Cedar Shoals City Hall ?

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We cruised into this historic north Georgia town on a bright spring morning last weekend.

This town began as a tiny settlement and trading post that evolved at Cedar Shoals, where an ancient Cherokee trail crossed the Oconee River. When we relieved the American Indians of the burden of the lands which they wandered, we at least kept the Indian's names of those places.

In 1801 a group of gentlemen made their way to Cedar Shoals much as today's developers forage the pristine coastal ranges for their next Condo Mondo sites. These five men had higher motives. One of their group, a John Milledge, purchased 600 or so acres on the high ground at Cedar Shoals and donated it to a yet to be built institution of higher learning chartered six years earlier by the state legislature, the General Assembly.

This tract of land laid within the boundary of Jackson County, but the General Assembly cut those 600 odd acres out of Jackson and named it Clarke County in honor of the Revolutionary War hero, Eligah Clarke. Milledge named this town after a cultural center from the Old World. Can you name the city as it is known today ? A small hint follows on the panel below: