As we’re looking forward to getting on the road again, we decided to take a day trip (really an afternoon trip) to a favorite Georgia town about an hour north of where we live: Dahlonega in the North Georgia mountains. This town of around 6000 residents has the distinction of being one of the best places to retire. Us? We just like going there and walking around. Wonder what we’ll learn today.
Dahlonega was home to the young nation’s first gold strike here in 1828, way before the 1849 California Gold Rush. Gold in Georgia?
illegal mining (from Wikipedia)
“Numerous gold mines were illegally developed in the area. White miners, entering illegally into the Cherokee Nation lands, came into conflict with the Cherokee, whose territory they had trespassed. The Cherokee lands were defined by the treaty between the federal government and the Cherokee Nation in the Treaty of Washington (1819). The miners raised political pressure against the Cherokee because they wanted to get the gold. The federal government forced the Native Americans west of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears during Indian removal. Dahlonega was founded two years before the Treaty of New Echota (1835), which made its founding a violation of the Treaty of Washington of 1819.”
Oops.
From the courthouse steps in 1849, the Dahlonega Mint assayer, Dr. M.F. Stephenson, tried to persuade miners to stay in Dahlonega instead of joining the California Gold Rush, saying, “There’s millions in it,” often misquoted as “There’s gold in them thar hills.” Now you know where that phrase came from!
Now the historic building houses the Gold Museum. Of course it was closed because of Covid-19, but sometime we will come back to walk through it.
The University of North Georgia campus is located just off the town square. It has around 20,000 students and is the 6th largest of the Georgia’s public universities. The university is one of 6 senior military colleges in the United States.
public square
Since I’m from Iowa, I’m used to town squares in small towns. My college town had 1 square, and my grad school town had 2 squares. I thought I was getting up in the world when I first visited (even though I was from a large city without a square).
Now we get to learn about the history of public squares.
What is a Public Square? Of course we found a sign with some information since these squares are in the center of many small towns across the nation.
The Public Square embodies the rights guaranteed to the people in the Constitution of the United States that includes freedom of speech and peaceable assembly.
In Dahlonega, the nation’s independence day is celebrated here each year, in addition to other celebrations and such somber observances as Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
The Gold Rush Days festival is held each October in honor of Georgia’s Gold Rush. The bittersweet reminder of the Cherokees being forced out is part of the festival.
A folk tradition has bridal couples circling the square 3 times to guarantee good luck in their marriages. Some funeral processions circle the square in a final farewell to the community. In the summer musicians congregate to play country music together. We’ve spent time here hearing them play.
Doc Holliday in Georgia
In one of the shops I saw this book on Doc Holliday, a close friend of Wyatt Earp, who was born in Griffin, Georgia!
So of course I just had to look up the history of Doc Holliday since all I knew about him was that he was a dentist who had TB and who fought at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
Yes, he was born in Griffin, Ga., in 1851 and grew up in Valdosta, Ga. Holliday earned his dentistry degree in Philadelphia just before his 21st birthday and first practiced in St. Louis and then moved to Atlanta to work. He was diagnosed with TB that he got from his mother when he was taking care of her during her contagious stage. Hearing that the Southwest might be better for him health-wise, he moved to Dallas, Tx., the “last big city before the uncivilized Western Frontier.”
As his coughing got worse while working in Texas, his dental practice started declining so he started gambling professionally to make a living (an acceptable profession at the time). But Holliday didn’t always gamble legally, or so some thought, so he started moving on. During these years he lived/worked in Denver, Cheyanne, Deadwood in Dakota Territory, Kansas to visit an aunt, and back to Fort Griffin in Texas where he met “Big Nose Kate,” a dancehall woman and sometimes prostitute, because it allowed her to be independent. She was the only woman with whom Doc Holliday was known to have a relationship.
In Fort Griffin he met Wyatt Earp who was chasing an outlaw. When Earp moved to Dodge City to be its Marshall, Doc Holliday eventually moved there too and restarted his dentistry practice. Their lives were intertwined from then on.
What really fascinated me about Doc Holliday is how much he moved around the country, probably on stagecoaches or on horseback.
a sweet treat
Jay and his wife opened the shop in October 2020 just as visitors were starting to come to the mountains to see the fall colors and enjoy the Gold Rush Festival. During the Christmas season, Dahlonega is a magical place with its lights and decorations, so the shop did well. Now Jay is holding on until the weather warms ups and more people come to visit. Be sure to visit if you’re in town!
We found out that other Kilwins are near us where we live in Alpharetta, but the ice cream is so good and rich that we’ll leave it as a treat in Dahlonega.
Sadly for those of you on the West Coast, their ice cream locations are primarily on the eastern third of the nation. The furthest west locations are in Colorado.
The trailer is almost fixed, and we’re getting ready to start traveling again. Can’t wait!
