How Tiger Got It’s Name

Welcome to beautiful Tiger, Georgia! In the 1700’s, the British fought the French for possession of the territory of India. While in this distant land, the British soldiers became used to, and familiar with, the cry and scream of the Bengal tiger, a powerful animal of the Indian jungles. When these same soldiers returned to England after the victorious war, many migrated to the New World, and with their families, settled in this northeast corner of Georgia. Imagine their surprise and shock to hear echoing from the cliffs of a nearby mountain, a piercing cry, as the dying scream of a woman – the same sounds as heard in India made by the black-striped tiger.

Because of these well-known sounds and recurring memories of far-away India, these early settlers called the mountain TIGER. The weird frightening cry was, of course, not made by a tiger, but these screams were made by a native mountain cat, a panther, commonly called a “painter.” Today the “painter” no longer roams these mountains, for as civilization crept in, the “painter” slowly disappeared to more isolated areas and further up into the higher elevations. Nevertheless, the mountain is still called TIGER MOUNTAIN and the neighboring settlement is now the incorporated town of Tiger.

After the area was discovered by tourists at the beginning of Appalachia due to Highway US441 passing through Tiger from New York to Miami, several tourist courts were added as Tiger became a stopping place for the snowbirds. However, in the 1960’s, with the development of interstate highways, the new plan was to bypass some of the sleepy villages of Rabun County, including Tiger, approximately 1 mile away. It is the rebirth of these once forgotten villages that has created more recent development as Tiger has become an attraction to those looking for a ‘piece of the past’.