Currahee Mountain: The Crucible of the American Paratrooper

Currahee Mountain rises about 800 feet above the Piedmont around it and is the highest peak in Stephens County, according to Camp Toccoa at Currahee. The name is widely given as a Cherokee word meaning "Stands Alone," which paratroopers, who often fought cut off behind enemy lines, took as their own. Today Currahee is still the battle cry of the 506th.

Hiking and race details are on our Currahee Mountain visitor guide. This page covers the history and the two places in Toccoa that preserve it.

The camp was built in the 1930s under the Works Progress Administration for the National Guard. In July 1942, 5,000 men arrived at the remote camp, five miles outside Toccoa, to train as a new kind of soldier: the paratrooper. Over the next few years about 17,000 soldiers trained there (other sources say 18,000), from four parachute infantry regiments plus support units, and the camp also housed prisoners of war.

Recruits ran the roads up the mountain, now Forest Service roads, in the conditioning run remembered as "3 miles up, 3 miles down." A 115-mile march from Camp Toccoa to Atlanta, December 1 to 3, 1942, ended with the soldiers boarding trains for Fort Benning.

Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, became famous through historian Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers and the ten-part HBO miniseries first broadcast in 2001. The series is a dramatization, so treat its scenes as drama and read the museum's exhibits and the camp's own history for the documented record. Fans come from around the world, and Toccoa leans into it every year with Currahee Military Weekend, held the first weekend of October.

The Currahee Military Museum sits in Toccoa's historic train depot, close to where incoming soldiers stepped off the trains before their hike to camp. It was named a 2025 Best of Georgia regional winner by the Georgia Business Journal, according to its own site.

Inside is a six-stall stable where Easy Company soldiers were quartered in Aldbourne, England, now preserved in the museum's Brenda J. Carlan Hall. The same building houses the Stephens County History Museum, with exhibits on Traveler's Rest and Toccoa Falls, and an exhibit hall recognizing local veterans from every U.S. war. Details are on the admission page.

The volunteer-run Camp Toccoa at Currahee Project is restoring the site. The regimental headquarters is the only original building still standing, and it now has a gift shop and exhibits. Barracks built from panels of original camp structures are available for overnight stays, and a pavilion seats 450 to 500 people.