How to resolve AdBlock issue? Mountain Park has a rich history
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- Randy Louis Cox | GwinnettCitizen.com
Mountain Park certainly has a rich history, dating back to Gwinnett County’s birth in 1818, and before that when the Creek and Cherokee Indians lived here. And the name Trickum played a major part. Some residents still refer to the FFT/Rockbridge intersection as Trickum, a name that’s been here since early days.
“Trickum seems to be a wordplay on the phrase, ‘trick‘em,’ going back to the mid-1800’s,” said Carl H. Tiegreen, author of History of Possum Corner, Trickum, Goddess & Mountain Park: As Seen from the William Garner Home of Gwinnett County, GA.”
“According to the descendants of that era’s citizens, the name Trickum either refers to a local proprietor’s dishonest ways (which also is how the Trickum community near Marietta got its name) or the desire of some of the area’s residents to trick the Union army as it foraged through here during the Civil War.”.
“But records show that by Union General Geary‘s use of the name Trickum, when he filed a report stating his encampment at Trickum Crossroads, the name had been well-established and already familiar. So, origin seems to lean towards pre-war time, and more likely a reference to the tale of a dishonest proprietor.”
The view looking at the back part of the Garner home.
“If a young man wished to marry, he went on the other side of the spring, or other side of his father’s soil, built his log cabin, cleared a…patch, married and went to multiplying,” Gwinnett County Judge Richard D. Winn was quoted as saying about the first settlers.
In 1864 during the Civil War, Union forces under Gens. Geary and Garrard (attached to Sherman’s Army) had the assignment of foraging the countryside for food and supplies while moving through Atlanta. Each of the detachments camped overnight on the farm of James Bracewell, sheriff of Gwinnett County. The farm was located on the county line behind today’s Kroger at “Trickum’s Crossroads,” the intersection at Five Forks Trickum and Rockbridge Roads, and did their gathering of supplies from there.
The Hudson-Nash Home, now being reconstructed on Five Forks Trickum Road as part of the Yellow River Post Office Park. It was moved there from across the street in 2019. An early resident, Thomas Hudson, owner of 500 acres near the Yellow River, was the postmaster and proprietor of the general store. Hudson supported Hudson’s Guards, a local Confederate militia, during the Civil War. No major battles were fought in this area, but five Union soldiers were killed at a skirmish at the Yellow River Bridge.