Cherokee County, Georgia
- Title:
- Cherokee County, Georgia
- Alternate Title:
- Cherokee County, Georgia
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Bullock, W. P.
- Other Creators:
- Conn, A. C.; Cherokee County Map Co. (publisher)
- Date:
- 1895
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 2095.01
- Collection Number:
- 8548
- File Name:
- PJM_2095_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1870 - 1899
- Subject:
- Advertising & Promotion
Unusual Graphics/Text - Measurement:
- 68 x 94 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- A large and remarkable map promoting settlement in Cherokee County, Georgia, at the end of the 19th century.
The extensive text describes "this fertile and productive county" as “500 square miles of the most picturesque and adaptable territory south of the Blue Ridge Mountains.” It goes on to describe the region’s suitability for raising grain, cotton, and corn as well as the opportunities for extraction from the county’s “primeval forests of great value and variety,” “six distinct gold leads,” “”Georgia Marble” of snowy whiteness,” and “iron in great quantities.” Vignettes show mining, quarrying, a public building, a railroad bridge and the picking of cotton. The map details networks of roads, rivers and streams as well as mines, mills and other businesses, schools, post offices, springs, the names of landowners and the town of "Ball Ground." Through it all runs the Etowah River and the line of the Marietta & North Georgia Railroad, with Pine Log Mountain - an extension of the Appalachians – rising in the county’s far northwest corner.
In the 1820s white settlers began pour into the Cherokee-owned lands of northwest Georgia, and the flow only increased with the discovery of gold in 1828. Cherokee County was created in 1831, after the Indian Removal Act passed by Congress laid the legal groundwork for the dispossession of the Cherokee and the ensuing “Trail of Tears.” Somewhat surprisingly, the map seeks to romanticize the removal of the native population six decades earlier: “Strongly can we realize the aching hearts and bitter sorrows felt by those crude, yet ardent Indians on takingleave [sic] of this their native land, where nature seems to harmonize with every wish and heart’s desire. From the leaping trout that flashed from pool to pool, the squirrel that sprang from leafy bough to bough, the robin that so sweetly sang of hope, to the howling wolf, the bear, the buffalo and deer, were here to meet his wants.”
Cherokee County today is a booming part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
Portions of the foregoing courtesy Michael Buehler, Boston Rare Maps
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Cite As:
- P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartography, #8548. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
- Repository:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
- Archival Collection:
- P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartography
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.