University of North Georgia
The University of North Georgia opened its first classes in 1873 in a building that once minted gold coins. That original structure, the old U.S. Mint in Dahlonega, had been shut down during the Civil War. Now it housed a fledgling college with 177 students, 98 men and 79 women, making it the first coeducational college in the state. From that single gold-town campus, UNG has grown into a multi-campus institution with nearly 20,000 enrolled students and a designation that sets it apart from almost every other university in the country. It is one of only six senior military colleges in the United States, and Georgia's own Board of Regents calls it "The Military College of Georgia."
How did a branch college born from agricultural legislation become a flagship military institution? What happened to those original gold-rush buildings? And what does a campus where cannon fire marks the end of each afternoon actually feel like to the students who live there? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.
North Georgia Agricultural College was created with funds from the Morrill Act, a federal law that directed revenue from land grants toward higher education. A local congressman named William Pierce Price pushed officials at the University of Georgia to channel part of those funds into Dahlonega, his own birthplace. The school that resulted opened in 1873 as an offsite branch of UGA's College of Agriculture and Mechanical.
Price's advocacy had lasting consequences. Classes ran in the former U.S. Mint building, a structure whose original purpose had been to refine and coin the gold discovered in the Georgia mountains before the Civil War. The college awarded its first degrees in 1879, and that graduating class of four, three men and one woman, made North Georgia the first public institution in Georgia to grant a degree to a female student. One detail that comes through clearly from the early record: the college did not just admit women alongside men as an afterthought. It opened as a coeducational institution from the very first day of classes.
The Morrill Act also carried a military requirement. Land-grant schools were obligated to teach military tactics, which planted the seed of what would grow into the ROTC program. The National Defense Act of 1916 formalized that presence, and the Army ROTC program has been active on the Dahlonega campus ever since that year.
By 1929 the word "Agricultural" had been dropped from the school's name, and it became simply North Georgia College. Three years later, in 1932, the institution was reduced to a two-year junior college, a significant contraction that reflected the pressures of the Depression era. World War II brought a different kind of disruption: male enrollment dropped sharply as students joined the war effort. The college responded by hosting an Army Specialized Training Program designed to prepare junior officers.
After the war ended, returning servicemen used G.I. Bill benefits to attend school, and that surge of veterans helped restore enrollment and justify re-expansion. By 1946 the college had been reinstated as a four-year institution. The 1950s brought a curious piece of civic pride: Dahlonega supplied gold for leafing the state capitol building. Around the same time, plans were drawn up to gold-leaf Price Memorial Hall on campus, though that project did not reach completion until 1973. The college was granted university status in 1996, more than a century after Price lobbied for its founding.
Gainesville Junior College followed a separate path. Founded in Oakwood, Georgia in 1964, it began holding classes in 1966 and operated for years under an open-access mission, accepting any applicant who held a high school diploma. Over time it expanded into Watkinsville and Cumming and shifted its name twice, first to Gainesville College and then to Gainesville State College. Before its merger with North Georgia, it had already begun moving toward four-year baccalaureate programs.
At 5:00 p.m. each afternoon on the Dahlonega campus, a cannon fires. All outdoor activity stops. Cadets stand at attention and salute the American flag. Civilians stop as well, remove their hats, face the flag, and place their right hand over their hearts. This daily ceremony, called Retreat, has been a fixture of campus life for decades. The cannon used is a 1902 three-inch pack howitzer, restored by the North Georgia Parents Association and housed at the Retreat Triangle near the Drill Field.
The Drill Field itself sits at the heart of the campus, roughly 800 feet long and framed by a sidewalk that students are expected to walk rather than cut across the field itself. On the 18th of April 2009, the field was formally dedicated to retired General William J. Livsey, whose name it now carries officially, though most students call it simply "the Drill Field." Campus legend holds that a decommissioned World War II submarine is buried beneath its center, a story possibly inspired by the nearby Chestatee River Diving Bell.
Over 600 students participate in the ROTC program in any given year. UNG is also home to the Blue Ridge Rifles, a precision drill platoon formed in 1950 as the Honor Platoon and renamed in 1958 after a Civil War unit that served in Dahlonega. The Blue Ridge Rifles won first place at the East Tennessee State University Drill Meet in 1971, and went on to claim national champion status in both 2001 and 2002.
The Golden Eagle Band, which was formed as a component of the Corps of Cadets in 1873, takes on an unusual role for a marching band. Because UNG does not have a football team, the band performs primarily at Corps of Cadets functions and in parades across the region. Every spring it tours the Southeastern United States in support of military reviews and processions.
Price Memorial Hall, completed in 1879 on the former site of the Dahlonega Mint, still anchors the Dahlonega campus. Its gold-leafed steeple remains a distinctive feature of the skyline. The Dahlonega campus lies approximately 66 miles from downtown Atlanta and 60 miles from downtown Athens, placing it within reach of both cities while remaining in the North Georgia mountains.
The Gainesville campus, located within the city limits of Oakwood despite its name, has no on-campus dormitories. Students there rely on nearby apartments and townhomes. The Oconee campus in Watkinsville was established in 2003, originally as part of Gainesville State College, and serves students in the Athens area from a non-residential facility accessible from US-441. The Cumming campus opened on GA 400 in 2012 as a joint venture between the two predecessor institutions called University Center 400, then was renamed the Cumming campus when the merger took effect in January 2013.
The newest location is Blue Ridge, which opened on the 13th of August 2015. Its focus is on dual enrollment for high school students, classes for first-time freshmen, and adult learners. Students there can also complete coursework through eCore, an online platform designed to carry them through the first two years of a degree. Collectively, the Dahlonega, Oakwood, and Watkinsville campuses cover 794 acres of land.
UNG offers 129 associate and baccalaureate degrees for undergraduates, along with thirteen graduate degree programs and one doctoral program. The university holds a distinction it shares with no other institution in Georgia: it is the only university in the state authorized to offer a minor in leadership, a reflection of its designation as a state leadership institution.
The honors program at UNG produces notably strong completion rates. Eighty percent of honors students graduate in four years, and 95% finish within five. Forty percent of honors students study abroad before graduation. UNG holds membership in the Georgia Collegiate Honors Council, the Southern Regional Honors Council, and the National Collegiate Honors Council.
UNG is also designated as a flagship ROTC Center for Chinese language and culture. The goal is to produce cadets who are proficient in both Mandarin and the cultural context needed to work alongside Chinese military counterparts. The Federal Service Language Academy, a summer program for high school students, extends this multilingual focus further. Students in that three-week program can study Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Korean, German, or Portuguese, and hear from speakers representing agencies including the DEA, FBI, State Department, and Peace Corps. After the program, students may earn high school credit if their school approves it.
The Cadet English Language Training Team, created through a partnership with US Army Cadet Command, sends cadets from institutions across the United States to foreign countries to teach English to military counterparts abroad, with a long-term aim of establishing a service-learning model that can be replicated across every Unified Combatant Command Area of Responsibility.
The North Georgia Arch at the Dahlonega campus entrance was built by the Class of 1951 to honor classmates who died in the Korean War. Tradition holds that freshmen walk only through the smaller adjacent archway, not through the larger central opening. Reveille sounds at 6:30 each morning, and cadets and civilians alike stop and face the flag at that signal. At midnight, Taps marks the close of the day, and cadets are required to be in their dorms except on designated open weekends.
The Memorial Wall, built in 1983 in front of Memorial Hall Gymnasium, lists the names of UNG students and alumni who died in military service. As of 2013, that list included 174 names spanning World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Students do not enter the area around the wall except to stop and pay respect.
Of the 18,219 undergraduate students enrolled at UNG, 44% are male and 56% female. Seventy percent attend full time. Out of 7,541 students at the Dahlonega campus, 36% live in college-owned housing, with a permanent resident population of roughly 2,500 during fall and spring semesters. Six residence halls serve the Dahlonega campus: Donovan Hall, Lewis Hall, Lewis Annex, North Georgia Suites, The Commons, and Owen Hall, each offering traditional, suite-style, or apartment-style rooms.
The university has more than 200 student organizations across its campuses. About 5% of male undergraduates and 10% of female undergraduates participate in Greek life, overseen by the Interfraternity Council, the Panhellenic Council, and the Unified Greek Council. The student-run multimedia news organization is called The Vanguard.
UNG's athletic teams carried the name "Saints" until the 2013 expansion of the university, when they became the Nighthawks. The university competes at the NCAA Division II level, primarily in the Peach Belt Conference, a membership that began with the 2005-06 academic year. Before that, from 1999-2000 through 2004-05, UNG competed in what was then called the Georgia-Alabama-Carolina Conference of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization later renamed the Southern States Athletic Conference.
One program breaks from the Division II pattern: the rifle team competes in the Southern Conference at the NCAA Division I level. All 13 intercollegiate programs are housed on the Dahlonega campus. Men's sports include baseball, basketball, golf, soccer, and tennis. Women's sports include basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, and track and field. Rifle is the sole mixed sport. The Faculty Athletics Representative to the NCAA is Margaret Poitevint, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, a credit worth noting because it connects academic oversight directly to the athletic program. The absence of a football team, unusual for a university of UNG's size, shapes the entire athletic and cultural calendar, giving the Corps of Cadets and the Golden Eagle Band a centrality that a football program would normally absorb.
Common questions
When was the University of North Georgia founded?
The University of North Georgia was established on the 8th of January 2013, through the merger of North Georgia College and State University and Gainesville State College. North Georgia College and State University itself traces its roots to 1873, when North Georgia Agricultural College opened its first classes.
Why is the University of North Georgia called the Military College of Georgia?
UNG is designated "The Military College of Georgia" by the Georgia Board of Regents and the Georgia General Assembly. It is one of only six senior military colleges in the United States, with an Army ROTC program that has been active on the Dahlonega campus since 1916 and over 600 ROTC students enrolled in any given year.
Where are the University of North Georgia campuses located?
UNG has campuses in Dahlonega, Oakwood (known as the Gainesville campus), Watkinsville (the Oconee campus), Cumming, and Blue Ridge. The Dahlonega, Oakwood, and Watkinsville campuses together cover 794 acres.
What was the first building used for classes at the University of North Georgia?
The original North Georgia Agricultural College held classes in the old U.S. Mint building in Dahlonega, which had been shut down during the Civil War. Price Memorial Hall was later constructed on that same site and completed in 1879; its gold-leafed steeple remains a landmark of the Dahlonega campus.
How many students attend the University of North Georgia?
UNG has nearly 20,000 enrolled students, making it the sixth-largest public university in Georgia. Of 18,219 undergraduates, 56% are female and 44% are male, with 70% attending full time.
What athletic conference does the University of North Georgia compete in?
UNG competes primarily at the NCAA Division II level in the Peach Belt Conference, a membership that began with the 2005-06 academic year. The rifle team is an exception, competing at the NCAA Division I level in the Southern Conference.
All sources
32 references cited across the entry
- 1Enrollment hits record 16,508 studentsEdie Rogers — University of North Georgia — September 22, 2014
- 2U.S. and Canadian 2025 NCSE Participating Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year 2025 Endowment Market ValueNational Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)
- 5University of North GeorgiaU.S. News & World Report L.P.
- 6Shannon named president of UNGUniversity of North Georgia — June 1, 2023
- 7North Georgia College and State UniversityU.S. News — 2011
- 8BookGeorgia's Best Kept Secret: A History of North Georgia CollegeWilliam Pittman Roberts — Alumni Association of North Georgia College — 1998
- 10History
- 24College Scorecard: University of North GeorgiaUnited States Department of Education
- 3010 USC § 2111a - Support for senior military collegesCornell University Law School
- 33Saint's SportsNorth Georgia