One day we set off to visit the Etowah Indian Mounds in Georgia. In Heflin, we passed this dairy bar with all the great signs:
So of course we had to share an ice cream cone. We didn’t notice while we were there, but the Tasty Dip is for sale – $200k. If you look really closely at the sign, you can see that they have actually *increased* the asking price for the business!
Next was Fruithurst, which is a story that starts in Tallapoosa, Georgia. Tallapoosa was promoted by a Connecticut salesman who moved to the area in the late 1800s as a “Yankee City Under the Southern Sun”. Ah, it sounds really messed up, actually, because the Spring 2009 Alabama Heritage Magazine has a feature on Fruithurst in which the author stated that the idea was to populate Tallapoosa with immigrant whites (Germans, Scandinavians) to ‘minimize dependence on black labor’. The natives of this area didn’t care for that one bit, and to make things on even worse footing, former Union general Benjamin Butler (Butler the Beast, whose likeness graced Southern chamber pots) was recruited as a board member for the town company.
Anyway, the company went bust and years later one of the original promoters came back and decided he was going into the wine making business. He convinced a priest in Pennsylvania to persuade 200 of his Hungarian coal miner parishoners (who also happened to be winemakers) to come to Tallapoosa and grow grapes. I know, this is a weird story.
The inn offered wild goose a la fermier, roast sirloin of beer, roast leg of lamb, and Columbia River salmon served with Fruithurst claret.
There’s lots more about the history of Fruithurst here.
There are six mounds at Etowah – Mississippian Culture mounds, built between 1000 and 1550:
