The Courthouse is the only thing in Dade County listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The brick building was built in 1928 and located in the middle of the traffic circle in the town square.
Dade county is the most northwestern county in the state. The county geographically feels seperated from the rest of the state, as Lookout Mountain divides the county from the rest of the state. (For many decades, to get anywhere else in GA, you'd have to travel into Tennessee or Alabama and go around the mountain. For this reason, and for the story told below, the county is often called the "State of Dade."
The following story may not be how it actually happened, but it's how the locals tell it (and even appears this way on a historical marker at the courthouse). When Georgia was considering whether or not to secede from the Union and join the confederacy, the residents of Dade County became impatient and voted to secede from the state and the country on their own, becoming their own state. After the civil war, when Georgia rejoined the Union, it was assumed that "State of Dade" rejoined with them, but since they had seceded from the state, they never actually confirmed their readmission to the union. The Confederate flag continued to fly over the courthouse. Finally, in 1945 many locals gathered in a ceremony here to replace the Confederate Flag with a US Flag, officially rejoining Georgia and the Union, with President Truman acknowledging the event.
For the full story:
www.appalachianhistory.net/2011/06/the-myth-of-the-state-...
The story continues: In 1999, when the first U.S. state quarters were being minted, the Georgia quarter had an outline of the state omitting Dade County in the corner. We'll never know if this was intentional or not, but you can see a picture of it here:
www.valuable-coin-stories.com/georgia-quarters.html
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