Lake Hartwell

The lake is named for a woman who is said to have captured six Loyalist soldiers single handed, and there may be a grave that proves it.

Nancy Hart lived on the Georgia frontier during the Revolution. By most accounts she stood about six feet tall, was cross eyed, and was handy with a musket. In the story that made her name, a party of Loyalist soldiers turned up at her cabin demanding a meal. She fed them, kept the drink coming, and passed their muskets out through a gap in the wall one at a time until somebody noticed. She shot the first man who moved and held the rest until her husband arrived with help.

That stayed folklore for well over a century. Then in 1912, railway workers digging less than a mile from where her cabin had stood turned up six skeletons buried side by side, every neck broken.

Georgia named a county after her, the only one in the state named for a woman. Also a city, a highway, a state park, this dam, and the fifty six thousand acres behind it.