County officials think tourism efforts are the way to go

Mitch Talley, Whitfield County director of communications

The way Mike Babb sees it, I-75 is just a catch-and-release trout stream flowing through Whitfield County.

“You go out there and throw out your line, reel one in, have your photo made with them, then throw them back and let them go about their way,” the chairman of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners says with a laugh.

Of course, he’s not talking about fish, he’s referring to potential tourists passing through every day on their way to and from Florida.

“That way you don’t have to build new schools, you don’t have to build hospitals, you don’t have to build infrastructure to keep them up, and yet you make money off them,” Babb said.

He and other tourism leaders here believe Whitfield County has plenty of “bait” to entice tourists to pull off I-75 and stay a while.

“We believe we’ve got a lot of things to offer people,” Babb said. “We just need to make them know about it.”

Imagine, for example, a county that can boast of still having:

• A house where Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had his headquarters for a few days during the Civil War.

• A restored tunnel that played a legendary role in a locomotive chase during that war.

• A historic cotton mill and auxiliary buildings playing vibrant roles more than a century after they were built.

• A 155-year-old mill that draws thousands every year for a country fair.

• Historic Cherokee Indian sites just a few minutes away.

• A pristine river to float down in a kayak,

• And two depots where visitors can watch a pair of railroad lines that echo with the rumble of trains every day.

You don’t have to imagine too hard because all those tourist draws are right here in Dalton and Whitfield County, ready to offer a history lesson that comes to life before your very eyes.

“Weekend trips … there’s several million people in the Metro Atlanta area,” Babb says. “Wouldn’t it be great just to have them say, ‘Let’s do an overnighter, run up to Dalton, stay overnight, eat at a few places, go up to Chickamauga to the battlefield, come down to Tunnel Hill and see the railroad tunnel, maybe eat lunch at the Depot here, or bring their kayak up and get on the Conasauga River and float down it.”

Fortunately for history buffs, city and county officials have long made decisions to help preserve much of the important past here.

“There’s hundreds of thousands of people that travel that interstate every week between the Midwest and Florida, going on vacation,” Babb said. “We’d like to pull them off. But to do that, you’ve got to have something for them to pull off to look at. And that’s where historic preservation comes in.”

Quality of life

Babb calls it a tourism economic development process, “but it’s also a quality of life process for us. You don’t want everything built up and paved over. You’d like to have some remembrances of your history. You want greenspace areas, and this all works together to make for a better quality of life for the people who do live here, and then better economics from getting people who are passing through to stay a few days or even a few hours in Whitfield County and spend some money. I think it’s extremely important that we preserve what we can, where we can.”

Having grown up in Cobb County (Atlanta), Babb saw firsthand what can happen to some historic sites with the tremendous growth there, “and when I first came into office in Whitfield County in 1997,” he says, “I thought that we only had ‘x’ number of years — maybe 10 years — to try to lock up a lot of things that need to be preserved in Whitfield County. Of course, with the economy changing, we have a little bit longer time period to salvage what we can, what we need to preserve before growth catches up with it. If you look at the population growth trends, we expect to see the population double in Whitfield County over the next 30 years. So you need to preserve as much as you can while it’s still there to preserve.”

Just in time for the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War in 2011, Dalton and Whitfield County can boast of having a treasure trove of war-related sites.

“Of course, Dalton was the starting point for the Atlanta Campaign, so we’re very important to that,” Babb said. “We’ve had the donations of the 80 acres of property at Tunnel Hill by the Holcombs, had the state turn the tunnel over to the city of Tunnel Hill. We’ve got a $1 million grant that refurbished the tunnel, and we’ve got the Heritage Center at Tunnel Hill. The tunnel is 160 years old, and it played a big role in the Great Locomotive Chase during the Civil War. We’ve got the donation of the Clisby Austin House up there, where Gen. Sherman had his headquarters, so that adds up to a nice little pocket park.

“We’ve got Dug Gap Battle Park that’s open for people to see. Of course, we’ve got Prater’s Mill that has been donated to the county by the Boring family. We have 600 acres of the Rocky Face battlefield north of Mill Creek Gap that was purchased through greenspace funds and donations and battlefield preservation funds, so we’re going to develop the walking trails on that property to the breastworks that are still there. There’s just a lot of things for people to come by and see in Whitfield County.”

Railroad lines and an arts district

Of course, no mention of tourist sites here would be complete without talking about the railroad lines that run through downtown Dalton.

“We have a lot of train enthusiasts in this country that like to get out and take photographs of trains and locomotives and all,” Babb said. “There’s no better place to do it than from the refurbished Freight Depot in Dalton because the two railroads (CSX and Norfolk Southern) cross one another right there close to the depot. Get on the overhead bridge and you can get some overhead shots of the trains coming through. I think we’ve got a great chance to draw people who are interested in the Civil War and train transportation.”

That’s not to mention the historic Crown Mill area near downtown Dalton. The old mill, instead of being torn down as in some cities, has been renovated into loft apartments, and the city unveiled plans recently that would help transform that area into a thriving arts and cultural district that could be popular with locals and tourists alike.

Right next to the mill is the 126-year-old Crown Archives, the old cotton mill offices that are being renovated by the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society to be used for displaying historic items, and the 170-year-old Hamilton House, the oldest house in Dalton that was used as a hospital during the Civil War and will soon be used to show off the historical society’s collection of textile and carpet-related artifacts, among others, after repairs to a bulging back wall are completed and the inside of the house is renovated.

“That area will be a draw for people interested in the history of our area,” Babb said, “because that is basically the heart and the bank of all our history in this area.”

Still much left to do

More work remains to be done, however, in saving the past, Babb said.

“People think that all the national forest land is government land around us,” he said, “but a lot of the ridges west of Dalton actually belong to private individuals. And a lot of the breastworks along these ridges are in danger as long as they’re in private hands because they can develop those ridges just like Mount Sinai’s been developed.”

His goal is for agreements to be reached with the owners of the ridge land.

“You can give tax breaks for people who are willing to preserve their property,” Babb said, “put it into a land bank so to speak. I would hope that we could do something along that line in addition to buying property outright and trying to save historic property. You need to have greenspace, view sheds; everybody likes to come and see pretty scenery. I would hope to keep as much greenspace in Whitfield County as we can.”

Past vs. future

Babb points out that even as Whitfield County is in an economic downturn the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades, county commissioners have been trying to preserve historic property, while also developing property for economic growth.

“There’s always going to be conflicts” between those two agendas, he said. “We’ve had so much history up in this Northwest Georgia area that there’s very little land that you can disturb that hasn’t had some kind of historical significance. You know, the Confederate and Union troops passed down through the area where we’re now developing an industrial park down at the Carbondale area.”

It’s hard not to affect history, he says, “but you know, you’ve got to look out for the people that are here today. You can honor the people who were in the past but you’ve also got to look after the people today.”

He says the county’s goal is to reach a happy medium between economic growth and historic preservation and quality of life.

“That’s the balancing act we are continually running,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve tapped as much tourism as we can in this area. But we are seeing some things come to fruition, I guess you’d say, like the recreation parks.”

He pointed out a recent Dixie Youth state baseball tournament at Edwards Park, which opened in 2009 after major renovations.

“That was a long time getting that park done,” Babb said, “but now we’ve got some good ball fields up there, and I’m told that because of the tournament, all the hotels in Dalton were full that weekend. That means they paid the extra penny tax that we just passed to help the Visitors Bureau drive tourism, so that’s going to help us in the future. And all those players and their families had to eat somewhere, so they paid sales tax on what they ate to help fund our county government, not to mention the profit for the people that sell them the food.”

Brett Huske, who was named director of the Dalton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) in January, is optimistic about building tourism here.

“I think there is great opportunity in the sports area, whether it is softball, tennis or cycling,” he said. “All those areas present some great opportunities to bring in visitors.”

Indeed, the CVB recently announced that Dalton will be hosting the 2011 National Collegiate Wrestling Duals in January at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center, with 20 teams and more than 500 athletes and coaches and their fans descending here.

The Dalton-Whitfield County “trout stream” looks to be busy for a long time.

Local News

Search Results

Related Links

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us