When the bustle of a city slows, towns dissolve into abandoned buildings or return to woods and crumble into the North Georgia clay. The remains of numerous towns dot the landscape–pockets of life that were lost to fire or drowned by the water of civic works projects. In 1832, Auraria was one of the sites of the original American gold rush. Cassville was a booming educational and cultural epicenter until 1864. Allatoona found its identity as a railroad town. Author and professor Lisa M. Russell unearths the forgotten towns of North Georgia.