Stephens County High School history

The land Jesse Walton died defending was sold, modified and remodeled several times over the years and eventually sold to Devereaux Jarrett in 1833.

The white population increased slowly until gold was discovered in northeast Georgia; the ensuing gold rush brought sudden growth, eventually resulting in the removal of the Cherokees from the area in 1838.

Following the end of the Civil War (1861–64), the Chisholm Trail, which passed through Stephens County, developed as a route for Texas cattlemen to drive their cattle to markets in Kansas.

On October 12, 1864, Confederate troops defeated Union troops at the Battle of Narrows (also called the Battle of Currahee), which was fought at a mountain pass in the county.

Because the Chickasaws and others of the Five Tribes supported the Confederacy, they lost their western lands as part of the conditions of the Reconstruction Treaties negotiated in 1866.

The Old Duncan Store, established circa 1867 by Silas Fitzpatrick, was situated along the Chisholm Trail.

Rail travel through the Blue Ridge brought tourists to the Tallulah Gorge beginning in 1882.

Stephens died on March 4 1883, four months after taking office.

In 1892 the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway constructed a line from Minco (in present Grady County) passing through Marlow, Duncan, and Comanche to the Oklahoma-Texas border.

For a time a group of county residents fought to relocate the county seat to Toccoa, leading to such a feud that when the courthouse in Clarksville was blown up in 1898, those advocating the move to Toccoa were blamed.

18, 1905, from parts of Habersham and Franklin Counties.

At 1907 statehood approximately two-thirds of Stephens County was formed from part of Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation, and the western one-third was taken from Comanche County.

In 1918 the O Nah Dy Well in Duncan was the first to produce oil of commercial value.

In 1921 the first graduating class program was held with two students graduating.

One such camp, constructed between July and September 1935, existed in Duncan at the intersection of Cypress and Fifteenth streets.

During the Junior College movement, Duncan Junior College was established in 1937.

Stephens County gained national attention on March 23, 1938, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stopped in Toccoa and made an informal speech from his "Special Train." A few hours later he delivered his famous "Brother's Keeper" speech in Gainesville.

The present courthouse was constructed in 1967.

A decision was made to merge Toccoa High School and Stephens County High in 1971.Thus from a modest beginning by the people of Stephens County, the school system has consistently grown and improved to become one of the finest and highest rated high schools in the country.

The Cherokee Indian translation of the word Eastanollee means, per Trogon's History of Stephens County 1973, "Rocky ledge across the water".

Stephens County again made the national news on November 6, 1977, when the dam above Toccoa Falls burst sending the contents of a small lake onto the campus of Toccoa Falls Institute.

History of Stephens County ([Duncan, Okla.]: Stephens County Historical Society, 1981).

Chris L. Jefferies, Duncan and Stephens County, Oklahoma (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 1999).