- Trail
- Early
- pre-1800; a main road until the 1840s
- DeKalb County
- General area only
Hightower (Etowah) Trail
One of Georgia's best-documented Indian trails, running northwest from the Augusta trading paths past Stone Mountain to the Shallow Ford of the Chattahoochee. It was once recognized as a Cherokee-Creek boundary, and part of it became the DeKalb-Gwinnett county line.
The record
The 1956 GHS marker calls it a much-used crossover between two trading paths radiating from Augusta; by an 1822 act part of it became the Gwinnett-DeKalb line, and it remained a main road until the 1840s. The 1985 Roswell marker says it divided the Indian cessions of 1819 and 1821 and carried pioneers to northwest Georgia after 1832; other accounts date the cession north of the line to 1818, and the 1820 lottery that distributed Gwinnett rested on acts of December 1818 and December 1819 (Georgia Archives), so both years figure. Both markers derive the name from the Cherokee 'Ita-Wa' (Etowah), which English speakers wrote as Hightower. In 1864 J. W. Buchanan's house stood 'on the Old Hightower Trail, where Peachtree Road crosses' (GHS). An online compilation of John H. Goff's 1951 study notes a surviving road west of Dunwoody Place still called Hightower Trail.
Today: Mostly erased; short pieces survive as roads, and the county line follows part of it.
Where on the map: From the Rock Bridge area (Rockbridge Rd) near the DeKalb-Gwinnett line east of Stone Mountain, northwest along or near the DeKalb-Gwinnett county line; crossing Peachtree Rd near J. W. Buchanan's (Doraville-Peachtree Corners area); through the Dunwoody area (Winters Chapel Rd, Tilly Mill Rd, Mount Vernon Rd, Spalding Dr per local researchers); to the Chattahoochee at the Shallow Ford near Roswell (Azalea Dr), where a short road west of Dunwoody Place is still named Hightower Trail.