Georgia’s Lake Lanier: A Dark History Of A Drowned Black Town

Lake Lanier is Georgia’s largest lake and is a popular weekend destination suitable for fishing, boating, and other water sports. However, the lake’s history, built over an underwater black ghost town, is almost too horrific to be true.

Named after Sidney Lanier, a poet and Confederate army veteran, Lake Lanier is situated in North Georgia between Gainesville and Buford. The lake was created in the 1950s by flooding valley communities that contained a cemetery. Historians say some unmarked graves and other structures were also drowned.

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More than 200 people have died in swimming and boating accidents on Lake Lanier since 1994, adding to its dark history. Despite many accidental drownings, bodies usually cannot be recovered due to the town lying beneath. In 2013, Usher’s stepson, Kile Glover, died after a jet ski accident at the lake– fueling the rumors that Lake Lanier was hallowed ground.

Vacationers seeking a water escape at the lake may not know it sits on top of the Black town, Oscarville.

Oscarville was burnt down in 1912, and out of fear, roughly 1,000 Black residents fled Oscarville and Forsyth county to escape racialized violence and rape allegations.

Rob Edwards was arrested in September 1912 along with Earnest Knox and Oscar Daniel, both teenagers, all accused of raping and murdering a young white woman named Mae Crow.

Edwards was dragged out of jail, beaten with a crowbar, and lynched from a telephone pole.

Daniel and Knox went to trial and were found guilty on the same day. The boys were sentenced to death by hanging.

After the trials and executions, white men, known as Night Riders, forced Black families out of their homes by burning their land, churches, and schools.

Once Black families fled, Lake Lanier was built on top of what was burned down.

In April of 1947, the Industrial Bureau met with the Chamber of Commerce and greenlit the Buford Dam’s construction. The $1 billion project took four years to complete.

After Lake Lanier first filled in 1959, old Oscarville became non-existent, solely living on through old newspaper articles and ghost stories.

According to the story, one of Lake Lanier’s most popular urban legends follows a Ford sedan carrying two women that fell off a bridge in April 1958 and tumbled into the lake. Some say the ghost of one of the women, dubbed the “Lady of the Lake,” wanders the bridge at night in a blue dress, lost and restless.