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The Chattahoochee and Oconee National forests have a rich and varied history.
The Cherokee and Creek Indians made their home in Georgia from the 1500s until
the early 1800s when gold was discovered, Indians were driven off the land in
the "Trail of Tears" to reservations in Oklahoma and their land was given away
in land lotteries. Gold was mined and almost every stream in North Georgia
suffered damage from hydraulic mining. When the gold ran out, timber, companies
moved in to capitalize on a demand for lumber to build an industrializing
Nation. Unmanaged logging removed the best, most economically valuable tree
species with no thought to reforestation. Many agricultural practices such as
deep plowing, planting the same crop year after year and burning crop litter
depleted soil nutrients and contributed to sediment in the streams.
Much of the southern Appalachian mountains in the early 1900's were devastated
by improper logging practices and no thought to reforestation. With the land
worn out, much of North Georgia was land nobody wanted. In 1911, Congress passed
the Weeks Law giving the government authority to purchase land from willing
sellers to protect the headwaters of navigable streams and insure a continuous
supply of timber. The Forest Service purchased 31,000 acres in Fannin, Gilmer,
Lumpkin and Union counties from the Gennett family in 1911 for $7 an acre.
In the beginning, the Chattahoochee was part of the Nantahala and Cherokee
National Forests in North Carolina and Tennessee. On July 9, 1936, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the Chattahoochee a separate National Forest.
The first task of the Forest Service was restoration. Help was received from the
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCCs), in the 1930's. The CCCs planted trees, built
roads, did erosion control work, check and controlled tree disease and insect
infestations, fought forest fires, fought forest fires, built fire towers,
ranger stations and recreation areas.
After the War, new uses of wood and wood products were discovered making the
forests event more important. In 1959, the Oconee National Forest was proclaimed
out of 96,000 acres of federal land in middle Georgia. The lands on the Oconee
National Forest had been devastated from extensive cotton farming.
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