Historic Sites in White County

The history of White County

White County was created in 1857 from part of Habersham County, becoming Georgia's 123rd county, and it was named for David White, a Newton County legislator who helped pass the bill establishing it. The mountain land had belonged to the Cherokee, and white settlers from neighboring Georgia counties, the Carolinas and Tennessee came to farm small homesteads on the rugged terrain. Gold shaped the county's early story: in 1828 gold was found near Duke's Creek, later known as the Nacoochee River, setting off a rush, and nine mines eventually operated in the county over more than a century of mining. Cleveland, the county seat, was named for General Benjamin Cleveland, an early settler. Its first courthouse was built by enslaved laborers in 1859 and 1860; it served county government until 1962, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and now houses the White County Historical Society. In 1911 a lumber mill gave rise to the town of Helen, and the Gainesville and Northwestern Railroad, the only railroad ever to serve the county, carried its products until the line failed in the early 1930s. In 1969 local business leaders remade the faded mill town of Helen as a Bavarian-style village, and it became one of Georgia's major tourist destinations.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orghmdb.org