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Amicalola Electrical Membership Co-operative began in 1940 as one of the last electrical membership co-ops. Rather than benefiting from...

Steele's Bridge 1964 baptism Most people from Pickens and Dawson County are familiar with the metal span bridge over the Amicalola River. Spanning 80 feet over a popular fishing and tubing location known as the Devil's Elbow, the bridge has been a landmark of local activity for over 120 years. Map of Steele's Bridge Dawson County John Chumley and his family helped build the bridge. The Chumleys lived downstream from the elbow, and Wash Steele owned the property upstream.

In researching the family Summerour of North Georgia, I made a surprising series of connections. Henry Harrison Summerour moved to Auraria, Georgia around the time of the Georgia Gold Rush, and later moved to Hightower, (previously known as Frogtown) by the 1840s. Hightower was a major stop and crossroads on what is now known as the Old Federal Road. Henry operated a dry goods store. He was also appointed postmaster of Hightower in 1848. One of his neighbors was Mrs.

During the Cold War, Lockheed Martin partnered with the Air Force to build a remote secret laboratory in the middle of a 10,000-plus acre wilderness in Dawson County, Georgia. The land was purchased by Lockheed from a local landowner named Roscoe Tucker who had acquired large tracts of land in the 1930s. In 1957, Lockheed deeded the land to the government and together they built a nuclear testing facility. The Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory (GNAL), also known as Air

61-year-old Gary Michael Hilton, a.k.a. The National Forest Serial Killer, finally got caught in 2008 after committing a grizzly series of murders. He had killed several people in the National Forests of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The entire scope of his murders is beyond what I'll cover in this article. I will focus on the tragic case of Meredith Emerson, due to its proximity to North Georgia. (In no way do I mean to diminish the importance of the other lives he

In 1829, a man named Young Potts moved to Dawson County from South Carolina. He hit the ground running and made a small fortune in his early prospecting in the late 1820s. Within a few years, in an attempt to maintain anonymity, he and his family moved into the rugged terrain known as the Wolfscratch Wilderness in 1836. Located on LL 131 and 98, Young Potts purchased nearly 500 acres of land in the remote forests of Cherokee County. Young Potts built his house near a spri

1886 Map with Johntown, Georgia John Dilbeck was born in 1787 in Rutherford County, North Carolina. Around 1839 he moved to Dawson County (Gilmer at the time) and purchased 160 acres near the present Steve Tate/Faucett Lake area. He acquired Land Lot 160, and Land Lot 129. This was where the area of Johntown sprung up. Upon his death in 1857, the land passed to John L. Grogran, the brother of John Dilbeck's son-in-law. The descendants of the Dilbecks lived near Burnt

In 1930, Colonel Sam Tate had just built his Tate Mountain Estates – which included his stunning Connahaynee Lodge, Lake Sequoyah and a beautiful 18-hole golf course. That October, Colonel Tate gathered with state legislators, Georgia’s Governor Hardman and the Mayor of Atlanta, to unveil the monument dedicated to the founder of the Colony of Georgia, General James Oglethorpe, and to celebrate the changing of the name of Grassy Knob to Mount Oglethorpe. I Unveiling of monumen