Many rural Polk County communities lost to time, technology
Looking back 100 years ago, there existed at least 45 rural communities in or around Polk County, outlined here as collected from the 1923 Cedartown Standard newspaper archive.
They were Akes, Antioch, Aragon, Bellview, Biggers, Buncombe, Cave Spring, Center Road, Collard Valley, Dugdown, Esom Hill, Etna, Felton, Fish, Friendship, Fullwood, Hamlet, Haney, Hematite, High Point, Jackson Chapel, Lake, Lime Branch, Lindsay Chapel, Little Cedar, Lookout Hill, Mountain Home, Mountain Spring, New Harmony, Oak Grove, Pine Bower, Pooletown, Relay, R.F.D. 6, Rock Hill, Rocky Ridge, Rockmart, Route 4, Route 6, State Line, Sutton’s Mill, Tecumseh, Wimberly Hill, Woodstock, Wray Mine, and Youngs.
Some of these locations were named for families settled in the region, and others were selected for the area’s central connection, such as churches, general stores, railroad stations, mines, mills, or simply a known feature of the landscape. After the Rural Free Delivery program was established in the early 20th century, the routes became wider districts, grouping several of the communities together and ultimately replacing them as directional locations rather than pocket communities.
In the following decades, society news in the papers condensed, making the columns a little less colorful, but likely an easier task for the editor on collecting the tidbits. This “gossip” included weddings, births and deaths, illnesses, visitors in and out of the community, school functions, church and group gatherings, and sometimes even eye-opening freak accidents.
It was a good selling point for newspapers in its time, but as transportation and telephones became more commonplace, the society pieces turned into “women’s pages” with homemaking advice, recipes, and organization news.
The communities, however, still have relevance in Polk County today, with a few remaining well-known such as Antioch, Collard Valley, Fish (Creek), Lime Branch, and Youngs (Station). Others retain little more than a road named for a family no longer occupying the area, or a school or church that has been lost to time and progress.
The Polk County Historical Society has a digitalized Hudgins Company map of Polk County from 1910 that references militia districts, the boundaries of school districts, public roads, settlement roads, railroads, Rural Free Delivery routes, school districts, and community boundaries — many of which were already absorbed into others by this 1923 assessment (such as Priors, which most likely was categorized as a numbered route in the ’20s newspapers).
Piecing together this timeline history from newspapers, maps and other reference materials is one of the projects the historical society enjoys. We are actively looking for members and volunteers who have a passion for local history and want to be part of an organization dedicated to preserving it.