A History of the Institution

The Georgia General Assembly established the North Georgia Agricultural College in 1873, choosing the site of the former Branch Mint in Dahlonega as its home. The choice was both practical—the mint building and its grounds were available federal property—and symbolic: the college would occupy the literal foundations of the Gold Rush era’s most important economic institution, transforming what had been a center of extraction into a center of cultivation.

The college received federal land-grant designation under the Morrill Act and simultaneously took on a military character that has defined it ever since. In 1996, the institution was designated a senior military college by Congress—one of only six such institutions in the United States, alongside Virginia Military Institute, The Citadel, Texas A&M, Norwich University, and Virginia Tech. The senior military college designation means that UNG’s Corps of Cadets members are eligible to receive Army commissions as officers without completing a separate ROTC program, a distinction that draws students from across the country with serious intentions of military service.

The institution has grown substantially over its history, expanding from a single-campus agricultural and military college to a comprehensive multi-campus university with locations in Dahlonega, Gainesville, Cumming, Oconee, and Blue Ridge. Total enrollment across all campuses exceeds twenty thousand students. The Dahlonega campus, the historic original, retains its distinctive military residential college character and remains the institution’s most recognizable face to the broader public.

Price Memorial Hall and the Gold Dome

Price Memorial Hall, constructed in 1879 on the foundation of the original Branch Mint building, is UNG’s most architecturally significant structure and one of the most recognizable buildings in North Georgia. The building is a Victorian academic structure of red brick with a distinctive octagonal cupola—the dome—that was gilded in 1993 with twenty-three ounces of gold leaf contributed by area gold mines and individuals, including gold donated by the students themselves. The gilding was done by craftsmen who applied genuine gold leaf to the dome’s copper surface, replicating a tradition of using local gold for civic and ceremonial purposes that dates to the Gold Rush era.

The dome is visible from much of the Dahlonega valley and catches the afternoon sun in a way that makes it glitter across the town and surrounding hillsides. Several photographs of the dome with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background have become widely circulated images of Dahlonega, and the building features prominently in the university’s visual identity. The interior of Price Memorial Hall houses the university’s main auditorium and several administrative offices; the building is open to visitors during regular university business hours, and self-guided tour materials are available at the welcome center.

The Corps of Cadets

The Corps of Cadets at UNG’s Dahlonega campus is the visible, living expression of the university’s military heritage. Approximately fifteen hundred students participate in the corps, living in barracks, following a structured daily schedule that includes physical training and formations, and wearing uniforms as their standard campus attire. The corps’ presence gives the Dahlonega campus a character markedly different from a conventional American university—the sight of uniformed cadets marching across the campus grounds or conducting drill on the athletic fields is a regular feature of campus life that visitors frequently find striking.

The academic calendar at UNG includes several formal military events that are open to visitors and are among the most ceremonially impressive spectacles in North Georgia. Pass-in-Review, the formal end-of-semester parade in which the full corps marches in review, draws hundreds of spectators and is typically held on the university’s athletic grounds. The Commissioning Ceremony, at which graduating senior cadets receive their Army officer commissions, is a formal and moving event that families travel long distances to attend. Both events are announced in the university’s public events calendar.

Academic Programs and Research

UNG offers undergraduate degrees across a broad range of disciplines, with particular strengths in nursing, business, education, criminal justice, and the natural sciences. The university’s nursing programs, offered primarily at the Gainesville campus but with instruction at Dahlonega as well, have a strong regional reputation and place a high percentage of graduates into regional healthcare employers. The business programs have expanded in recent years to include graduate-level offerings and a growing emphasis on entrepreneurship and small business development.

The geography of the Dahlonega campus—surrounded by the Chattahoochee National Forest, within a short drive of multiple designated wilderness areas, and at the heart of one of the Southeast’s most ecologically diverse mountain landscapes—makes it a natural base for environmental science, geology, and natural resources research. Faculty and students in these departments regularly conduct fieldwork in the surrounding national forest, studying topics including watershed hydrology, forest ecology, geological mapping, and the environmental legacy of nineteenth-century gold mining.

The University and the Town

The relationship between UNG and the town of Dahlonega is symbiotic in ways that are both obvious and subtle. The university is the largest single employer in Lumpkin County, with faculty, staff, and administrative positions totaling several hundred full-time jobs. The student population of approximately five thousand on the Dahlonega campus (the residential corps population plus commuting and non-corps students) represents a significant economic presence in a town of roughly seven thousand permanent residents—students support local restaurants, shops, and service businesses in ways that extend the town’s commercial vitality well beyond what the resident population alone would sustain.

The cultural contributions of the university to town life are equally important. The Gainesville Symphony Orchestra performs periodic concerts in the UNG Dahlonega auditorium. The university’s theater program stages multiple productions each academic year that are open to the public. The athletic program, competing in the Peach Belt Conference at the NCAA Division II level, fields teams in men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, cross country, and several other sports; home games and meets are open to the community. The university’s library, one of the better research libraries in the region, maintains community borrowing privileges for Lumpkin County residents.

Perhaps most significantly, UNG anchors Dahlonega’s identity as a college town—a quality that attracts a certain kind of resident and visitor, supports a more diverse and intellectually engaged local culture than a town of comparable size would otherwise sustain, and ensures that the town retains a youthful energy and a connection to wider currents of thought and culture even as its historic identity and mountain setting remain the defining features of the visitor experience.

University of North Georgia, Dahlonega Campus: 82 College Circle, Dahlonega, GA 30597 | Phone: (706) 864-1400 | Visitor Parking: available in designated lots on the campus perimeter; visitor passes obtainable at the gatehouse