If there is a paradise on earth, it likely includes a green hill, a blue mountain lake and a lazy summer day.
For generations of Atlantans, that paradise has been Lake Rabun in the northeast corner of the state.
While the lake and its neighbor, Lake Burton, are now known as enclaves of expensive mountain real estate, Rabun began as something humbler. The story of its modest ancestry is told in a new history of the lake, produced as a labor of love by the Lake Rabun Association.
Proceeds from the sale of the book (rather grandly titled “Lake Rabun: Georgia’s Lake Como: A Centennial History of Lakemont: 1915-2015”) will support the association’s charitable efforts.
The other motive? Somehow, the residents wanted to be able to explain the magic of the place — to themselves, to each other, to people who had never been there.
Enlisted to tell that story was relative newcomer Bob Voyles, who grew up in Tarzana, Calif., and was accustomed to water skiing in the dusty impoundments of Arizona.
After he met Belle Schroder at the University of Virginia, she invited him to her family’s Lake Rabun home. The verdant land was a revelation. “It was like dying and going to heaven if you liked water skiing,” said Voyles, 63. “It was unlike anything I’d ever seen; it was a magical place.”
Voyles did the prudent thing and married into the community.
CEO of the commercial real estate development firm Seven Oaks, he is comfortable with bringing massive mixed-use projects into being. But writing a book is another matter. He drew a comparison to Lewis and Clark, who also didn’t know what they were getting into.
“It took a lot longer and it was a much more intensive process that I thought it would be,” he said. “What made it work was the team.”
Dozens of lake residents contributed to the book, including members of the association's living history committee, who recorded interviews with residents of the lake, collected and copied old photographs and home movies, and produced an oral history that's available on DVD. A sample is available at vimeo.com/97501369.
The Lake Rabun Association sparked interest in the project by holding a photo competition. Eventually, more than 150 people contributed photos or interviews for the finished history.
“It takes a village,” writes Voyles.
That history doesn’t shy away from the downside to all the happiness at Lake Rabun. When the Georgia Railway and Power Co. (a precursor to Georgia Power) proposed damming the Tallulah River, they met staunch opposition, notably from Helen Dortch Longstreet of Gainesville, widow of Confederate Gen. James Longstreet, who decried the threat to the beautiful Tallulah Falls area.
The falls, with their roaring cataracts and mountain vistas, were already a vacation destination by 1910, with 17 resort hotels catering to newly married couples in the “honeymoon capital of the South.”
But demand for electricity in the rapidly growing city of Atlanta overcame those objections. The Tallulah Falls dam was only the first of a series of impoundments along the river. The falls were silenced. These days they only roar when a controlled release from the dam sends water down the dry cataract.
The builders did not pursue their projects with delicacy. In 1923, when the power company returned to Lake Rabun to install an additional generating facility, they created new twin intakes by dynamiting tunnels through solid rock; each tunnel was a mile long, 15 feet high and 13 feet wide.
The result of this industry was a boom in hydroelectric power, the growth of Georgia Power as an industry leader, and an “emerald necklace” of lakes encircling the hills of North Georgia. There are six lakes in the chain: Lake Burton, Lake Seed, Lake Rabun, Tallulah Falls Lake, Lake Yonah and Lake Tugalo.
The 834-acre Lake Rabun was the second to be impounded by the completion of the Mathis Dam in 1915. It attracted the first wave of vacationers seeking respite from the city’s heat, and grew to become Atlanta’s beloved cooling station.
“It was the first lake that really had a sizable population on it,” Voyles said.
As the unincorporated Lakemont community grew up on the lake’s shores, it created its own traditions: the wooden boat parade on the Fourth of July, square dances at the Rabun Boathouse, bingo nights at Hall’s Pavilion.
Today, Voyles suggests that the biggest threat to the community and its traditions is the convenient availability of Wi-Fi.
“The challenge is going to be to keep that spirit of community in an internet era,” he said. “Technology changes everything. The chance to disengage is harder and harder now. It has to be a willful decision on people’s parts.”
The book and DVD are available on the Lake Rabun Association website, lakerabun.org, and at some businesses on the lake.
