The Rabun County Historical Society Burton: The Town Under The Lake
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By Richard Cinquina
n a moonlit night on Lake Burton, some say you might hear the pealing of a church bell. The sound would not be coming from a nearby church. Rather, the mournful tolling is said to be an echo from 100 years distant when that bell was ringing in Burton, the town that lays submerged under the lake that took its name. Originally called Powellsville, Burton was founded by Scotch-Irish settlers in the early 1800s. The town straddled the fast-moving Tallulah River, where Dick’s and Timpson creeks flowed into the river. The community’s name later was changed to Burton after Jeremiah Burton, a Baptist preacher and owner of a general store. By that time, Burton was the largest town in Rabun County. And the town was isolated, requiring a full day to travel the 15 or so miles to Clayton by horse-drawn wagon. The center of community life in the fertile Tallulah valley, Burton was a prosperous town. Large homes stood along the river. The town boasted Baptist and Methodist churches; two general stores, one of which housed the post office; and a sawmill, gristmill and syrup mill. The pride of the town was the steel bridge built across the Tallulah River in 1899 at a cost of $1,925. It was a prime meeting place for the community. Burton’s schoolhouse was known as Tallulah Academy or central school. In 1913 the school had 60 students in seven grades with two teachers and was stocked with maps, blackboards and about 100 books. The school board spent $400 a year on county schools, with parents paying an additional $5 for each child. Farming was the lifeblood of Burton, and the river bottoms were ideal for corn, tobacco, vegetables, fruits and walnut groves. Other business activities in Burton included sawmilling, small-scale gold mining and moonshining. Gospel singing conventions were a main form of entertainment for Burton townspeople and other nearby residents. Accounts by former Burton resident Willie Blalock Elliot from a 1982 interview provide an inkling of what life was like back then. She said each family took a dinner to church in homemade baskets every Sunday. She remembered a waterfall across the road from her house that the family used for refrigeration by storing food behind it on the cool rocks. Ms Elliott concluded that the people of Burton had “a good life.”
10 - June 2020
Bridge at Burton Dam But this bucolic life changed suddenly and forever in 1917. Georgia Railway and Power Company, the predecessor of Georgia Power, was requiring steadily increasing amounts of electricity to power the streetcar system it operated in Atlanta. To meet this need, the company completed the Tallulah Falls dam and hydroelectric plant at the head of Tallulah Gorge in 1913. It was the third largest hydroelectric facility in the country. Five additional facilities were planned along a 28-mile stretch of the Tallulah and Tugalo rivers. Planning for the dam that would form the Lake Burton reservoir began in 1917. It was not intended originally as a hydroelectric generating station but as a storage and flow-regulating facility for the Tallulah Falls plant downstream. J. E. Harvey of Tallulah Falls was hired by Georgia Railway and Power in 1917 to acquire the entire town of Burton and much of the surrounding land. Sixty-five property owners eventually sold thousands of acres to the company. The single largest purchase consisted of 1,000 acres from the Gennett Lumber Company that became the site of the dam. Willie Blalock Elliot recounted: “I reckon my daddy was fairly well satisfied, but dozens of people never were. It just ruined their lives. They were never satisfied.” Some of the folks who sold their land moved to higher ground in the valley; others went to nearby Tiger, and many migrated to Habersham County. However, at least one landowner, a Dr. Murray, did not sell. Owning about 400 acres, he only agreed to give the power company the rights to back water
