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The Amazing Legacy of Harmony Mills and the ruins of Alice The ruins of a grist mill and former gold mine entrance sit adjacent to Town Creek The Harmony Mills at Alice, was the most spectacular accomplishment of the Atherton brothers. Built in 1882, this combination grist and textile mill had 800 spindles and was funded with capital of $25,000. Water flowed through a system of ditches around a mountain for more than one mile and a half to provide a drop. A wooden race

This information is based on interviews conducted with Colonel Lemuel J. Allred and Mr. James Simmons, by the Ellijay Courier newspaper in 1887. Not long after Pickens County was carved out of Cherokee County and Gilmer in 1853 by legislation drafted by Colonel Lemuel Allred, a new town was proposed as the county seat. James Simmons, the former legislator who moved to the area in 1835 and lived in Colonel Haney Nelson's old Tavern along the Federal Road, originally proposed

During the 19th and 20th centuries, many counties in the United States had places where the indigent could live and take shelter. They...

In searching through the archives of deeds at the county, I came across this map of the town of Jasper dated March 5th, 1883. The chief engineer of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad Company, F.S. Wallace, drew this map up to demonstrate the lands that were conveyed to help facilitate the passage of the railroad through the town of Jasper. The map is below along with what I could make of the penmanship of the document. {Georgia, {Pickens County: For the purpose of e

Juan Contreras, Sr.'s grave marker - Pleasant Union Baptist Cemetery, Waleska This is the tragic story of the Contreras family of Cherokee County, Georgia. In 1976, two teenagers killed their father and tried to make it look like an accident. For whatever reason, they decided the fictional site of the murder would be at the S-Curves below Cove Mountain, across the road from the entrance to the Perseverence Quarry. In early 1976, Juan Contreras, Sr., and his wife Peggy d

An illustration of the game of Anetsa being played. Anetsa, a game that resembles lacrosse, was a Cherokee Indian game played by two teams of up to eighteen players on a 100-yard field. Normally this was played by a water source. They used wooden sticks (longer than a tennis racquet) with a depressed cavity made of deer sinew (looking similar to a spoon) On each end of the field, there were two poles erected with a pole spanning the top (similar to Football posts). The first

Before Grandview Lake, or the Salvation Army Camp existed, for a brief time Grandview Summer Colony was a burgeoning place to relax during the warmer months. In 1927, H.E. “Cy” Hawkins, a former minor league baseball pitcher in Carrolton, Georgia bought a bunch of land near where present-day Grandview Lake is. Cy was the salesman and brains of the operation and his brother (Ira) Tanner was the builder. Cy and his brother Tanner became land developers. They bought up much of