The Northeast Georgia History center is proud to partner with Atlanta Historic Dance for our upcoming Fraser's Ridge Wedding ball on Saturday, March 30 from six to 10:00 p.m. Inspired by the popular series Outlander, you'll enjoy dancing the night away, taking part in historic games, attending a wedding scene reenactment from outlander, delicious treats and refreshments, and more. This event is a fundraiser for the Northeast Georgia History center and directly supports our mission. Details are available at ww negahc.org.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to then again the podcast of the Northeast Georgia History Center. I am your host for this episode, Marie Bartlett, director of the ADA May Ivester Education center here and today. Our special guests are Jim Grier and Tony Cornette from the Lula Belton Historical Society. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Well, thank you for inviting us, Marie. We appreciate the time.

Of course. So I'm very excited to get to talk to you about Lula today, which is just about 20 minutes from the northeast Georgia History center. You are one of the wonderful places to visit in northeast Georgia. So can you tell us, how was the city of Lula incorporated?

Well, Lula actually is a tale of two cities, Murray. It started way back in 1873 with the creation and the construction of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, which was created running northeast out of Atlanta toward Greenville, South Carolina, and included 147 miles of track. Now, along that route, there were two communities, one known as Belton, that was named after Major John Bell, who lived nearby, and then another, which was called Lula. The city of Belton was actually incorporated in 1874 and was incorporated with 1 mile city limits and 1 mile radius from Belton Depot. Well, two years later, the city of Lula was incorporated, which also claimed 1 mile radius from the Lula depot, although that bumped into the city of Belton's city limits about a half mile up the road. Well, later in 1876, the railroad was actually completed in another direction from Athens to Lula. Both Lula and Belton were in competition for that. Back in that day, you had to guarantee 40 miles of track to get a charter for a railroad from the state of Georgia. Belton was 40 miles from Athens. Lula was only 39. So Belton thought they had a real lock on getting that line to come to Belton. Well, unfortunately, politics were involved. Who knows what else. But the track was actually built to Lula, and another mile of track beyond the Richmond and Danville railroad was built over going over towards the river, and that mile of track was actually never used. Interesting. Those two cities really started off the same way in the early days, and then both were very busy time, busy places during that time, because in the early 19 hundreds, most of the farmers in that area farmed for cotton. Cotton was a very lucrative crop at that time. So whenever the cotton crop came in, there were bales of cotton stacked up for hundreds of yards either side of the Lulule depot. And that really supported the economics of the entire area throughout the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. Then along came the bull weevil, sadly. And so, in late 1920s, cotton went out of production. Things changed drastically. So that really changed how much the cotton crops were grown in that area. And Lula and Belton really just became a stopping point on the railroad. Well, then things changed again in the 1950s. Both Lula and Belton had started water systems to serve their citizens, and Lula had built their wells kind of away from the edge of the railroad, which is actually located on the continental Divide, the eastern continental divide, that is. And so water that falls on the southeast side of the railroad tracks runs into the Atlantic Ocean. Water that falls on the northwestern side of the railroad tracks runs into the Chattahoochee and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. The wells in Belton, unfortunately, were constructed closer to the railroad track, which was near the top of the divide. And as the drought of the early 1950s, 1954 was actually a worse drought year for northeast Georgia than any other year in history, and was actually a worse drought year than the 1930s dust bowl drought era. Most people don't realize that, but that caused the wells in Belton to go dry. So to serve their citizens, the two cities got together and decided it would be a good time to merge the two cities. And a vote was taken on November 19 of 1955 to do that, and it was passed by an overwhelming margin to do so. So Lula said, well, we've got the water. We want the city to be named Lula. That was how it became Lula.

That makes sense. I mean, if you got the water, you kind of hold all the power in that negotiation.

That's right.

It's a very important resource. So can you tell us, you touched on it a little bit, but can you tell us a little bit more about Lula's railroad heritage and your annual railroad days?

Well, the railroad days was started in 1976, and it was really designed to celebrate the heritage that Lula has with the railroad, because the railroad had the junction that I mentioned that went to Athens and then also Atlanta and Greenville. There were trains that moved in both areas, really, from Lula going towards Athens, from Lula going towards Gainesville, from Lula going towards Greenville. And so train crews had to stop to get water, which it was a large water tower in Lula. There was also a large coal chute that refreshed the coal supplies in those steam engines, steam locomotives. Then there was cars. People needed to stay overnight. So there was hotels and boarding houses that were in Lula that were supported by the railroad employees. So there were a lot of jobs and economy functions that really happened in Lula because the railroad was there. And for years, that was a great source of employment and pride for the city because somebody would say, well, I work for the railroad. And they instantly had great esteem in the community because of that.

And can you tell us about what it's like today at the annual railroad days?

Well, obviously, things have changed a lot since even 1976. But now most people see the railroad and they think, oh, no, there's another train blocking. So that's what they think of the railroad. But the jobs are gone. Now, most of those jobs that were created by the railroad in Lula, although we still have some residents that are engineers for the railroad and conductors and line maintenance people, but they work in different areas. They travel to Gainesville, they travel to Greenville, things like that. So it's a little different nowadays, but we still call it the railroad festival, and we still have a great time. The railroad really looks out for us, especially during that time. They'll actually encourage the trains to slow down as they go through Lula, to not disturb the festival and try to give people a break as they're crossing the tracks.

That is important.

It is, indeed.

So I've always wondered, how did the town get its name of Lula? I even looked on the Internet, and I couldn't really find anything. Well, very curious.

You know, Marie, there's not a real definitive story about that. There's several that are in and out, and most of them involve somebody's daughter. But the most rampant one is a version that says that Dr. Fernand Finazi Calhoun had a daughter named Lula Finnezi, and she spelled her name l u l a h. We're not quite sure if that was the case, but that really could have been a possibility. And yet nobody that I know has been able to verify that Dr. Fernand Finizi Calhoun actually had a daughter named Lula. So again, it's a legend, and we're not really sure.

Okay. Did they live in the harder.

No. Well, he owned the railroad, the northeastern railroad that ran from Athens to Lula. And I believe that he actually lived in Atlanta. So, no, he didn't live in the area, but they came there, and they had a big dinner to celebrate the incorporation of the town on a dining car of a train parked on the siding.

I could see how well you want to definitely come to our town because it's named after your daughter. I could see how that can kind of meld into legend and not get us historians. We love it when people write things down. There's a nice big paper trail, but I guess this one will remain a mystery.

I'm afraid it will.

So on your city's website, it says that Lula is known for that hometown feel. Can you try to put that feeling into words for us?

I'll try. I think what everybody says, that they think of a hometown as being a place where neighbors look after neighbors and neighbors enjoy each other. And for the most part, that's the way Lula really is, and it has been for decades. I mean, there was some notes in a minutes of a town council meeting that so and so was paid $2 to remove Mrs. Brown's dead cow from the roadway. Well, they paid the person who needed the $2 in town that week, and $2 in 1905 was probably a lot of money. And so I think just the things like that really made people feel like, well, okay, we can look after each other, and it's a real community here in Lula.

That's wonderful. Do you have any of your own stories of that hometown feel since you've been a resident in Lula for so long?

Well, actually, I grew up sort of with 1ft in Atlanta and 1ft in Lula. My parents actually left Lula in the tail end of the depression and went to Atlanta in the late thirty s to find jobs. And my dad worked for Georgia Power and my mother worked for the Department of Labor down there. And dad eventually built a house on Northwood Hills just off of I 85, but with both sets of grandparents and a great grandparent living in Lula, we spent most every other weekend in Lula, and I spent a lot of the summers up there and enjoyed being with both sets of grandparents. So I developed friends and memories and stories in both places. I really do have a lot of family memories and love living in the house where one of my grandparents.

Wonderful. And it definitely has that hometown feel, especially with that historic character. And does.

It does.

So Hall county has seen a lot of growth, and I know Lula is also an interesting kind of border town since it's essentially in two counties, but Hall county has seen a lot of growth in the past several years, and the city of Lula is also experiencing significant growth. So what do you see the future of Lula being?

Well, Lula really could become two cities again, I'm afraid. We think that Lula and even the Belton area may remain generally residential as it currently is. And we'll see most of the growth around the city of Lula, either outside on the corridor along Georgia 365 or even on Highway 51, maybe just a little bit east of Lula. So we really think that's going to probably help maintain that sense of hometown feel, because we can maintain the identity of the core of Lula and yet at the same time provide services for our citizens that the downtown area can't right now, a grocery store or the retail services that would want to locate really along Georgia 365 for better access and visibility reasons, it could again become two cities. We certainly hope it remains one in organization, even though it may be two different characteristics and feels there y'all are.

From the county's historical society, the Lula Belton, which I now understand why it's called Lula Belton. Since that wonderful tale of two cities, can you tell us a little bit about your organization and how people might be able to get involved?

Sure, I can take that. Our Lula Belton Historical Society, we have been around for many, many years. I am a new member. I've only been involved for approximately the last five years. And from the moment that I came, I was just immediately embraced by people who had a passion for preserving history and presenting it and making it available. And with that comes challenges. How do you go about doing that? So we as the historical society are really focused on capturing new stories, things that have been brought to our attention in the past, or you hear a rumor of, and then all of a sudden you find, hey, this individual has the actual story, or this was their father, or they still live there, or these little stories about homes and locations. And it's really good to kind of put a face to it or a locale to a story, and we want to preserve that as much as we can. We don't want our history to be lost. And so that's really the general purpose of the historical society and Lulabelton Historical Society. It's got a lot of opportunity and a lot of promise, and we encourage as much as we can for individuals to come and join. We always need a hand. Any thoughts on that, Jim?

Well, we certainly do. In addition to the festival that I mentioned that the historical society sponsors. We actually have meetings every month except December, and that is to be able to share some stories to make some plans for the future as well. And also we have a game that we call what is it? Someone brings in some historical object, and it could be anything as simple as a shoe laugh or a corn shelling machine or something like that that you don't usually see every day. And so that then goes up on the display table and whoever guesses the most items, right? We have some sort of small prize just for the fun of that game. So we have some fun along the way. But then again, we do plan some things. We maintain a historical cemetery there in Lula. We also sponsor celebrations for Veterans Day and Memorial Day. And we also have some other activities throughout the year that society works on. And we've had chicken dinners and things like that to help fundraise for special projects. So we're trying to do things that get more people involved and bring history alive and at least back into the conversation again, where maybe for some years we haven't had a chance to tell those stories that our grandparents told so easily to each other.

Yes. So do y'all have a website that people could go check out and learn more about?

We do. We do. Our website is lulabelton.com and we also have presence on Facebook and other social media as well as Instagram. So we encourage others to come find us there. We also have dedicated social media sites specifically dedicated to our fall festival there in Lula that we sponsor. So it's a good opportunity for others to find us on social media or even come by during one of the festivals and we'd be glad to talk to you and get people engaged as much as possible.

Yeah.

So we'll be sure to put the link to your website down in the description box so people can just click on that. So if you're listening and are interested, go down to the description box, click the link, and it'll take you to get even more information about this wonderful organization. But thank you all so much for being with me today and for sharing the story of Lula.

Thank you.

Our pleasure. Thank you for inviting us.

Then again is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Gilles. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the ADA May Ioster Education center. Please join us next week for another episode of then again.