New Georgia Press book offers guide to the state's 16 historic sites

There’s a lot to see in Georgia.

For history buffs, the title’s of Jennifer W. Dickey's new book “There’s Lots to See in Georgia” (University of Georgia Press, $29.95) is pretty obvious. For those who travel to Atlanta for a Falcons game or chase ghosts and alcohol in Savannah (we’re generalizing, of course), you might be surprised to learn that this original American colony and Native American homeland is home to both numerous and unique historical offerings.

Dickey, professor of history and the coordinator of the museums and the history and public programs at Kennesaw State of Georgia, understands the significance of one of the country's 13 English colonies and offers a comprehensive guide for visitors to learn more.

For instance, there’s a chapter on the Dahlonega Gold Museum where visitors may learn how the gold found in the north Georgia mountains started the country’s “first major gold rush,” predating California. The land containing gold in the 1820s belonged to neither the state of Georgia or the United States but the sovereign Cherokee nation. The Trail of Tears and the removal of the Cherokee can be chalked up to the discovery of this vein.

“The North Georgia gold rush led to an invasion by prospectors and the eventual seizure and redistribution of Cherokee land by the state and the removal of the Cherokee people by the federal government to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma,” Dickey writes.

The 16 historic sites Dickey details include Native American sites from the Woodland, Mississippian and Cherokee periods, places such as New Echota, the first national capital of the Cherokee, and Etowah Indian Mounds north of Atlanta and Kolomoki Mounds in the southwest. She tackles, colonial-era sites, frontier settlement sites, antebellum plantations, Civil War battles such as Pickett’s Mill, part of U.S. Gen William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and the Warm Springs presidential retreat where Franklin D. Roosevelt sought refuge from his debilitating polio.

Dickey has served as the preservationist at Berry College and works as a preservation consultant. She has worked for the National Park Service and the Historic Preservation Division of Georgia. She is the author of “A Tough Little Piece of History: ‘Gone With the Wind’ and the Politics of Memory" and coauthor of “Memories of the Mansion: The History of Georgia’s Governor’s Mansion.” She lives in Atlanta.