Who is responsible for most of your local history? In my example, let's search through all of the events that I typically write about for a common denominator:
Connahaynee Lodge (1930-1946)
Appalachian Trail (1930-1957)
Dude Ranch (1910-1935)
Tate Mountain Estates (1929-present)
Civilian Conservation Corps Camp 1449 (1933-1934)
Eber Carle Perrow (1919-1968)
Blink Drummond (1930-1932)
and articles I haven't written yet, to include:
Henry Fitzsimmons and the discovery of Georgia Marble (1830?)
The Dogtrot home of Caleb Griffith (1877)
The lost town of Sandy Bottoms (1930-1955?)
In each and every case, the Tate family, and usually Col. Sam Tate or his father has a connection.
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Now, as a precursor to all of the above, you could draw back to the Old Federal Road as being responsible or perhaps the Land Lottery of 1832. This naturally means that European expansion (1440-1945) and land acquisition are the real sources of all changes that took place in Pickens (1853-present) and the former Cherokee County (1832-1853). The formation of Georgia (1776) Mind you, if you travel back far enough, Asians crossing the land bridge between modern day Russia and Alaska really take you back farther back in time, 13,000 years ago, around (11,000 BC). The death of the dinosaurs that produced the limestone that became Georgia marble (> 68 million years ago) And going back even further you have the splitting of Pangea (240 million years ago) formation of the Appalachian mountains (480 million years ago). Further back yet, the Earth was created some 4.5 billion years ago.
The further back in time we go, the cloudier the picture of our past gets. As we get within 200 years, that view looks sharper and sharper. I suspect this has been the case since time immemorial.
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What does this all mean? That a long, long time ago, our mountains were created in a place that looked very different than today. Millions of species came and went according to evolutionary and extinction event sources. The oceans sundered and the mountains rose from the sea. Marble was created and our ancient ancestors crossed over onto our continent looking for new places to live. Eventually the archaic (pre-tribal indians) arrived and hunted in the lands that are now north Georgia. De Soto came searching for gold and brought disease to the new world. Years later The Cherokee and Creek indians roamed our part of the earth. Later yet, they clashed as the forces of the Age of Discovery and Colonization took root in North America. By 1838 the Cherokee and Creeks were exiled to Oklahoma to the western territories as Scottish, English, Irish and Germans largely moved into our mountains.
Each individual actor played a part in our history, some larger than others. Some discoveries altered the paradigm of the world: The printing press, the circumnavigation of the globe, the invention of the assembly line, the internet and others.
The power of human agency is penultimate to that of gravity and her sister, entropy. And yet, human intention, at least for the last 5,000 years, has shaped more of the world's future than any other species. Our dictators and inventors, orators and visionaries, all have helped to form the world we live in. Each of them constituting a different thread of the tapestry that is woven into life.
Some strands are brighter than others.
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