Heroic Helen

We visited Helen GA today -- only 13 miles from our RV park. We’ve been there several times over the past six weeks, but we haven’t written about it yet.

Helen is a very nice town, having re-established itself with a Bavarian theme some 40 years ago. It reminds us of another Bavarian wannabee town, Leavenworth WA, which we visited a few years back.

Helen has been here since the Cherokees occupied the valley before 1800. Gold was discovered just a few miles out of town in 1828. About 1900 it was a timber town. Then in the 1950’s and 60’s it was a dying town, but tourists were going through Helen on their way to some place else in these mountains.

The town fathers wanted to do something to save the town. Local businessmen, like Jim Wilkins and Pete Hodkinson, talked and talked. They asked local artist, John Kollock, for ideas and Kollock did some sketches of local buildings, giving them an alpine Bavarian look. The idea caught on.

In the Welcome Center (shown on one of the photos above) there is a room devoted to then-and-now photos. It’s amazing. Even the U.S. Post Office has a Bavarian look. It was fun to view past and present photographs of exisiting buildings in Helen. It is unconfirmed, but we were told that the city passed laws requiring the Bavarian look on all its buildings.

One owner went so far as to include a windmill (shown in another photo above). A windmill in Bavaria? Sure. Why not? There is a windmill in Podersdorf, Burgenland, Austria, so it makes sense if there is a windmill in the Bavarian Alps and Helen GA.

There is a lot to see and do in Helen. One thing a visitor cannot avoid is the number of “tubing” companies which charge about $15 to rent a tune to float down the Chattahoochie River which flows right through the town of Helen. (The photo show one such company with it’s mountain of tubes.)

Millions of visitors come to Helen every year. The charm is still there, but many of the buildings can use a can of paint or two. Many of the murals have faded from the UV rays. Maybe the town fathers can do something about that, too.