Cornelia, Georgia Cornelia, Georgia Downtown Cornelia Downtown Cornelia Official seal of Cornelia, Georgia Location in Habersham County and the state of Georgia Location in Habersham County and the state of Georgia Cornelia October 22, 1887 Cornelia is a town/city in Habersham County, Georgia, United States.
Notably, it was the retirement home of baseball legend Ty Cobb who was born nearby, and was a base of operation for manufacturing of the 1956 Disney film The Great Locomotive Chase that was filmed along the Tallulah Falls Railway that ran from Cornelia northward along the rim of Tallulah Gorge to Franklin, North Carolina.
Cornelia is positioned at 34 30 49 N 83 31 51 W (34.513716, -83.530942). According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the town/city has a total region of 3.4 square miles (8.8 km2), all land.
(This section adapted from Cornelia, The First Hundred Years printed in 1987 by the Habersham Historical Society (uncopyrighted enhance domain) in commemoration of the town's centennial with minor chronological editorial updates) A small part of the southern end of the county was probably at one time held by the Creek Indians, while the Cherokee Indians inhabited the rest of the county.
The old boundary line between the Cherokee and Creek nations ran below where Chenocetah Mountain and Hillcrest are positioned and now lies inside the town/city limits of Cornelia.
The white men soon persuaded the State of Georgia to take the lands from the Indians.
The United States government held that the State could not do so; but the spirit of small-town self-government was still strong in Georgia, and the state defied the federal government and took the territory despite the rulings of the Supreme Court.
The first treaty affecting any part of what is now Habersham County was in 1804 and concerned a tract of territory "four miles in width from the top of Currahee Mountain to the north ford of the Oconee River." (Stephens County was not created until 1905.) The region is now in Banks County near Wofford Shoals.
Many of the old territory grants to the head right lands, now largely in the government region around Nancytown Lake , were granted in this period.
This Treaty of 1804 is called "The Four Mile Purchase Treaty" and, although the territory was originally in Franklin County, the initial strip now lies in Banks and Habersham Counties because of later redistribution of territory in counties.
Stores in downtown Cornelia The Blair Line was the boundary between the State of Georgia and the Cherokee Nation (now Georgia hwy 115 at junction with Georgia hwy 105).
As previously stated, it was the boundary line between the Cherokee and Creek Indian nations.
At the close of the Civil War in 1865, the section where Cornelia is now positioned was a typical mountain forest.
Cornelia was first settled around 1870.
Lt was situated near the old boundary line between the Cherokee and Creek Indian tribes, the Cherokee territory extending to the north and the Creek territory to the south.
The Tallulah Falls Railway, as it came to be called, carried passengers, freight, and mail from Cornelia to Franklin, North Carolina.
These two subdivision plats form the initial plan for the town of Cornelia, complete with narrow streets and no provision for parks or other amenities.
The square blocks which lie east and northeast of the central company precinct of Cornelia represent the initial town.
Barrow), the name was changed to Cornelia with respect to his second wife (and daughter of Confederate Major General Henry R.
Cornelia's official date of incorporation was October 22, 1887.
Reynolds, a small-town territory surveyor and town planner, made a town/city plan of Cornelia for the Broadview Park Land and lmprovement Company for Cornelia.
There was an attempt to carry out this plan, as Cornelia's perimeter road which follows the circular boundary and the large town/city park were components of Mr.
The plat of this enhancement plan for Cornelia is on file in the Habersham County Courthouse in Clarkesville.
In addition to being the official town plat, it is also an advertisement for selling lots in Cornelia.
Advertising on this plat is identical to that carried on the initial plat for the town of Demorest, which entices prospective buyers with promises of clean mountain air, fresh water, scenic views, medicinal springs, company opportunities in timber and quarrying of iron ore, and handsome profits on investments in territory located in Cornelia.
Early subdivision evolution in Cornelia continued at least until 1912.
Cornelia is assembled on the falling slopes of seven hills which collect together to form a group of Georgia's highest mountain peaks, the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Cornelia is actually an intrusion of the generally flat, rolling upper Chattahoochee River Plateau and the beginning of the Georgia Mountain Region.
The first trade in Cornelia was a tanyard positioned on the banks of Tanyard Creek on the highway from the mountain peaks to Athens.
Hotel owners in the town contributed a great deal to the expansion and evolution of Cornelia.
According to one source, the first hotel in the town was directed by Oliver Wyley, with Worth Grant coming soon after to open the Grant Hotel.
Grant bought its lot and assembled a large, undivided hotel which he directed very successfully for a number of years.
(History and Resources of the Hills of Habersham County, presented by Department of Education, Clarkesville, Georgia, 1937, pp.
Officially, the 1900 census listed 1,058 inhabitants in the precinct of Cornelia.
Sellers, and the rest ordered and opened for company the Cornelia Bank with a gain in capital of $15,000.
Stovall contributed to the ongoing expansion of the town more than any other individual at this time (Tri-County Advertiser, June 16, 1927.) About 1906, the Postal Telegraph surveyed and assembled a telegraph line from Atlanta to Washington, DC, and, as most of their lines were constructed along streets and highways, they erected their lines through Cornelia on the east side of Foreacre Street to Jones Street and the Toccoa Highway (Thls Yonah of Yesteryear by R.L.
Archie Willis, who featured Cornelia in an article in the Atlanta Journal (August 4, 1918), stated that "Cornelia hospitality is the result of its having been built.
They're glad to see new citizens in Cornelia, and they know how to make one feel they are glad to have the visit with them." In 1946, Johnson & Johnson assembled a textile manufacturing plant in Cornelia under the name Chicopee.
Cornelia abounds in historical lore.
The last barns holdup in Georgia took place at Cagle's Crossing, which is a several miles south of Cornelia.
The whole of Habersham County was extremely loyal to the Confederacy and was known, along with the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and countless other fertile, out-of-the-way places as the "breadbasket of the Confederacy", as thousands of bushels of wheat and corn were supplied to the troops from this region alone.
After the fall of Atlanta, a detachment of Sherman's cavalry was sent to raid the county; but the Confederate Home Guard, made up of men too old for military duty, left the mountain peaks on which Cornelia is situated and met the Yankee raiders at a narrow pass about four miles east of the town.
Cornelia has been helped in its expansion by its good schools.
In the early days, the school fitness was owned and directed by the town of Cornelia.
According to the document presented by the Habersham County Department of Education in 1937, Professor Booth added a training course for teachers, and students were thriving to this school from all sections of northeast Georgia (p.
Cornelia Normal Institute was chartered on May 27, 1901.
The elementary schools had been kept in each town but two high schools were built, one to serve each end of the county.
Prior to 1952, Cornelia Public School served all the students residing in Cornelia.
As with any city, there were a number of businesses, but hotels contributed greatly to the expansion and evolution of the town/city in its early history.
Cornelia's Big Red Apple, positioned at the old train depot in downtown, pays homage to the apple and apple growers of the county.
Built of steel and concrete in 1925 the statue, as stated to Habersham County, The Big Red Apple weighs 5,200 pounds (2.4 t) and is 7 feet (2.1 m) high.
In Habersham and Gilmer Counties farmers increased manufacturing of apples and peaches.
The Extension Agents push for this range seemed almost prescient, for in 1922 the boll weevil began the systematic destruction of cotton crops in the state of Georgia.
In 1925 the citizens of Cornelia realized that the apple had been a key in preventing the scourge that finished other counties and drove non-urban families to metros/cities like Atlanta and Macon.
By the summer of 1933, the apples that had saved the county less than 10 years earlier nearly finished it.
Through the years downtown Cornelia changed dramatically.
In the city, the populace was spread out with 23.4% under the age of 18, 11.0% from 18 to 24, 26.4% from 25 to 44, 21.7% from 45 to 64, and 17.5% who were 65 years of age or older.
City of Cornelia.
City of Cornelia.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cornelia, Georgia.
Municipalities and communities of Habersham County, Georgia, United States This populated place also has portions in an adjoining county or counties state)Cities in Habersham County, Georgia - Micropolitan areas of Georgia (U.S.
|