The community of Smoke Rise nestles amid rolling terrain in DeKalb County, a couple of miles east of Tucker. A sign at the intersection of Hugh Howell Road and Rosser Road pinpoints the location on both sides of Hugh Howell. The community began in the ’60s.
When buying a house in Gwinnett in 1975 from a bankrupt builder, adjacent to Smoke Rise, I figured telling everyone I lived near Smoke Rise would make it feel a lot classier.
There are some costly estates in the Smoke Rise community. My grandfather said that a man could only sleep in one bed at a time, so I never considered buying a house with too many rooms that I couldn’t afford anyway. But some people don’t mind big mortgages. Looking from the front steps of the Smoke Rise Country Club, I could see a wide valley with towering trees. When driving past some homes, I saw garages the size of my house.
Carbon dating indicates that early Americans migrated into the Southeast 12,000 years ago when the water of the rivers and streams was potable and the saber-toothed tigers still roamed the land. The people were hunters and gatherers but eventually took up farming also. Evidence in the way of artifacts can be found indicating that the area where Smoke Rise is located once was the home to early Americans. Before Smoke Rise Golf Course was excavated, Gene Cofer gave me permission to look for artifacts in the valley where streams converge. It proved to have once been an encampment where Cherokee Indians lived. When a dam was constructed in Stone Mountain Park the streams supplied water that filled the park’s lake.
Many of the roads around Atlanta started as worn paths where animals moved from one feeding area to another. Following worn paths in search of food, Indians continued using the same routes. With the arrival of Europeans, horses became part of transportation and also followed the same pathways.
After invading what is now Florida and Georgia, Spanish conquistadors found natives living gently on the land. Lusting for the treasures they thought were here, the Spaniards began a campaign of acquisition forcing the Indians to concede their land. The Indians lost their homelands because they were a trusting people and when they were attacked, they were hopelessly outgunned.
Two large tracts of land at the intersection of Rosser Road and Old Tucker Road, Ivey Oaks and Spenser’s Mountain, remained undeveloped until the 1990s. Another large tract along Rosser Road in Gwinnett County was developed about the same time. Until then that area was covered with kudzu and provided me some good venison.
Smoke Rise is not a city. It has no mayor or courthouse. But it does have its own newspaper. It is a community of over 2,200 homeowners who have banded together in a display of pride in homeownership. I don’t live there. However, I can hit my three-wood into Smoke Rise from my front yard. That’s a good enough association.
Bill York of Stone Mountain is a novelist, freelance writer and retired furrier. Reach him at sioux2222@gmail.com
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