The Lost Town of Burton: an excerpt from Haunts & Hollows: Georgia Backroads.
Originally known as Powellsville, the little town of Burton boomed at the confluence of Dicks Creek and the Tallulah River. During the mid-1800s, the Georgia Gold Rush brought treasure hunters from around the country, and many chose to settle here as mining opportunities began to dry up. Logging and a new railroad stop added to the town’s fortunes, and by 1900 Burton had more than 200 residents—at the time the second largest town in Rabun County.
The boom wouldn’t last, and in 1917 Georgia Railway & Electric Company purchased the entire town. The 65 families who lived there, along with nearby homesteads and outlying communities, sold out to seek higher ground.
A dam soon rose that measured almost 130 tall and spanned more than 1,100 feet. It closed on December 22, 1919, and over the next nine months, the abandoned town slowly disappeared beneath 2,775 acres of water.
Like many other towns submerged beneath artificial lakes, much of the town remains exactly as it was. The families received modest payments, then took what they could. One sticking point of such transformations has always been the relocation of cemeteries and family plots, as witnessed at nearby Lake Lanier.
In the case of Lake Burton, it was said that all the dead were carefully exhumed, documented, and then moved to permanent lots. The question arises, though, as to the number of dead that were moved. Many ended up in one of two Burton Cemeteries or smaller plots elsewhere. In total, the relocated bodies number approximately 100. For a settlement town with a 100-year history, there would have been far more buried on family land and in forgotten corners around the valley.
It must be assumed, then, that many of the former residents of Burton never left the submerged town. Locals seem to agree as stories of restless dead have become a part of Lake Burton lore. Many submerged towns have tales of phantom church bells ringing beneath the waters and the dead walking across the floor of the lake. Burton’s remnants are much more direct.
Residents and tourists often tell the same tale of seeing the dead leaving the water on moonlit nights. Witnesses recount seeing small breaks in the surface rippling across the lake. After a few moments, misshapen shadows make their way to the shore and disappear into the tree line. The only point of confusion is that the forms leave no watery footprints with their passing. The land from the beach to the trees is always dry.
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