Ghost Town Directory

Burton, Georgia: The Rabun County Town Drowned by Its Own Lake

2 min read

State
Georgia
County
Rabun County
Coordinates
34.843° N, 83.501° W

Burton, Georgia was a gold rush town in Rabun County, in the mountainous northeastern corner of the state, that a power company bought outright in 1917 and flooded two years later. Today the town lies at the bottom of Lake Burton, the reservoir that kept its name. Roughly 200 people lived there when the Georgia Railway and Electric Company made its purchase, enough to make Burton the second-largest town in the county.

01A Gold Rush Town on the Tallulah River

Burton grew up in the first half of the nineteenth century, a product of the Georgia Gold Rush. The town sat where Dicks Creek meets the Tallulah River, and the first gold found anywhere in Rabun County turned up just north of it, where Moccasin Creek joins the same river. It took its name from Jeremiah Burton, a well-liked local man who owned the general store and ran the post office. That post office opened in 1875.

Gold alone did not keep Burton going. The town stood on the old road from Clayton south to the Nacoochee Valley, a route that met the Unicoi Turnpike near the Old Sautee Store, and it became a supply point for the corundum mines at Tate City. Timber came next. The Byrd-Matthews Lumber Company built a narrow-gauge railroad into Burton to carry logs out of the surrounding mountains to its mill in Helen.

By the early twentieth century Burton held about 200 residents and three general stores. Only one town in Rabun County was larger.

02What Happened to Burton?

The Tallulah River's value to the town was nothing next to its value to a utility. In 1917 the Georgia Railway and Electric Company, the predecessor of today's Georgia Power, bought the town of Burton along with the homesteads around it. The post office had already closed the year before, in 1916.

The dam was closed on December 22, 1919. As the water backed up behind it, the residents watched their homes go under while the rivers rose to form Lake Burton. Before long the town was submerged, and the reservoir that replaced it kept its name.

03What Remains of Burton Today

Nothing of Burton stands above water. The town lies under Lake Burton, and what may survive on the lake bed is unknown. The town site is underwater where Dicks Creek once met the Tallulah River, a short way downstream from the Moccasin Creek confluence where Rabun County's first gold was found.

For a visitor, Burton is a place to imagine rather than walk through. The lake is, in effect, the town's grave marker, and the only Burton most people meet today is the name on the water.

Rabun County, Georgia · Post office: 1875–1916 · Primary industry: gold mining, then logging

Sources (2)

Note on sources: one account places Burton at the junction of the Tallulah River and Moccasin Creek; this article follows the version that puts the town at Dicks Creek and the gold discovery at Moccasin Creek.

Keep exploring

The nearest towns to Burton first, then the ones readers look for most.

Browse all towns