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Policeman Lee Cape had always suspected his enemies would eventually get him. But he would tell his friends, “but when they do, I’ll be so old I won’t have lost too many years anyway.” William Lee Cape, better known as Lee Cape, spent the better part of four decades in law enforcement. Lee was born two years before the Civil War began and by the age of 18, had moved in with his grandmother who lived in Pickens County. Lee had a reputation by his early 20s of being a tough g

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

Peter Cantrell's grave marker, not at actual site of his murder, placed by Dutch Cantrell of Canton. Located on private property on LL 114. During and immediately after the Civil War tensions were high in Pickens County and roving bands of men, sometimes assigned to Home Guards (informal companies of men) would kill their enemies in the county. Peter Cantrell was one of perhaps a dozen men that were

Chief Vann was a controversial figure. Born in the 1760s, the half Scotsman/half Cherokee, grew to become a wealthy businessman,...

Pickens County has a history replete with convicts who escaped local authorities. This particular story took place near Sharptop Church (near the present-day corner of Grandview and Pendley Road) and moved to the Connahaynee Lodge grounds within Tate Mountain Estates before the convict escaped our county. On September 2, 1937 a group of convicts were near Sharptop Church, when one of the convicts, a man convicted of murder, escaped from the group and ran up an embankment. A