Cherokee’s Past, Present, and Future: A Lesson in Land Use
This is a guest post by Raleigh Morgan, a life-long resident of Cherokee County.
It’s political season again.
In Cherokee County, we need to elect a State Senator and a Post 1 Commissioner due to the departure of Senator Brandon Beach to support the Trump administration. While I’m interested in the State Senate race, it’s the Commissioner race for Post 1 that will hold my attention.
You’re going to hear a lot of rhetoric about “protecting our way of life” and “keeping Cherokee rural.” I’ve lived here since 1957, so I’ve seen it all and heard it all. Back then, the road I lived on was a dirt road. If anyone thinks Cherokee is still rural, I’ve got a chicken farm in the Atlanta city limits—just two blocks from City Hall—to sell you. (And yes, I’ve actually raised around 50,000 chickens on a two-month cycle for several years. By my count, I raised about 2.5 million chickens during that time. But I digress.)
Time for a history lesson.
When I was at Cherokee High School, the big talk was about building an airport on the site of a former nuclear reactor and a road called the Outer Perimeter. It was supposed to be another road like I-285, except 30-plus miles outside Atlanta, running through rural counties like Cherokee. The project was a massive undertaking, so the DOT decided to break it up into four arcs: the Eastern, Southern, Western, and Northern Arc. The Northern Arc got the most attention because of current and projected growth in the northern corridor. But it wasn’t the Northern Arc that kicked off growth in Cherokee County—it was a former Commission Chairman named Emily Lemcke.
The first Commissioner I knew was a man named Tramel Carmichael. At the time, Cherokee County had a single commissioner. The State of Georgia called these officials “Road Commissioners”—he was responsible for running and maintaining the county’s roads and infrastructure. There were three important positions in the county: the Commissioner, the Sheriff, and the School Superintendent.
Eventually, the political powers in the county decided that the Commissioner’s office was too powerful for one person, so they petitioned the state to switch to a multi-member commission. Voters approved the change. But that first multi-member commission ended in disaster and was voted out in the next election, returning us to a single Commissioner, led by Gene Hobgood for several years. Still, the political powers pushed again for a multi-member commission.
This second incarnation of the Cherokee County multi-member commission elected a lady named Emily Lemcke as Chairman. Ms. Lemcke made many promises—spending money on parks, recreation, roads, infrastructure, and generally growing the county for the people who elected her. There was just one problem: we didn’t have the funds or tax base of a rural county like Cherokee. But she had a plan to raise revenue.
Since agriculture was the predominant land use, she used a little-known state law to collect a “personal property tax” on livestock, farm equipment, and tree farms. The result of taxing farmers was devastating. Farmers went out of business left and right to avoid taxes they couldn’t afford. My family was one of them. The result was the largest land selloff in Cherokee County history.
Now, who do you think could afford 50, 100, 200-acre tracts? Not people looking to get into farming. Developers. They were the only ones who could afford it. That set off a growth bomb in Cherokee County.
Farmers were left with land that produced no income—where before it had produced enough to pay taxes, upkeep, and insurance. Now, owning the land was a liability they couldn’t sustain. So they sold it. That’s just the way business works. How many big-box stores are sitting empty because the market changed?
Because farmers had to sell their property, they were labeled greedy. But they weren’t greedy—neither are the developers, who build what people want and desire. You know who is greedy? The person who wants to control other people’s property without having a stake in it. The person who wants to “keep the view” they don’t own or “protect their property value” at someone else’s expense.
Around this time, the population was moving from Roswell into the new suburbs. Planned communities farther north like Bent Tree and Big Canoe were being built out. Owning “a piece of rural life” became trendy—even though this growth was what killed the rural way of life.
Then the Northern Arc became serious again, along with a movement to “protect” the perceived rural lifestyle. A group formed called the Northern Arc Task Force to fight the Northern Arc. They believed the Northern Arc would create growth. But growth had already started, and it wasn’t going to be stopped.
They succeeded in stopping the Northern Arc, thanks to then-Governor Sonny Perdue. But they didn’t stop the need for it. That horse had left the barn and wasn’t coming back. Since then, plenty of groups have tried—and failed—to stop or slow growth. They’re known as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and No Growth groups. But the only real chance to slow growth was stopping Commissioner Lemcke from driving farmers out of business. Like I said, it’s much too late. The horse has left the building—along with Elvis.
As traffic in Cherokee County became unbearable, GDOT, under Governor Nathan Deal’s leadership, looked for ways to address it. A plan was developed to build a multi-lane road connecting I-75 to I-85 using several corridors. The idea was to preserve the communities along Highway 20.
But once again, a reincarnation of the Northern Arc Task Force formed—this time called the Highway 20 Coalition. Their goal was to keep the road inside the existing Highway 20 corridor. I warned at the time: if they succeeded, every community along the route would be bulldozed and destroyed. Nobody listened—and they won.
Then GDOT released the plans for Highway 20’s expansion—and it shocked everyone. It wouldn’t be just four lanes. It would be six lanes, with additional turn lanes. GDOT’s reasoning? If they only built four lanes, the road would already be over capacity when finished, doing little to solve traffic. That project is well underway now—and it’s ripping the heart out of every community along its path, just as I predicted.
Folks, growth is here. It’s been here for a long time. People claiming we can keep our area “rural” aren’t looking logically at what’s happened—or what’s happening. Houses on two-acre lots aren’t rural.
All we can do now is try to control growth as best we can. The biggest danger now is trying to prevent Highway 20 from becoming another Cobb County Highway 41—and trying to keep it from being the deadliest highway in Georgia. After all, it will be the east-west truck route between I-75 and I-85.
What we need from our Commissioner candidates isn’t talk about stopping growth or preserving a “rural” lifestyle. We haven’t had a rural lifestyle in years—unless you think DeKalb County is rural. Sorry, but two-acre lots aren’t rural; they’re just poor land use planning.
We need a Commissioner who will tell us the truth and commit to smart, controlled growth with plenty of green space and parks—because we’re going to need them now more than ever.
As I see it, that’s the only way to save Cherokee County.
