Shoal Creek (Cherokee County)

Not to be confused with Shoal Creek in Dawson County, which flows through Dawson Forest.

Rare Fish

Shoal Creek is home to the Cherokee darter, and federal biologists have found the endangered amber darter in its lowest reach, just above the lake.

History Along the Creek

Donaldson’s Furnace

In the woods beside Shoal Creek, near the Etowah’s mouth at Lake Allatoona, stand the ruins of Donaldson’s Furnace. Local tradition says Judge Joseph Donaldson, who owned the land from 1837 until his death in 1892, built the iron furnace with his sons during the Civil War to supply iron to the Confederacy. The war ended before it was finished, and research suggests it never made a single batch of iron: archaeologists found no iron or slag nearby. The stone stack still stands, and a deep ditch that once carried creek water to the furnace, the mill race, is still visible between the stack and the creek. It sits on private ground off the beaten path, so please don’t count on being able to visit.

A Mystery in the Rock

Beside a small waterfall on the creek, a rock face holds one of the most unusual carved panels in north Georgia. Native artists pecked three boxes side by side into the stone: one holds nine circles, each around a small cup-shaped hollow, and another holds a box within a box. It sits only about four inches above the creek’s normal level, and heavy rains cover it completely. A line of six weathered footprints on the same rock appears to step out of the water. The footprints are probably the oldest carvings here.

Archaeologist Johannes Loubser, who studied the site, considers it an outlier, because he found nothing quite like it among the related carvings of north Georgia and western North Carolina. He suggests the panel may picture a Muscogee (Creek) townhouse and may date from roughly 600 to 1,050 years ago. The rock sits not far upstream from Etowah Mounds, which Creek history suggests their ancestors most probably lived in. Nobody knows for sure what it means. Lichen and moss now cover much of the rock. To help protect it, we’re not sharing its location.

Challenges

The lower 15.5 miles of Shoal Creek, from Hwy 140 to Lake Allatoona, don’t meet state standards because of high E. coli bacteria. Georgia first set a cleanup target for the creek in 1998 and updated it in 2023. Common sources of bacteria include failing septic systems, pet waste, and livestock.

The private Lake Arrowhead community near Waleska sits on Lost Town Creek, a Shoal Creek tributary.

How You Can Help

Have your septic system pumped and inspected every few years, pick up after pets, and keep livestock out of streams. Interested in tracking bacteria levels? Join our water monitoring volunteers.