History
Our Brief History:
In the Beginning: Where Spring Spends the Summer
“It was no wave of a magic wand that transformed a mountain wilderness into Fairyland. But so quick, so complete has been the transformation that almost magical results have already been achieved.
Yet Fairyland is still at the threshold of its’ real development. As it stands today, it is only a promise of the greater Fairyland of tomorrow.”
-Marketing brochure dated December 6, 1924*
The promise of the “greater Fairyland of tomorrow” started with buyers laying down $2750 per lot, but not for an identified property as it was a lottery drawing. Each buyer had to draw a number from a hat to find out what property they had purchased. What ensued was a bevy of activity as new property owners scurried across Fairyland trying to find what property they had purchased. You can only imagine our mountain landscape dotted with straw hats, long dresses, and seersucker.
This special time in our community’s history could be referred to as the dueling period between the Carter brothers an “almost comical, good-natured rivalry between two brothers and their resorts.” In 1925 Garnet Carter opened the Fairyland Inn followed by Tom Thumb Miniature Golf a few years later. Paul Carter on the other hand opened the Lookout Mountain Hotel in 1928.
As history records the economic prosperity of the Roaring ’20s came to a screeching halt in October of 1929, and the following year both the Fairyland Inn and Lookout Mountain Hotel closed their doors. The Roaring 20’s was officially derailed, but perennial seeds of our future were firmly planted. In time what was the Fairyland Inn became the Fairyland Club and the timing of the sale of Tom Thumb Golf led to something greater, the beginning of Rock City.
The Middle Years, Coming of Age
In the throes of the depression hopefulness was in short supply. Eventually hope returned in full measure when The Lookout Mountain Hotel reopened in 1964 as the new castle home for Covenant College. A discussion between Paul B. Carter and Allen Duble revealed this unexpected dream fulfilled:
“I joined the Covenant College Development Team in 1967 and made it a point to visit Paul Carter and share with him what was going on at the old hotel.
On one visit I told him I dropped by to bring him up to date, and he said why do you keep coming here. You know, it was a bad experience for us. A terrible thing. We all went bankrupt. We dreamed that it would bring people from all over. That they would come from Florida to this place, and they would come to love Lookout Mountain the way we do. And he said that all fell apart.
And I said Mr. Carter, I do not know whether you have thought of this or not, but your dream has been fulfilled in far greater measure than you ever could have dreamed. We have students here from twenty-four states and seventeen foreign countries. They do not come for a weekend. They come for four years. And already a hundred of them have married and settled down here because they love this place.
And I looked at him and there were tears running down his face and he said, I never ever thought of that.” And I said, “well your dream has been fulfilled.” **
Before closing out these middle years, our small community had reached maturity. What was a community called Fairyland, became “a city at last!” In 1969 we were incorporated as the City of Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and what was a dream lost, was reimagined, and returned to life as our “Castle above the Clouds”.
Today – Embracing Tomorrow
We have expanded and grown in our brief history. We have stayed committed to who we are as a community. Our vision as stated in our Comprehensive Plan is to seek to preserve and enhance the peaceful and beautiful nature of our mountain and community. We more than anything else embrace the notion of “one mountain, one community.”
Under the leadership of Mayors Hamilton, Gifford, Glascock, Gothard and Bennett a sewer system was installed, budgetary stability attained, build out of sidewalks occurred, fee structures established to support services and growth, as well as gardens and parks established.
Without question the pièce de résistance is twofold: the recently completed Mountain Hall and coming in the spring of 2023 Our Mountain Center, coupled with the restoration of the historic Fairyland Clubhouse and the Seth Rayner-designed Golf Course.
What was the roaring ‘20’s has returned to Lookout Mountain a hundred years later as the measured renewal of the 2020’s – in time this period may be defined as one of “roaring renewal.”
In the 1924 brochure announcing the birth of our Fairyland community, it stated our mountain was “Where Spring Spends the Summer,” today we would say it is “Our Mountain Home for all Seasons.”
*See Rock City, The History of Rock City Gardens, Tim Hollis
** Covenant College Video Interview with Allen Duble
