Blue Ridge Country May/June 2022 - 14

THE GOOD WALK
ONE MILE OF HISTORY AND PRESENT-DAY DELIGHTS
Downtown Blue Ridge,
Georgia
The delightfully named town has an equally appealing walking tour.
Text by LEONARD M. ADKINS | Photos by LEONARD M. AND LAURIE ADKINS
have walked the full length of the Blue Ridge Mountains
five times. I write for the magazine Blue Ridge
Country. I am the author of " Hiking and Traveling
the Blue Ridge Parkway. " So, I wasn't about to pass
up a chance to explore a town known as Blue Ridge,
Georgia, using the easy one-mile Downtown Historic
Walking Tour brochure supplied by the Fannin
County Chamber & CVB (blueridgemountains.com).
In the 1890s, the town grew around mineral springs
I
and the railroad that brought in passengers to enjoy the
waters. The 1906 depot is still in use as the ticket office for
the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway.
The Baugh House, now owned by the Fannin County
Heritage Foundation, was built with bricks obtained
from nearby Mineral Bluff in 1890. Also built in 1890,
THE WALK: HISTORY & MORE
There's plenty of free parking-as long as you arrive early
in the morning or after the scenic railway returns from its
afternoon excursion-on West Main Street that will put
you pretty much in the middle of the walking tour. Before
leaving this street, stop by the 1926 Fannin County Bank
Building with its Doric pilasters and block glass transom.
The coffee shop that now occupies the building has kept
the bank's vault. A block away is the 1937 Fannin County
Courthouse (now the Mountain Arts Center), which retains its
original courtroom. Walking past the train station will bring
you to East Main Street, where most of the historic buildings
are located. In addition to those mentioned in the main
text, check out three of the town's earliest structures. The
1900 Hall Building was once a clothing store and what is now
Hansen's Grill was a boarding house where you could rent
a cot for the night for 50 cents. As you round the corner of
the street at the Cohutta Fishing Company to return to your
car, take a look at the building's lower level. It was once the
NuGrape Soda bottling plant. -LMA
the Kinkaid House, now the elegantly restored Blue Ridge
Inn B&B, retains its original hand-carved woodwork and
a wraparound porch from which to watch the world go
by. What was the town jail, and is now the Police Department,
was built by the Works Progress Administration
(WPA) during the Great Depression and constructed
of regionally quarried stone. As we were passing by the
Tilly Building, whose second floor had been a car dealer's
showroom, I queried a couple using the same brochure we
were, and got a delightful earful.
Yeah, we take these tours wherever we go! They're great for
bits of history, architecture and culture that area residents may
not even know. Like this place here. It's currently Mitzi's on
Main, but was once a Western Auto Store. I used to love wandering
those stores as a kid. They had everything-car parts,
phonographs, skates, transistor radios, sleeping bags, harmonicas-just
everything. For years I coveted their Western Flyer
bicycles-and then my parents surprised me with one for my
eighth birthday!
We didn't buy a bike, but the many interesting businesses
did entice us into a couple of purchases. I bought
a stuffed animal (for a niece not yet born) at Blue Ridge
Antique Mall and Laurie obtained a distinctive squirrelproof
bird feeder in Blue Ridge Bird Seed Company. (Here
we learned that the huge tree in the center of downtown
is a 100-year old silver maple.)
14 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
CLOCKWISE
FROM
RIGHT: At the
Black Sheep,
diners eat under
a 200-year-old
oak; the Blue
Ridge Scenic
Railroad crosses
the Toccoa River;
the Blue Ridge
Police Station
was built in The
Depression as
the city jail.
http://www.blueridgemountains.com http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
Blue Ridge Country May/June 2022

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