Indigenous Heritage of the Valley

Helen's Alpine look is a 1960s invention. The valley beneath it is far older. The gazebo-topped mound beside Highway 17 is the most visible piece, and it's worth a stop before you spend the afternoon in the shops. This page covers what archaeologists have learned there, what happened to the Cherokee who lived in the valley, and where you can go to learn more.

Sources: the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Wikipedia's Nacoochee Mound and Unicoi Turnpike articles, and the National Park Service.

The valley around Hardman Farm and the mound, just south of Helen.

The mound sits beside the upper Chattahoochee River. Platform mounds like it were built to lift important buildings, such as a leader's house or a ceremonial structure, above the village around them. Excavations in 1915 uncovered 75 burials, and about a third of the people were buried with objects that signal high status: hammered copper celts, stone tools, conch-shell beads and cups, and elaborate pottery. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says the mound and a nearby site called Eastwood probably served as local administrative centers in the late 1400s and early 1500s.

It was altered long before archaeologists arrived. According to Wikipedia, in 1890 the landowner, Captain Nichols, removed the top two feet of the mound and built a gazebo on the new summit. The encyclopedia says the original platform has been completely excavated and that what you see today is a reconstruction. Georgia State Parks describes the mound as a burial site probably used long before the Cherokee lived in the area, so stay off it. You can see it from the Hardman Farm grounds, and the park's Hardman Farm page has current hours and fees.

Whether Cherokee people lived at the site is a separate question from who built the mound. A 1955 marker says they did, but the encyclopedia and Wikipedia note that the excavation needed to confirm it hasn't been done. The village around the mound may have been occupied much later, and it's possibly the site of Nacoochee or Chota, two Cherokee villages recorded in the valley in 1715. A 1734 land grant also lists Nacoochee as a Cherokee town. Our companion Indigenous heritage page covers the Unicoi Turnpike.

You may also hear that the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto visited a town called Guaxule here in 1540. That's a local tradition, not a settled fact. Scholars still debate which towns de Soto's chroniclers recorded and where they stood, and some place Guaxule near Asheville, North Carolina.

By the 1820s the Cherokee Nation had a constitutional government, established in 1827 according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. In 1825 the Cherokee national legislature made New Echota its capital, where, Georgia State Parks says, the first Indian-language newspaper office operated. Georgia ignored the sovereignty the Supreme Court recognized in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and distributed Cherokee land by lottery.

In May 1838 U.S. Army troops and state militia forced more than 16,000 Cherokee from their homes in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia, the National Park Service says. They were held in round-up camps and then sent west in detachments through the end of 1838. More than a thousand people died during the trip, and perhaps several thousand more from its consequences. The New Georgia Encyclopedia puts the total deaths at least 4,000, about one-fifth of the Nation. The gold rush added to the pressure; see our gold rush page.

Visiting these places with that history in mind changes how the valley looks. The Cherokee Nation is headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and today's tribes remain active in preserving their culture. The Nation's own site is the best place to learn about it.

Hours and fees from Georgia State Parks for Hardman Farm, New Echota and Etowah Indian Mounds as of October 2026. Track Rock Gap: our guide.