xiv Georgia’s Lake Como Introduction xv

Even to those of us who arrived in the latter decades of the twentieth century, Lakemont still evokes a slower pace where one’s blood pressure would seemingly drop twenty to thirty points simply upon crossing the Highway 441 bridge at Tallulah Falls. The temperature be-came cooler, the air sweeter, and the pace more relaxed. As each round of road improvements from Atlanta made that hundred-mile trip easier, the drive time to Lakemont from Atlanta dropped from a full day (assuming the weather cooperated) in the 1920s, to just under two hours by the end of the twentieth century.

Lakemont remains a special spot. It is a community steeped in a memorable tradition, lovingly developed over a century, and known for its summer camps, hotels, marinas, and many unique summer homes—both “castles” and “cabins.” It is a good community. And it is the history of this community that we now celebrate.

The idea for the Lake Rabun Centennial celebration was spawned in 2007, following the completion of the new Lake Rabun Association Pavilion at Hall’s Marina. Led by Rick Asbill, Thad Warren, Kirk Knous, Charlie Arp, and a group of other visionary individuals, the then Lake Rabun Association (LRA) officers began to look at Lake Rabun from a more holistic and historical perspective. Like many Atlanta institutions that came of age in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Lakemont would soon be celebrating its first one hundred years. How should that milestone be celebrated? What markers and “stakes in the ground” would we set to honor this unique community we love so much?

In the past, a number of people have shown their love of the lake by memorializing its history. The 1978 reprinting of the 1926 Georgia Power Annual Report by Ray Warren and Gene Cofer, the early 1990s cookbook Lake Rabun Dockside Delights: Cooking the Lake Rabun Way, and Take to the Hills! Lakemont, Georgia: The Early Years by Ben Noble (1989), come to mind. These efforts helped set down boundary markers as to where we came from and where we might be going.

In more recent years, lake resident John King began leading a separate effort by institut-ing “Lakemont University” at the newly constructed LRA Pavilion to have—among other efforts—the generational elders among us begin to share stories of their earlier days on the lake. These efforts proved to be so popular and such a significant success that several mem-bers volunteered to begin the Living History project eventually led by Barbara Roper, Anne Pledger, and Mary Cobb Stone. Anne Pledger became a tireless researcher for various aspects of the lake’s history, including forgotten family trees, old maps, deeds, and historical elements found only in the Rabun County Courthouse, the Rabun County Historical Society, or the Georgia Power Archives in Atlanta. Led by lake resident and senior executive at Georgia Power Ron Hinson, Georgia Power contributed $15,000 for the development of this project. Then Helen McSwain, another long-time Lakemont resident, discovered that her passion for archiving her family’s eighty-year history on Lake Rabun would translate into a nearly full-time role as photography archivist for the history project. Numerous interviews con-ducted over the last year and the combined efforts of these people and many others mined

an incredible wealth of uniquely personal stories and memories and spawned an additional amount of research into the history of the lake and its surrounding community. Enthusiastic contributions of time, photos, articles, and stories came from every quarter. It is that history and the many-detailed facets of the lake that we will attempt to honor and celebrate with this commemorative book, both in words as well as art.

For this author, like most tasks in life, this one began with an idea, followed by a list on a notepad, and then an outline on how to do it. Trained as a transactional lawyer, I initially thought the task would be somewhat simple. I imagined I would just dictate the summary of the significant amount of research and living history transcripts, edit it, and forward it, along with the additional stories and sections written by a group of fellow writers, to our publisher, Laurie Shock, whose thoughtful design, editing, and layout services would culminate in a book. What could be easier? Was I wrong! As is often the case, I greatly underestimated the task ahead of me. Like Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as they embarked on their im-probable journey into the vast interior of the American continent, I thought I knew where I wanted to go, but once the work began, I discovered that this project, like the several great river systems the explorers traveled on their “Voyage of Discovery,” would steer me on a much