Walenda - Lake Rabun Association

people watching anxiously from both sides of the now-silent gorge, the sixty-five-year-old
Wallenda walked across the 1,250-foot highwire, crossed back again, and stood on his head
twice on the wire during the process, much to the adoration of the audience. Tallulah Falls
had not seen this much activity since the “old days,” and it was a big event for the lake.
Travel during the sixties and seventies dropped to just over two hours, with long, low
faux wood-sided station wagons and Jeep Wagoneer’s filled with kids and dogs avoiding the
older congested two-lane U.S. 23/441 route through Gainesville and Cornelia, now taking
I-85 up to Toccoa and across GA Hwy. 17 to Hollywood. The highlight of this trip was the
infamous roller-coaster drop on Hwy. 17 right before Tallulah Falls, where the wide two-lane
road seemed to drop away on one particularly long straight downhill followed by an equally
steep uphill. Children were delighted as their fathers broke the monotony of the long trip by
speeding more than one hundred miles an hour down the grade and then let up on the gas as
the road turned upward.
As homes continued to be added to the lakeshore, and summer time populations swelled,
several of the lake homeowners, anticipating the future, decided to re-establish the Lake
Rabun Association. Originally chartered in 1928, the association was reconstituted in 1970,
with John Lundeen as its first modern president, and its board of directors composed of Ira
Longino, Jack King, and Stuart Witham Sr. Other institutions which are now part of the community fabric of our lake, were borne during this era, too. In 1972, Boat Church, established
by Norwood Griffin and Stuart Witham in cooperation with the Clayton First United Methodist Church, began on Sunday mornings during the summer from Memorial Day through
Labor Day in the cove immediately outside the marina. As property values began to climb
because of the convenience of these lakes to and their notoriety in Atlanta, the need for security and fire protection became very important. In 1973, Fred Stewart, longtime friend and
resident of the area, began the Mountain Patrol, which provided security service for Burton,
Seed, and Lake Rabun. To that end, the first flea market was held in 1981 to raise money to
support the Lakemont Wiley Volunteer Fire Department. Along with the money, the event
also raised a group of future leaders on the lake, led by Winnie Brown, Patti Gray, Betty
Mitchell (Bowring), and others. Membership in the LRA grew from 110 in the early 1970s to
more than 170 by the end of the decade.
While new institutions were finding their roots by the end of the 1970s, many venerable
Lakemont institutions, which had begun so robustly in the 1960s, would be in decline. Rabun
Boathouse, a fixture since August Andreae leased the property to Myles Patterson in 1924,
would close. Hall’s, having been sold by Guy Hall to Atlanta transplant Jim Manry in the late
1960s was now under the ownership of Gene White and needed significant improvements to
bring it up to current environmental standards. The marina slips and buildings were in poor
repair, and similar to what Chuck Wallace once said about the Whittaker family’s old lake
house before he tore it down to build the handsome new Adirondack–style Wallace Camp,
“the only things keeping things standing are the termites holding hands.”
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Georgia’s Lake Como
Rabun County Pre 1900: Before the Lake
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