Experience the best of Blue Ridge

Blue Ridge is the seat of Fannin County in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia, close to the Tennessee and North Carolina lines. A small downtown of antique shops and cafés sits around an old railway depot, and the Toccoa River, a cold trout stream, runs through the valley, with Lake Blue Ridge, a reservoir ringed by forested hills, to the east.

A scenic railway follows the Toccoa River to McCaysville, Georgia, and Copperhill, Tennessee, twin towns divided by a state line. The Chattahoochee National Forest surrounds the town with waterfalls and trails, and Springer Mountain, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail, lies in the hills to the south-east. Brasstown Bald, the highest peak in Georgia, rises farther east.

Mountain cooking means biscuits and gravy, fried trout and barbecue, and apple orchards in the surrounding hills sell cider and doughnuts in autumn, while small wineries have appeared on the slopes. The woods burn red and gold in October, and summers are cooler than in Atlanta.