Sugar Hill Historic Preservation Society

The city’s most recent historic marker highlights one of the oldest landmarks that exists in the city, older than the city itself – a Southern Red Oak. Between 150 – 190 years-old with a circumference of 17-feet, this tree has lived in the area since the Civil War.

Our Champion Tree welcomed the area’s early settlers, likely moving here in hopes of striking gold.  Many of these miners mined from Sugar Hill all the way to the Chattahoochee River at gold mines like the 1901 Level Creek Mining Company. Before street names and paved roads, the Southern Red Oak served as a physical landmark for those traveling to and from the area, to be sure they weren’t lost on their way home from school or the mines. The early settlers organized Sugar Hill’s Baptist Church and the Sugar Hill Historic Cemetery in 1886 and what would eventually become the City of Sugar Hill in 1939 continued to grow as a community, with a Southern Red Oak tree present every step of the way.