The Town That Refused to Drown: The Legend of the Burton Steeple

Lake Burton is one of the clearest and prettiest lakes in Georgia. It's also a grave marker of sorts: under the water is the town it was named for, and a legend about a church steeple that wouldn't go down quietly.

A town called Burton

According to Wikipedia's Lake Burton entry, Burton was the second-largest town in Rabun County, with about 200 residents. It was named for local citizen Jeremiah Burton, the first postmaster, and it sat along the road between Clayton and the Nacoochee Valley. Andrew Jackson Richie, who later founded the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, carried the mail there by mule as a young man.

The Upper Tallulah Valley had been Cherokee land until it was ceded to the State of Georgia in 1817. Settlers followed, and the discovery of gold on Dick's Creek in 1828 brought more.

Why the valley was flooded

By the early 1900s, the Tallulah River's steep drop made it ideal for hydropower. A series of six stair-step dams were built between 1913 and 1927 along about 28 miles of river, and Lake Burton, the largest and highest, was meant to be the main reservoir for the system. It was one of the first large, integrated hydroelectric systems in North America, and the electricity it produced helped power Atlanta's growth.

To build the dam, the Georgia Railway and Power Company (today's Georgia Power) bought out 65 property owners in and around Burton and cleared the town. The dam was completed on December 22, 1919, and the lake was declared full on August 18, 1920. The Detour has the longer story of how a power company bought the whole town.

The legend of the steeple

Here history turns into legend. The story goes that once the dam was closed, the water rose so quickly that the ruins of the town couldn't be completely removed, and the steeple of the Baptist church floated on the lake for three years before it sank. The Rabun County Historical Society's version has a church steeple floating for a year before it found a landing spot on the shoreline. It's a story you'll hear in different versions around the lake, and details vary with the teller. Wikipedia says only a handful of cemeteries remain, in a line tagged as needing a citation, while the society says cemeteries were moved to higher ground.

Some retellings add the sound of a church bell pealing under the water on a moonlit night. That's folklore, not history, but it's easy to see why a still mountain lake inspires it.

Visiting Lake Burton

Lake Burton is about 35 minutes from Helen by road. The easiest public access is Moccasin Creek State Park, which also has a campground and a boat ramp.

We know of no marker or monument to the town of Burton. The lake itself is the memorial. For boating and fishing details, see our Lake Burton guide and Moccasin Creek page.

Another drowned valley: Lake Chatuge

A similar story played out at Lake Chatuge, near Hiawassee, about 35 minutes from Helen. It was formed in 1942 when the Tennessee Valley Authority built Chatuge Dam, and it covers about 7,000 acres across Towns County, Georgia, and Clay County, North Carolina. It's the highest major lake in Georgia. Building it required relocating 278 families and 532 graves. Old Burch Cemetery, established in 1856, was surrounded by water and is now Cemetery Island, with about 30 graves left there at the families' request.

Today Chatuge is a place for boating, fishing and swimming, and the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds in Hiawassee host events through the year, including the Georgia Mountain Fall Festival in October. See our Lake Chatuge guide for details.

Make a day of it

Lake Burton and Moccasin Creek pair well with a stop at Tallulah Gorge, where the same river runs through a very different landscape, and our day trips guide has more ideas. For another lost-town story closer to home, read about Auraria, or about how Helen reinvented itself.