Nine Months to Bavaria: John Kollock's Sketch Changes Everything
Near Helen, Georgia
The story of Helen's transformation begins in nineteen sixty-eight with a desperate idea and an artist who had lived in Germany. Local businessman Pete Hodkinson gathered shop owners to discuss what could be done. The town had been declining since the mill closed nearly forty years before.
Something drastic was needed. John Kollock was the artist. He had lived in Germany and knew what Bavarian mountain villages looked like: steep rooflines, arched windows, decorative woodwork painted in bright colors, flower boxes, murals.
Kollock sat down and sketched the existing storefronts of Helen with these details added. The bones of the buildings were plain brick and frame construction, but with the right treatment, Kollock argued, they could look like something from the Bavarian Alps. Crews went to work painting facades, adding gingerbread trim, installing window boxes, and changing roofline profiles.
By nineteen seventy-two, Kollock's paintings had become real buildings, and Alpine Helen was open for business. Visitors came to see the Bavarian village in the north Georgia mountains. They told their friends and came back.
The mountain town that the timber industry had abandoned remade itself entirely from scratch, becoming one of the most visited places in Georgia.
