Lake Lanier, Hall County And Gainesville, Georgia (Issue 120)

About two years ago, I moved from Atlanta to Hall County’s Gainesville, Georgia. It’s a pretty little town, about 50 miles north of Atlanta, nestled not far from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It has a beautiful historic district of old Southern mansions in midtown.
 
It’s not very far from Commerce, Georgia, where I was born. In years past, I would drive through here on my way roaming around in beautiful North Georgia. Back in the late 60s, I used to visit a friend—one of my oldest and dearest friends, Grace Zabriski, a movie actress now living in Hollywood—at Brenau College that is located around here. Grace has been in many movies like “The Burning Bed” starring Farrah Fawcett, the movie starring Sally Fields about the mill worker, and many others, as well as having many appearances on “Seinfeld.”
 
A few years ago, I came here and visited a bookstore on the square, looking for a copy of Sidney Lanier’s famous poem, “The Song of the Chattahoochee.” I loved that poem, and wanted to teach it to my grandchild Isabella . . . “Out of the Hills of Habersham, down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plains, run the rapids and leap the falls.”
 
My parents lived in the little town of Flowery Branch in Hall County for a number of years. Despite the fact I never lived here before, it was nostalgic de-ja-vous reading all the information about this area that the Convention Center and Visitors’ Bureau sent to me today when I called.
 
Because of my love of Freedom and the history of this great country, it was most interesting to hear about the history of this area. 

Hall County is named for Lyman Hall—a signer of The Declaration of Independence. Our neighboring county, Gwinnett County, was named for another signer, Button Gwinnett.
 
General Longstreet of the Civil War retired here and opened the Piedmont Hotel where many famous travelers stayed. President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter, Jesse, was born here at the hotel in 1887. And the claim is that southern fried chicken was first served at the Piedmont Hotel.

Reminiscing about that era makes me want to live back then, if it had only had zip-lock bags.
 
And speaking of chicken, one of Gainesville’s claim to fame is its world-renowned poultry industry—a huge agriculture industry for the State of Georgia. Pioneered by Jesse Jewell, who provided chicks and feed to Depression-era farmers who raised and sold them and then repaid Jewell for his investment, it’s now an international industry that gave the world “chicken nuggets,” an industry that generates big bucks for the entire state.
 
Here’s a nugget tid-bit, the City of Gainesville actually has an ordinance that prohibits eating chicken with a knife and fork within the city limits. That must be where the “finger-licking good” motto came from.
 
Gainesville sits on the banks of Lake Sidney Lanier, which covers five counties. It is the most visited Corps of Engineers Lake in the U.S., with more than eight million annual visitors.
 
The 1996 Olympic Games held canoe and rowing events in Gainesville and the Canadian Olympic team held their trials for the 2008 Beijing Games here.
 
The Atlanta Falcons training camp is in Hall County at Flowery Branch, a little city between Gainesville and Atlanta.

Road Atlanta is the home of the Petit Le Mans Race.
 
Gainesville has a very large hospital facility, serving all of North Georgia and the North Georgia Court District. There are a number of colleges including Brenau and Riverside Academy.
 
Gainesville has a population of around 130,000.  Not a large town, but a bit larger than the tiny city where I attended school and graduated from high school. A town so small, once when a tourist drove through and stopped and asked a local the population of the town, the local resident responded by saying, “you see ‘em, count ‘em.”
 
But I went from that small town to living in Tokyo, Japan for four years, one of the largest cities in the world where driving was a nightmare and everyone blows their horns. There are many perks to living in a small town, as well as living in a large town. I claim Atlanta as home and loved living there. A southern saying is “those living in Atlanta, when they die, don’t want to go any place but back to Peachtree Street.”
 
The entire state of Georgia is beautiful country, but the majority outside of the area know very little about it other than GWTW, the movie “Deliverance” and boiled peanuts. Now you know we are the international center for the chicken industry! Economically, it is so lucrative, one might expect to hear chicken clucking all the way to the bank.
 
Let Freedom Ring!

JUST ME,
AC