Helen 04/20/21

Tallulah Gorge State Park, Tallulah Falls, Georgia

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey.  He took with him two servants and his son Isaac.  When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. ~ Genesis 22:3        Did you notice that Abraham didn’t hesitate to obey?  How great his faith has become!  And for those wondering how the Old Testament people were saved without Jesus, this is it.  By faith in God and belief in His Word, demonstrated by their obedience to Him, out of love for Him.  Not so different from us.  Except our faith is in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.  We demonstrate our faith by our obedience to His Word, out of love for Him.

Helen, Georgia has been reinvented many times.  When I went in search of how she got her name, I found the following on cedarcreekcabinrentals.com.  It’s easier, and more interesting, to just let Tom Telford tell you about it.  😊

A lot of people don’t know this, but Helen is actually the third most-visited town in Georgia, only beat out by Atlanta and Savannah. That’s pretty good for the best little German town in America with a population of only 543 people!

However, Helen wasn’t always known for its German roots. Since the beginnings of American colonization, all the way to the present day, this area has experienced numerous ups and downs since its settlement.

Like most of northern Georgia, Helen was home to the Cherokee nation before the arrival of European settlers in the 1800s. You can still feel the Cherokee influence today in place names and other historical sites like the Track Rock Gap petroglyph site.

For many years, settlers and the Cherokees worked together. In 1813, the Cherokee Nation approved the construction of the Unicoi Turnpike, a wagon road through their territory leading from the Savannah River headwaters northeast into Tennessee. Highways 17 and 75 now sit where the old road used to be. Sadly, the Cherokee nation was forcibly displaced later that century with some limited influence in the present day.

Shortly after, gold became a transformational force. America’s first gold rush didn’t start in California, it began in 1828 when gold was discovered in the Nacoochee-Helen Valley (5 miles southeast of Helen, Georgia). Miners worked the land extensively including the current site of the historic England Gold Mine, the location of Helen’s existing gold mine.

Discovery of gold in the Nacoochee Valley, the resulting less-well-known Georgia Gold Rush, brought a considerable rush of settlers and opportunists who quickly established towns and settlements across the area. Prospectors worked the hills around Georgia for nearly a century in the pursuit of this precious metal. The gold rush ended when miners hightailed it west, leaving Helen to fend for herself.

While that gold boom died off relatively quickly, the area became Helen lived on as a mining center throughout the Civil War. While relatively untouched by the war, the Helen area fell into anarchy during The Reconstruction, until the end of the 19th century when it was rediscovered as a forestry center. Sawmills rose up, and the railroad came to town as well.

Helen came into being in 1913 and was named for the daughter of a railroad surveyor looking to bring more rail lines into the area.

For the next several decades, Helen operated as a dedicated logging town. The logging industry kept Helen at the center of commerce in Georgia with the Matthews Lumber Company sawmill leading the boom.

But by the 1930’s, the timber company and the sawmill abandoned the town of Helen and residents left for other opportunities. Helen might have folded, except the Federal government created the Chattahoochee National Forest, bringing both tourism and additional lumber opportunities to Helen through the 1950’s.

In the late 50’s and into the 60’s, Helen went into a new decline. There was less demand for lumber with the rise of plastics, and tourism was dropping off as well. Facing a town in trouble, civic leaders conceived of an audacious plan that turned Helen into the beautiful attraction we love today.

In 1968, the town turned German, when  town leaders got together and proposed turning their town into a recreation of a Bavarian alpine village complete with gingerbread trim, cobblestone alleyways, and old-world towers. It became a destination city, and one now famously known.
The two major local businessmen – Pete Hodkinson and Jimmy Wilkins – found a way to uplift their town after hearing of a nearby town finding success by renovating and updating their downtown storefronts.

Hodkinson and Wilkins took it a step further by hiring a local artist, John Kollack, who had German roots and had spent quite a bit of time in Bavaria. His mission? To redesign the entire town to resemble that of an Alpine mountain town, bringing the Alps to the Appalachian mountains. Given the strong influence of German settlers on the history of the area, it was a natural fit.

The revamp brought a facelift to the entire town. Besides agreeing on a standard color scheme for Helen and basing the new store facades around it, the revamp extended even to the street names, changed to mirror typical streets found in Germany.

Practically overnight, Helen became the best little German town in America, from the stores to the cobblestones.

The experiment was a near-immediate success. By 1972, the reinvention of Helen significantly boosted its tourist revenues. In 1976, the Federal government was sending economic experts to study Helen’s amazingly rapid revitalization.

From 1972, Oktoberfest has been an annual tradition in Helen, creating one of the best celebrations of German culture anywhere in America,and it’s the longest in the nation, running for nearly six weeks from mid-September to the end of October.

Millions of people come to enjoy the unique experience that Helen presents – the beauty and charm of an authentic Alpine mountain town, nestled among America’s most beautiful peaks alongside the historic Chattahoochee River.

Helen attracts some the brightest from Germany and elsewhere across the Alps, with many Master Chefs relocating to the area to open their own authentic restaurants. Locations like the Haubrauhaus or the Bodensee bring Helen authentic cuisine that can only be found in a few other places this side of Europe.

Our first stop in Helen was the Welcome Center, where we picked up a few maps and some information on local waterfalls. 

We decided to save the town-walking for later, and drove the short distance to Anna Ruby Falls; named for the only daughter of James H. Nichols, a Colonel of the Civil War who settled in the Valley in 1870.  It is actually a confluence of two different creek-fed waterfalls – the Curtis (153’) and the York (50’) that merge and form Smith Creek.

It was a wonderful half-mile paved walk to the falls, along Smith Creek!  Despite the fact that it was uphill – and mostly steep uphill! – the entire way.  We passed a lot of people, but that’s not saying much, because most of those we passed were at least ten years older and much heavier.  Still, it’s good they were well enough to make the journey. 

It’s been quite a while since we’ve done a hike like this – the creek-side culminating in a waterfall.  Well, to be honest, the hills too, because even though there are a lot of steps at Tallulah Falls, it’s not quite the same. 

We took our time returning to the Jeep, now stopping at all the signs they had posted along the way, and taking in the exquisiteness of our surroundings.

We had planned on visiting other waterfalls today, but this one already set us back $6 (total), and each of the others would’ve cost us $10.  Our state park pass was no good here because it’s within the National Forest.  We think a National Park Pass would work, but ours has expired. We decided we’d rather spend our money elsewhere, although outside of dinner, we had no plans for it today.

Between the waterfalls and Helen, there’s a State Park called Unicoi, with a 2.2-mile trail that circles Lake Unicoi, so we stopped there.  Our campground pass gets us in here for free.

This was also a lovely walk, with the lake usually in sight.  And much flatter than the last one.  😊

Now it was time to walk the town.  Neither of us are big shoppers, and it seems the town is mostly shops and restaurants, but then what else would you expect to find?  Still, it was so interesting to peek in the windows, study the murals and decorations on the buildings, and gaze at the architecture.

There’s a German bakery we’d read about, so we thought to stop in and pick up a pastry of some type.  We did.  But we weren’t impressed – not with their offerings, and definitely not with the price!  Of course, they didn’t tell us the price upfront.  It wasn’t until Blaine went to pay for our two purchases (an apple fritter with few apples for Blaine, and a cranberry orange muffin with few cranberries and even less orange taste for me), that he discovered they were each $3.50!  We should’ve walked out when we didn’t see anything in the case that we craved.  Ah well.  C’est la vie! 

There was no lunch today, so we had an early dinner at one of the premier authentic German establishments, Bodensee.  Mostly, we chose it because of the sampler platter for two they offer.  It was a great way to taste the flavors of Germany!  Delicious!

And so, it was with tired feet, happy mouths, fully bellies, and grateful attitudes, we returned home.