Roads passing through Clayton—Highways 441/23 and 76 and Warwoman Road—are daily reminders of a distant past when the Appalachians in northeastern Georgia were known as the Cherokee Mountains. And in the land that became Rabun County, the major Cherokee trails, which are now our highways and byways, converged at The Dividings in present-day Clayton. Early explorers and settlers classified the Cherokee into three groupings, depending on their location and dialect: Lower, Middle, and...

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 the name Mt....

Everyone who has driven to the town square has driven by the old Sam Penland Store (currently the Ellijay Florist) on River Street. Sam Penland hails from the same family which started Penland's Orchards. Sam Penland began operating out of the River Street location in 1914 as a merchandise store. Sam Penland and his son in front of the store. The faded mural on the wall shows an advertisement for Ballard's Obelisk Flour. Ballard's Obelisk Flour was produced in Memphis, Tennessee. The...