Rabun County Historical Society Presenting Our Rich and Colorful History

by Dick Cinquina

The Rabun County Historical Society, located at 81 N. Church Street in downtown Clayton, is dedicated to presenting the rich and colorful history of this county to the public. Open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 to 3, our free museum was totally renovated in 2021 and now has professionallevel exhibits and signage that tell the history of Rabun County. Exhibits are arranged in chronological order that make it easy for visitors to conduct self-guided tours through the museum.

The starting point of the museum is Rabun County’s Native American heritage that covers the Mississippians (800 AD-1600) and the Cherokee (1600-1839) on whose homeland the county was established. The end date of 1839 marks the infamous Trail of Tears when the Cherokee and other Southeastern tribes were expelled at gunpoint to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory. Our Native American exhibit includes an extensive collection of stone artifacts found in Rabun County.

The next exhibit details the founding of Rabun County in 1819 on land ceded by the Cherokee to the state of Georgia in 1815. Included in this exhibit is Commissioners Rock, which was placed on Commissioners Creek in 1819 as part of the survey to determine the exact boundary of Georgia and North Carolina. An important piece of history, Commissioners Rock is the oldest dated artifact in the museum’s collection. This exhibit also houses an actual map of lots surveyed as part of the Land Lottery of 1820 that distributed land to Rabun’s first settlers.

The Historical Society hosts the Southeast’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Tallulah Falls Railroad artifacts. Founded in 1898, the TF, as it was known, opened this isolated and remote corner of northeast Georgia to the outside world. Our TF exhibit includes the history of the railroad, tools used to build its roadbed, large-scale models of the wooden trestles that crossed creeks and ravines, and a reproduction of a TF ticket office. Accompanying these displays are photos of TF steam locomotives and trains, many of which are over 100 years old.

Rabun County was the moonshining capital of Georgia. Distilling illicit corn “likker” was the county’s oldest and largest business. Our moonshining display includes an actual copper still that was used to make white lightning. Signage explains the parts of the still and how whiskey was distilled.

The following exhibit covers the environmental disaster of clearcut logging. During the 30 years from 1900, virtually every tree in Rabun County usable for lumber, paneling and telephone and telegraph poles was clear-cut. This practice left in its wake a rubble-strewn landscape and eroded and deformed mountains. Adjoining this exhibit is the story of the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps that reforested the county in the 1930s.

Next is an extensive exhibit of the five hydroelectric dams built between 1910 and 1926 on a 26-mile stretch of the Tallulah and Tugalo rivers, which made this length of waterway the most heavily developed in the nation for the generation of hydroelectricity. The construction of the dam in Tallulah Falls sparked Georgia’s first environmental battle, led by the widow of a Confederate general. Burton Dam, which impounds Lake Burton, was built at the expense of the town of Burton that once was Rabun County’s largest town. Burton was submerged under 60 feet of water.

Our final exhibits detail life in nineteenth and early twentieth century Rabun County. To tell this history, displays cover a variety of activities, including farming, education, the county’s early postal system and the growth of tourism generated by the Tallulah Falls Railroad.

The budget of the Rabun County Historical Society is dependent upon annual memberships that start at only $30 and donations from visitors. Without your support, the museum that is keeping alive the history of this county could not exist. We invite you to visit our museum and become a member.