Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format: 2021 March Vintage Rabun
Rabun County is host to four houses on the National Register of Historic Places. Two became inns, or boardinghouses as they once were called, as a direct result of the Tallulah Falls Railroad. One is a farmhouse, serving as a vivid reminder of how poor, subsistence farmers lived in the Georgia mountains in the late
Mountain City’s history is entwined with a Native American legend and a sheriff who saw the lucrative potential of a railroad. Our story starts centuries ago in the time of Notla, son of a Cherokee chief, who wanted to marry Hiawassee, daughter of a Catawba chief. Hiawassee’s father, who had no love for the Cherokees,
A Rabun County mountain man from Tiger, Thomas E. Roane was not an electrical engineer. In fact, he had no college education at all. But that did not stop him from engineering and building the first power generating system to bring electricity to Clayton back in 1914. That was the same year Georgia Railway and
Clayton was barely a speck on the map. The few roads that existed were no more than old Cherokee trails. People caught vast numbers of jumping fish in baskets. An encyclopedic work published in 1849 provides a detailed snapshot of life in a rugged, remote and sparsely populated Rabun County within 30 years of its
The topics in the December 2020 edition of the Rabun County Historical Society’s Vintage Rabun newsletter are: Update on museum renovation and new website Depots of the Tallulah Falls Railroad Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format: 2020 Dec Vintage Rabun
The topics in the September 2020 edition of the Rabun County Historical Society’s Vintage Rabun newsletter are: Update on museum renovation and new website People who made a difference: Sheriff Luther Rickman and Justice Logan E. Bleckley Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format: 2020 Sept Vintage Rabun
Clayton, Ga.—October 2, 2020—The Rabun County Historical Society is asking area residents to donate or loan a moonshining still to its museum in downtown Clayton as part of a wide-ranging effort to expand the museum’s permanent collection. At one time, Rabun County was the moonshine capital of Georgia. Moonshining also was one of the county’s
Impassable roads (where roads even existed) and isolated communities shaped the development of Rabun County’s postal system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the absence of decent roads, post offices had to be located within easy reach of the county’s many small communities. A round trip by horse and buggy from Rabun Gap
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81 North Church Street
Clayton, Georgia 30525
(706) 782-5292
