T. Addison Richards

As word of Tallulah Falls' beauty spread in the mid-nineteenth century, more visitors started making the trek to the north Georgia mountains. Tallulah Gorge By the early nineteenth century, local as well as national writers extolled this scenic wonder to broad readerships, which increased its allure to tourists, who had to travel for days over mountain trails to see it. Artist and writer Thomas Addison Richards made his engravings of the falls and the gorge a focal point of his book Georgia Illustrated, published in 1842, and made them the title piece of a collection of stories and sketches a decade later, Tallulah and Jocassee (1852). Other antebellum writers extolled the breathtaking beauty and power of this "very grand and wild scene, an immense chasm or ravine," and many commented on the tremendous sound the rushing water produced.