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
The Rabun County Historical Society’s museum in downtown Clayton has been closed while undergoing an extensive renovation to accommodate important new exhibits. The Society expects to reopen the museum in the spring of 2021. The renovation was undertaken to organize exhibits around the major developments and themes that have shaped the history of Rabun County
Only seven teachers had a tenth grade education. Schools lacked desks, books charts and maps. Many children were unable to comprehend what they read. School buildings were in varying states of disrepair. This snapshot of Rabun County’s 29 community schools emerged in 1914 when Georgia undertook a survey to assess the quality of education in
The railroad lost money practically every year from its inception in 1897. Collapsing wooden trestles plunged trains into deep ravines. Its wood-burning steam engines were antiquated. Many locals dubbed the Tallulah Falls Railroad the “Total Failure.” But the importance of the TFRR is inestimable. Northeast Georgia had few passable roads by the late 1800s. The
It was a grand vision of economic development cut short by the Civil War. That is the story of the Blue Ridge Railroad. No freight cars ever ran through its roadbed and long tunnels, the remnants of which are still visible in Rabun County and South Carolina. The Blue Ridge was never completed, making Rabun
The Day 50 Years Ago When Karl Wallenda Walked a Tightrope Across Tallulah Gorge (But He Wasn’t the First) By Richard Cinquina How do you revive interest in a resort town featuring spectacular waterfalls plunging through a 750-foot-deep gorge? Why, obviously, you would hire a 65-year-old daredevil to walk across the gorge on a tightrope.
Buggy Repairs, Flavo Flour and Hotel Rooms with Sewerage: Clayton Business Advertisements in 1920 By Richard Cinquina Described as a ramshackle town in the early 1900s, Clayton had attained a degree of prosperity by 1920. Overall conditions had improved significantly from the village’s poverty and neglect at the advent of the twentieth century. Tourists, courtesy
When executives of an Atlanta electric utility peered into Tallulah Gorge in 1909, they quickly saw the answer to their problem. A growing Atlanta was hungry for electricity. The Tallulah River roaring through the gorge would power a hydroelectric generating plant. Every kilowatt of that electricity would be transmitted to Atlanta. Problem solved. However, an
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81 North Church Street
Clayton, Georgia 30525
(706) 782-5292