History of Cohutta Springs: Cohutta Springs in the 1860s

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Cohutta Springs in the 1860s

By the 1860s, several boarding houses and resorts had located around the old mineral springs at Cohutta Springs in the 2nd Section of Murray County (Cohutta Springs, east). Water was an important commodity, then as now. People would dip drinking water from the wellspring. Also at the eastern Cohutta Springs were some boarding houses and resorts. People came to summer at the mountain spring, as respite from the summer heat.

One young lady, Myra Inman, of Cleveland, Tennessee, writes about Cohutta Springs in her diary. Her family summered at Cohutta Springs, not long before the Yankees came into Cleveland. Cohutta Springs is also mentioned in Sara Wadley's diary. Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy stayed at Cohutta Springs one summer, early in the War (before the Atlanta Campaign brought the Yankees into Georgia). Wadley (as I read between the lines of her diary) may have had a crush on a young man who was Stephens' secretary. These diary entries refer to Cohutta Springs, east. Myra Inman places the location as about two miles from Summerhour's. The mineral springs is on what is now Cohutta Springs Road, Crandall, Georgia (off of U.S. Highway 411).

Cohutta Springs, west: Thomas Calloway, of Cleveland, Tennessee, and his nephew, Callaway Campbell, owned land near Waterhouse's at the "other" Cohutta Springs (five miles west of the mineral springs). That Cohutta Springs was on the Spring Place and Cleveland Road (now Georgia Highway 225, where Hall's Chapel Road and Georgia Highway 2 intersects 225). The area was scouted by Union soldiers in 1864. Colonel Eli Long, U.S.A., camped at Waterhouse's plantation in February 1864, en route to the First Battle of Dalton.

(Note: I did a quick Wikipedia lookup to verify the name of the vice president of the Confederacy.)

Clearer references to the Myra Inman diary (book), Sara Wadley diary (on-line excerpts), and the Callaway Campbell letters (library holdings) will be given later.

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Blog Purpose

The Cohutta Springs History blog is meant to explore an old community in Murray County, Georgia, known as Cohutta Springs. The place name appears in at least four locations on old maps, and on some maps, actually appears prominently in two places at once. For that reason, we will sometimes distinguish between "Cohutta Springs, east" and "Cohutta Springs, west," though both of them appear on old maps simply as "Cohutta Springs." The original place name appears to belong with the mineral springs, located at the base of Grassy Mountain, northeast of the old Summerhour Chapel. The springs are at the dead end of Cohutta Springs Road, off of U.S. Highway 411. The post office opened a branch five miles west of the springs in 1836, at which time the second place name for Cohutta Springs appeared on old maps. Later maps designate the second "Cohutta Springs" as "Cohutta Springs P.O." The post office suspended mail delivery during the Civil War. Some years later, after that post office closed, another branch was opened west, but much nearer, the mineral springs, and the place name on maps followed it. The other two instances of "Cohutta Springs" as a place name are an additional site very near the springs, and an area north of the springs called "North Cohutta Springs."

Loss of the Old Mill

The old ruins of the mill and dance hall on the property of an old, historic mineral springs always interested me. I loved to visit the old mill when it was still standing. The diagonal timbers were pretty, I thought. The massive wooden beams of the mill were something to see. I first visited it as a child in the late sixties or early seventies. Even then, it was falling in. In the seventies, the Georgia Cumberland Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists bought the property and built a new conference center and lake a half-mile or so from the older ruins. The mill was in hazardous condition, already falling into the creek. No one then had the money to restore it. The new owners demolished it, but first, they created a history project to document all they could learn about the mill, mineral springs, and old resort. They spoke to neighbors and collected stories, deed histories, and a bit of genealogical information. The mill is now gone, but not forgotten.

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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Cohutta Springs in the 1860s

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