8 Georgia Lake Towns Locals Love (and 3 Tourists Overrun)
Georgia has more than a dozen big lakes, and the crowds pile onto about three of them.
Locals sorted that out years ago.
While tourists idle in traffic toward Lake Lanier, many Georgians are backing a boat trailer down a ramp two hours away with the whole cove to themselves.
These are the lake towns Georgians love, and those they’ve surrendered to everybody else.
1. Hartwell
Lake Hartwell wraps around the Georgia-South Carolina line, and the town of Hartwell sits on the Georgia shore in Hart County.
Bass anglers know the name cold.
The Bassmaster Classic has crowned champions on this water more than once, so the pros treat it like hallowed ground.
Show up on a Tuesday in June, though, and the ramp at Hart State Park sits half-empty.
You can fish all morning and pass three other boats.
The town square still runs on a hardware store and a diner, not a wall of vacation rentals.
Locals like it that way.
2. Blairsville
Up in Union County, Lake Nottely curls through the mountains below Blairsville.
The Tennessee Valley Authority built it in the 1940s for flood control, not for jet skis.
So the shoreline stays green instead of wall-to-wall docks.
Blairsville anchors the whole thing with a courthouse square and a farmers market, not a strip of T-shirt shops.
Drop a line off Poteete Creek at dawn.
The bass don’t know it’s a weekday.
Trout streams feed in from the high country, and the crowd stays thin even in July.
You’ll have room.
3. Lakemont
Lakemont sits on Lake Rabun, a narrow 835-acre stretch of water tucked into Rabun County.
Georgia Power owns much of the shore, so the tree line stays put and the docks stay small.
Families here still run wooden Chris-Crafts from the 1940s, boats that stayed with the houses when they sold.
On Sunday mornings, a floating service called Boat Church gathers in Hall’s Cove, and pajamas are welcome.
Try finding that at a resort.
The Lake Rabun Hotel, built of stone and locust wood in the 1920s, still rents rooms just up the road.
4. Donalsonville
Way down in the state’s southwest corner, Lake Seminole spreads across some 37,500 acres where the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers meet.
Donalsonville, in Seminole County, is the closest town, and it runs on bass and quail, not tour buses.
The lake is thick with hydrilla and old stumps, which anglers love and speedboat crowds avoid.
The bass thrive.
Bring your rod and reel, not a wakeboard.
Seminole State Park runs a boat ramp and cottages right on the Georgia shore.
The bass fishing rivals anything across the Florida line, minus the entrance gates and the theme parks.
5. Chatsworth
Tucked below Fort Mountain, Carters Lake sits hidden in the hills between Chatsworth and Ellijay.
It’s the deepest lake in Georgia, 450 feet down at the dam.
The Army Corps of Engineers owns every inch of shoreline, so you won’t find a single private dock or lake house.
None.
That keeps the water clear and the coves calm.
The dam itself is the tallest earthen dam east of the Mississippi.
Launch from Woodring Branch or Doll Mountain, and the mountains close in around you.
6. Lincolnton
On the Savannah River east of Lincolnton, Georgia shares a giant lake with South Carolina.
The federal government calls it J. Strom Thurmond Reservoir.
Georgia calls it Clarks Hill, and the legislature made that the official state name back in 1989.
At 71,100 acres, it’s the third-largest artificial lake east of the Mississippi.
Yet the Georgia side stays sleepy.
Elijah Clark State Park hands you a sandy beach, cabins, and a boat ramp near Lincolnton, all without a mob.
The bigger crowds cross to the South Carolina shore, and Lincoln County stays off the tourist map.
Psst! How much do you know about Georgia’s lakes beyond these shores? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Georgia Lake IQ
Answer nine questions on Georgia’s lakes, dams, and namesakes. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Lake Sidney Lanier is named for Sidney Lanier, who was best known as what?
7. West Point
Right on the Alabama line, West Point Lake stretches roughly 25,900 acres up the Chattahoochee above the town of West Point.
Interstate 85 runs straight past it between Atlanta and Montgomery, and almost everybody keeps driving.
Their loss.
Highland Marina rents cabins and slips over on the LaGrange side.
The lake is a resting stop for migrating birds, so the fishing and the bird watching both pay off.
You chase largemouth and crappie while bald eagles work the same water.
8. Hiawassee
Lake Chatuge wraps around Hiawassee up near the North Carolina line, a 7,000-acre mountain lake the Tennessee Valley Authority built in the 1940s.
Bell Mountain rises over the north shore, and the view from the top costs nothing.
The Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds sit right on the water's edge and host concerts and the fall fair.
Come midweek, and Towns County feels like it belongs to you again.
Rent a pontoon, circle the islands, and watch the sun drop behind the ridge.
Nobody hands you a bill for that.
Where the Crowds Take Over
Now for the three Georgia lakes where you'll fight for a parking spot and a patch of sandbar all summer long.
1. Buford
Lake Lanier holds nearly 700 miles of shoreline an hour north of Atlanta, and on a summer Saturday it can feel like the whole metro showed up.
More than 10 million people visit every year.
That's a lot of wake.
Buford sits at the busy south end near Buford Dam, close to Interstate 985 and the outlet crowds.
Margaritaville at Lanier Islands runs a water park, a beach, and a lakeside resort right there.
It's a blast if the crowd is what you came for.
Just don't expect an empty cove in July.
2. Blue Ridge
Blue Ridge has become one of north Georgia's biggest tourist draws, all cabins and boutiques and the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway.
Lake Blue Ridge sits just south of town, a clear mountain lake the power company dammed on the Toccoa River in 1930.
The water is gorgeous.
So is the traffic on a fall weekend.
Cabin rentals blanket the ridges, and the marina near the dam stays packed from Memorial Day on.
You'll share every overlook.
3. Acworth
Lake Allatoona sits so close to Atlanta, just off Interstate 75 around Acworth and Cartersville, that it ranks as the most-visited Army Corps of Engineers lake in the country.
Acworth goes by the nickname Lake City.
Red Top Mountain State Park juts out on a peninsula between two arms of the water.
The beaches fill by ten.
The coves fill with wake boats by noon.
If you want Allatoona to yourself, you launch at dawn or you wait until October.
By then the wake boats are trailered for the winter, and the coves around Red Top Mountain finally go still.
7 Georgia State Parks Locals Say Beat the Famous Ones
Georgia keeps more than 60 state parks, and the crowds cram into about five of them.
The best hiking, paddling, and stargazing in the state waits at the parks most visitors drive right past.
7 Georgia State Parks Locals Say Beat the Famous Ones
8 Georgia Mountain Town Mistakes Visitors Always Make
A family rolls into Helen picturing a centuries-old German village and finds a Bavarian theme instead.
That gap between the postcard and the real town follows visitors from one mountain stop to the next.
