Do you see it?

The upside down army private’s single stripe in the middle of the Toccoa River?
It looks like a ‘Big V’.

Kinda like the ‘Big W’ from the movie ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World’ – and with that I think I just really dated myself.

In Dial, Georgia just upstream from the old Dial Bridge in the middle of the Toccoa River right next to the Cochran-Davenport Farmstead is a fish weir most likely built by the indigenous Cherokee people.

This structure dates back a couple of hundred years and is still visible today. If you are standing on the shoreline it is hard to discern, but from overhead you can clearly see it.
What is a fish weir you may ask? Well, it’s how the indigenous Cherokee people ‘herded‘ fish into baskets or nets – much easier than a hook and line in my opinion. Fish weirs were structures built within a stream or river designed to route fish into a trap where they could be captured.
The most common form of fish weir in the Southern Appalachians is a “V” shaped rock wall. The V-shape starts near the shore on either side, and the tip points downstream. Fish would enter at the wide part of the ‘V’ and the basket or net would be at the tip of the ‘V’. Now that is pretty indigenously ingenious if you ask me.

It is one of many fish weirs that are still visible along the Toccoa River proving once again that ‘There’s History Around Every Bend’, and sometimes that ‘bend’ is in a river stream if you know where to look.
#HistoryBend