Mount Airy, GA

Mount Airy is a Habersham County town perched on the Eastern Continental Divide in northeast Georgia, west of Cornelia and along the southern edge of Chattahoochee National Forest. The 2020 census counted 1,391 residents. The town was established in 1874 around a Richmond and Danville railroad station built at the highest elevation on the line between New Orleans and New York. Colonel M. C. Wilcox promoted the place, and its 1,545-foot elevation gave the town its name. Mount Airy spent its early decades as a mountain resort, with summer homes, tourist cottages, and hotels drawing visitors toward the Blue Ridge.

The old resort mood still lingers in the views and in the town's hilltop layout, while Camp Creek drains north toward Hazel Creek and the Soque River. Cornelia handles nearby shopping and larger errands, and forest roads lead south into the national forest. Mount Airy's local scoop is a Georgia hill town built around a railroad summit, with two watersheds on either side and the Blue Ridge stretched out beyond the porches.