Last month’s post focused on Tallulah Falls, Georgia, home to a thousand-foot gorge, six spectacular waterfalls, and a Gilded Age and Edwardian resort area that provided the setting for my novella A Summer at the Niagara of the South. We looked at the lavish hotels and waterfalls with names like Tempesta, Hurricane, and Oceana.
In addition to the amenities at the hotels, and hiking and hunting excursions, guests made the most of mountain culture and activities offered by enterprising locals.
Photographer Walter Hunnicutt captured thousands of images using his large format wooden dry-plate camera. He also founded Blue Ridge Mountain Post Card Company and Rustic Furniture Company, making twig furniture from mountain laurel.
Mary Ann Lipscomb, a prominent summer resident from Athens, led a movement to establish Tallulah Falls School, which opened in 1909. All students learned math and English. Boys learned gardening, woodworking, animal husbandry, and stone masonry. Girls were taught spinning, sewing, crocheting, basketry, and weaving patterns to sell in the craft shop such as Orange Peel, Snail Trail, Pine Bloom, and Lover’s Knot.
“Aunt” Fannie Smith (and her fried chicken) became “the famous hostess of Sinking Mountain,” welcoming thousands to her 1840s log cabin seven rough miles from town. The mother of ten girls and a boy, she trained local girls to assist when her daughters left home.
In July of 1970, 65-year-old legendary aerialist Karl Wallenda became the second person to cross the gorge—on 975 feet of steel cable…to a crowd of 25,000. He paused to perform two handstands. Upon reaching the other side in under eighteen minutes, he earned ten thousand dollars.
We cannot close the story of Tallulah Falls without mentioning the woman who led the fight against Georgia Power’s construction of a dam on the Tallulah River to generate electricity for Atlanta—Helen Dortch Longstreet, widow of the famed Confederate general. Mrs. Longstreet lobbied for preservation at state levels from 1911-1913. She would have been surprised to learn that thirty years after her death, her state park became a reality through the efforts of the state of Georgia and Georgia Power Company.
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| Tallulah 1882 Fare |
https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Niagara-Romance-Gilded-Resorts-ebook/dp/B0CV91YK6Q/
Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.
