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Old Home Sites - 18 More Chimneys and Old Homestead Remains NE Georgia & W Carolinas |
All Text & Images: Copyright (2026) |
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Old Home Sites - 18 More Chimneys and Old Homestead Remains NE Georgia & W Carolinas |
All Text & Images: Copyright (2026) |
| Home Sites on this page: | 1 - CL11, Big Tuni Creek, Clay Co., NC |
| 2 - CL12, Trib. of Big Tuni Creek, Clay Co., NC |
| 1 - Old Homesite CL11, along Big Tuni Creek, Clay Co., NC March, 2026 The old maps showed a homesite on the far side of the creek. The water was flowing pretty fast and it took me a while to find a good spot to cross the creek. When I did, I found a place that looked ideal for a homesite, but nothing except a few rock piles. Re-crossing the creek and heading back to my truck, I walked right up on this old pair of collapsed chimneys. |
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| Rear of chimney 1. The old house had a pair of chimneys, both long collapsed. This was the more recognizable of the two. |
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| Chimney 1 from the front. |
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| Chimney 1 from the side. |
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| Chimney 2 At the opposite end of the former home, now nothing but a pile of rocks. |
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| 2 - Old Homesite CL12 - on tributary of Big Tuni Creek, Clay Co., NC March 2026 After my discovery of the homesite above, I only had one more potential site to investigate from the old maps in the general Tuni - Tusquittee Creeks & Gaps area. It required crossing a steeply flowing, fairly substantial creek, but worst of all, 500 feet of steep elevation climb through a real mess of rhododendron! I wondered if it might be possible to approach from the opposite direction, even though the route would be longer, and there was a steep ridge in between. Looking at LIDAR, I was amazed to see an old logging road that went exactly where I wanted to go. And it followed the contour of the mountain, with minimal elevation change. Of course, as any bushwhacker knows, these old logging roads nowadays (after 60-100 years) can often be worse than a jungle, with every kind of impenetrable obstacle! I got up to where the old logging road met the FS road, and after going through some initial rhodo, continued onto one of the clearest old logging roads that I've traveled in years, with minimal blow-downs, laurel or rhododendron. Such a pleasant walk for a change! And it led right to my destination! Descending to the site, I saw the metal roof of an old collapsed cabin, with remains of a rock chimney behind it. I believe that the chimney predates the cabin / log shanty. The cabin doesn't align with the old chimney, and the cabin had an old barrel-stove with a stove-pipe going through the metal roof for heat. |
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| Metal roofing over the collapsed cabin, old chimney visible in the rear. |
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| Old rock chimney Only portions of the rear and right side remain. |
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| Red clay chinking in the chimney |
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| Rear side-angle view of the chimney. I could just touch the top, so the remains are a bit over 8 feet tall. |
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| I didn't bring a tripod. I rested my camera on a flat rock on the ground for this selfie, so the height is greatly fore-shortened. |
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| Chimney on left, collapsed cabin on right. The barrel is an old heat stove, with a rusted out stovepipe coming out on the left. I'm pretty sure that the stone chimney was part of an earlier structure that predated the tin-roofed cabin. |
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| Many of the cabin's logs have rotted away; most of what remains is this metal barrel stove and the metal roof. |
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| A couple of canning jars. |
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| Nails in one of the remaining logs. |
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| Nails in another of the remaining logs. |
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| Old basin or tub. |
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| Another old basin or tub. |
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| Looking underneath the collapsed roof. |
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| A few of the cabin's remaining logs. |
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| One of the base level logs. |
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| More cabin logs... |
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| This view of the chimney is aligned with what remains of the right side. |
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| There were lots of daffodils around, always a sign of a homestead. |