Long before Tallulah Falls became a tourist mecca in the 1880s, Tallulah Gorge and its raging waterfalls was the domain of what Indians claimed was a race of ferocious “little people.” Hernando de Soto may have passed nearby in the 1540s. European traders were frequenting the area by the early 1700s, and a few hermits
Clayton has been around a long time, probably longer than many people think. The town’s history begins with the Cherokees and ends, at least for now, with tourism and a Main Street lined with boutiques. A good deal has transpired in between. As the homeland of the Cherokees for hundreds of years, northeast Georgia was
The September 2023 newsletter contains photos and a bit of history of many of the gas stations that once lined Main Street in Clayton. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2023 Sept Vintage Rabun
One of the largest national forests east of the Mississippi owes its birth to an environmental disaster. The history of the Chattahoochee National Forest, which takes its name from the river whose headwaters rise in the north Georgia mountains, is the story of a phoenix rising, not from ashes but from a rubble-strewn landscape left
The history of the Tallulah Falls Railroad is part and parcel of the schemes of southern railroad builders in the nineteenth century to link the port city of Charleston with midwestern markets at Cincinnati. In 1835, South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, former U.S. vice president and staunch defender of slavery, was among the first to
The June 2023 Vintage Rabun Quarterly features photographs and a short history of a few of the many summer camps for children that have operated in Rabun County since the early twentieth century. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2023 June Vintage Rabun
Disputes over Georgia’s borders flared up periodically during the state’s early history. Most involved the 35th parallel north, which commonly was accepted as the shared boundary between Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee by the late 1700s. However, it was one thing to declare the 35th parallel a legal boundary, while it was altogether something else
The March 2023 Vintage Rabun Quarterly contains photographs and a history of the Bynum House previously located on US 76 West. The newsletter also includes a brief history of the Georgia/North Carolina state boundary marker that was placed in 1819 and will be on display at the Rabun County Historical Society museum beginning in April.
A fire in a mechanic’s garage sparked a conflagration that burned the resort town of Tallulah Falls to the ground on a December night in 1921. The village had no fire department. Neither did any other town in Rabun County. If your house caught fire, it helped to have friendly neighbors, because that was the
There could have been a settlement of Seminole Indians atop Black Rock Mountain as a tourist attraction. There also could have been a bust of Franklin Roosevelt gazing down over Rabun County from the heights of the 3,640 foot mountain. Instead of these, the county became home to the highest state park in Georgia, Black
The December 2022 newsletter contains photographs and a history of the hotel on South Main Street variously known as the Clayton Hotel, the Dillard Motor Lodge, and the Old Clayton Inn. The newsletter also includes a current listing of our Society membership. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2022 Dec
“He has never turned down a call. Cold winter nights, bad roads, long distances, have not kept Doc indoors when a call came. He feels as much urgency of the need in a shack twenty miles back in the mountains as on Main Street; and ministers with as much care to a grubby patient under
The history of Sky Valley is a story of risk-taking and national economic cycles. This explains why Sky Valley developed in a totally different way than anyplace else in Rabun County or northeast Georgia, for that matter. For one thing, Scots-Irish immigrants came to this part of Georgia in search of cheap farmland in the
The September 2022 newsletter contains historical photographs of the hotels in Tallulah Falls in the latter years of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2022 Sept Vintage Rabun
Sinking Mountain is located about seven miles northwest of Tallulah Falls. Some people claimed the mountain was sinking a few inches every year. They swore you could feel the mountain moving under your feet. Others dismissed this claim as sheer nonsense. But we are getting ahead of our story about the Hostess of Sinking Mountain.
African-Americans were among the earliest residents of Rabun County. They were slaves. Rabun County was created by an act of the Georgia legislature in 1819. The new county’s land was offered to white settlers through the Land Lottery of 1820. Unique to Georgia, this lottery system distributed 250-acre parcels in the county’s river valleys, which
Confusion, outright blunders and armed conflict ultimately shaped the eastern and northern borders of Georgia following the colony’s creation in 1732. Border disputes with Florida and Alabama flared up during the nineteenth century, but none were as contentious as those involving Georgia’s boundaries with South and North Carolina. Given its location, the land that became
The June 2022 newsletter contains historical photographs of Clayton scenes from Main Street and Savannah Street going back to the early twentieth century. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2022 June Vintage Rabun
Although some politicians equate paying taxes with patriotic duty, few people celebrate their payments into the government till. That proved to be the case in 1907 when Rabun County’s Ordinary, the county’s chief executive responsible for everything from taxation to roads and bridges, ordered the imposition of a special tax to finance the construction of
At one time, Rabun County was dotted with nearly 30 gold mines as prospectors hoped to strike it rich with the yellow metal. Unfortunately for the Rabun miners with dollar signs dancing in their heads, more money was put into the ground than ever taken out. However, that was not the case elsewhere in north
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81 North Church Street
Clayton, Georgia 30525
(706) 782-5292