“A host of emotions accompanied the talk of relocation. “At first, the government assured land owners they were paying them the true value of the land and buildings but residents found it hard to price generations of memories, hard work and deep roots,” Russell wrote in her book, Underwater Ghost Towns of North Georgia. The US Army Corps of Engineers wanted to create a lake to provide power and water to Atlanta, and they wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. The controversy surrounding the lake project, as described by author and historian Lisa Russell, started long before its inception nearly 75 years ago. Lake Lanier has a complicated history of strong-armed land, accidents, and urban legends And now, thanks to social media, the lake’s supernatural lore and urban legends have found a collective audience of believers. The popular 38,000-acre lake north of Atlanta was created in the 1950s by deliberately flooding valley communities and existing cemeteries. At the age of 25 she was standing in her red dress on the balcony of the hotel during a storm when. Some locals credit a spooky origin story of the lake for its deadliness. Philips Episcopal Church, while visiting the hotel at night. The property they owned and spent their lives on, buried in water,” Holland said.More than 200 people have died in swimming and boating accidents since 1994 in Lake Lanier. “Because they don’t think of what the lake did to the people that were here. Otherwise, the generations that have followed may never know there was once a land under the lake. It's a story Holland said needs to be told. The old farm house she grew up in survived, but most of the homes around there did not. On the pasture where cows once roamed, Holland’s father went water skiing. It wasn’t too fascinating to Holland her childhood is out there in a sunken community. That’s where our house was.' It’s fascinating," Pickering said. Right over there is where I used to play. “And now they’re out here, and they’re looking at this and saying, ‘Yeah. They relay stories about when they were kids and grew up there, and all the things they did. Pickering has met some of the families who told him the tale.
So, when you're diving around this, you're diving into the middle of a forest,” Pickering said.Īnd there are the places people once called home. (AP) A car with human bones inside that was hauled from the bottom of a lake may have been the one that ran off a road in 1958, say officials still trying to determine what happened to the two occupants. In fact, one of the most prevalent ghostly tales in the area is of a lady in blue. If Lake Lanier had a Jacques Cousteau, it'd be Pickering. Since Lake Lanier was created in the 1950s, it has been the site of a. He makes his living retrieving items lost in the lake.
#Lake lanier lady in blue dress full#
There's a full forest down there,” Pickering said. “People think there's nothing down there. Richard Pickering has seen it with his own eyes. And the lives they left behind, were buried under 600 billion gallons of water.
They may have owned the land for decades,” Coughlin said.įor the greater good, 700 families had to go. Maybe your parents or grandparents were there. “Someone comes up to you and asks you to pick up and move from an area that you lived there.
They had no choice but to sell their homes and land to the government. It wasn't 'if.' It was ‘when,’” Coughlin said.īut a lot of the people who lived there were in the way. It was built for drinking water and flood control. Officials created a 3,800-acre reservoir named Lake Sidney Lanier. “It was the largest earth dam they had every constructed,” Coughlin said. Army Corps of Engineers built the Buford Dam.ĭavid Coughlin is an authority. But the life she remembers vanished in 1956.
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