Community Profiles

By Erica Schmidt eschmidt@dawsonnews.com

One of the things that makes Dawson County so unique is the wide range of people and families living here. From lifelong residents to transplants that only recently began calling Dawson County home, the citizens of our county each contribute to making it the vibrant place it is. Here are a few of the county’s citizens and why they love living in Dawson.

NAME: Bill Elliott WHO HE IS: Elliott is a retired professional NASCAR driver, whose successful racing career earned him the nickname “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville”.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN DAWSON AND

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE COUNTY? Elliott was born and raised in Dawson County and has lived here his entire life. “Both my mother and dad grew up in the county and that’s where I call home,” Elliott said. “It’s been a home all my life and it was just a great place to grow up.” In his time growing up in Dawsonville, Elliott remembers some of the pieces of history that shaped the county’s legacy. “For me, growing up here it was kind of a sleepy little community with its own personality and there were a lot of people who did different things to make a living, including some illegal things like making moonshine which has become a whole separate industry today,” Elliott said. “Between what NASCAR’s ties are here and the moonshiners and what that brought to the county, that’s all part of it.” Throughout his time living in the county, Bill has seen Dawson change a lot from what it was when he was growing up here. “Since the 400 corridor came through, that’s what to me has changed the county dramatically — when I was growing up here, we didn’t even have a traffic light,” Elliott said. “Now we have Amicalola Falls and all the parks on the north end and all the growth on the south end, and that’s all a part of how our county continues to change and what makes it what it is.”

WHAT DO YOU LOVE THE MOST ABOUT DAWSON

COUNTY? One of the things Elliott said makes Dawson a great place to live is how multifaceted it is.

“The county pretty much speaks for itself and it has a little bit of everything,” Elliott said. “It’s relatively close to Forsyth and all the growth there, it has a lake and everything else and I think that’s what attracts people to come here.” As a lifelong resident of the county, the other thing Bill likes about the county is its sense of community. “I’ve enjoyed living here,” Bill said. “It’s a great place and a great community, and it’s got a lot of good people in it.”

NAME: Laura Fulcher WHO SHE IS: Fulcher is the Public Affairs Officer for the Dawson County Government. She fills many different roles in this job, and if you’ve ever dealt with the local government it’s a safe bet you’ve come in contact with Laura.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN DAWSON AND

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE COUNTY? Fulcher and her husband Charlie, along with their dog Mabel, moved to Dawson County from Jasper in October 2015. Both Laura and Charlie grew up in Gwinnett County, and they soon realized that driving from Jasper back to Gwinnett to see their families was a long trip to make each weekend. “We’re both big family people, so it was like we were going out of town every weekend,” Fulcher said. “Charlie has a law practice in Jasper and I was working at the University of North Georgia at the time, so when we decided to move Dawson was a happy in between. NAME: Judy Harris WHO SHE IS: Harris is the president of the Dawson County Historical Society and knows everything there is to know about the local history of the county.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN DAWSON AND

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE COUNTY? Harris was born and raised in Dawson County and has lived here for her whole life, 74 years this upcoming December. Her entire family, all the way back to her Laura and Charlie both graduated from UNG and had driven through Dawson for years, so they were familiar with the county and drawn to it by its smallcounty feel and spacious living. “That’s what really drew us here,” Fulcher said. “the neighborhood we live in has really large lots, so we have neighbors, but we’re not all on top of each other so it’s just peaceful.”

WHAT DO YOU LOVE THE MOST ABOUT DAWSON

COUNTY? One of Fulcher’s favorite things about Dawson is the community and how the citizens of the county pull together no matter what. “I think the people definitely make Dawson unique; it’s not quite Mayberry but the community really does come together,” Fulcher said. “Case in point whenever Chase Elliott wins a NASCAR race, the community pages blow up and the communities rally around him; or during COVID-19, people would go out of their way to help each other out.” The feeling of community is similar to what Laura and Charlie both got to experience while they were growing up, and the fact that Dawson County upholds these community values is important to both of them. “Dawson manages to keep that small town living and small town community going,” Fulcher said. “I would want to raise my family right here where the kids in our neighborhood play outside and ride their bikes to the pool, that kind of thing.” Another thing Fulcher says makes Dawson unique is how much there is to do in a relatively small county, from hiking to shopping and everything in between. “We have Burt’s Pumpkin Patch, Amicalola, Fausett Farms, the farmer’s market — when you stop and think about it, there’s really any outdoor activity that you would want to do and that’s not as easy to access in some of the other counties as it is here,” Fulcher said. “I think that Dawson County is like the

hidden gem of North Georgia.” grandparents, lived and grew up in Dawson County. “I was born right down town in the beautiful little house right below El Rio, and since then that house has been a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a funeral home and now it’s a home again,” Harris said. “And I can look up the hill from where I live now and see the house I lived in for pretty much my whole life.” In her time living in Dawson, Harris has seen many

aspects about the county evolve and change. “I remember when everything used to close on Wednesday afternoons and when we didn’t actually have a grocery store,” Harris said. “All the grade levels first through twelfth went to school together in one building where the junior high school is now, and of course that was way before 400 was down there and when Perimeter Road was just dirt.” While the change over the years has happened very quickly, overall the evolution of the county has brought good changes along with it according to Harris . NAME: Briana Ray WHO SHE IS: Ray is a recent graduate of Dawson County High School. In her time at DCHS, Ray participated in several different sports, clubs, and groups there, as well as being active in her church and mission trips.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN DAWSON AND

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE COUNTY? Ray was born in India and came to the United States in 2009. She and her family lived in between Cumming and Dawsonville until 2017, when Ray’s mother wanted to move a little further north. “My mom wanted to move more north toward the lake, so we moved up to Dawson,” Ray said. “I was a little nervous to move to a different county because all my older siblings went to North Forsyth “I wish the growth would slow down a little bit because I love my little town, but I also really enjoy having a Kroger and an Ingles and a Food Lion,” Harris said.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE THE MOST ABOUT DAWSON

COUNTY? One of the things Harris said makes Dawson County unique is its history. “We have the museum downtown that’s very interesting, and our historical society office is in the old courthouse in the middle of the square that’s so beautiful inside too,” Harris said. One piece of this local history especially close to Judy’s heart is that The Pool Room, one of the most well-known local restaurants, offers a burger named after her father. “My daddy cooked at the Pool Room, and everybody would laugh because they’d go in and he’d only fix the burgers one way with mustard, ketchup, slaw and onions,” Harris said. “His name was Buster but everybody called him Bully, so they named that burger after him and if you go into the Pool Room today there’s still an option on the menu to order a ‘Bully Burger’.” Another thing that Harris loves about the county is its people, both those who have spent their entire lives in Dawson like Harris has and those who have moved to the county later on. “The people are just home folks, and even most of the people that have moved in later on sort of just blend in with us,” Harris said. “It’s always just been home; we could go from house to house and feel at

home anywhere that we went.”

High School and I was planning on it too, but going into my freshman year we moved counties and schools.” While moving to a new county was stressful, Ray is a self-proclaimed “people person” who was determined to make a new life for herself in her time at Dawson County High School. “I love meeting new people, and I was very thankful for the Christian-based groups the school had because you don’t find that everywhere,” Ray said. “I like how this is a small town and there’s one high school, so everybody knows everybody else.” NAME: John and Mimi Seibel WHO THEY ARE: John and Mimi own and operate John Seibel Photography, a local business that is well-known within the Dawson community. The couple shoots headshots for all the members of the local government, both in the city and the county, as well as business photography and commercial work.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN DAWSON AND

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE COUNTY? John and Mimi moved to Dawson County from Austin, Texas in 2005. The decision to move to Dawson came out of an extensive search of where the couple wanted to move. “We looked all over the U.S. and got it down to four states and then one,” John Seibel said. “And when that state ended up being Georgia, we came over and looked around in a few different places where we thought it would be favorable to live, and lo and behold we ended up finding a house and settling down in Dawson County.” The couple already had a successful photography business in Texas, and with their move to Georgia their photography came along. Upon moving to the county, the Seibels immediately joined several groups in Dawson, including the Dawson County Chamber of Commerce. According to Seibel, this choice made a difference in them being able to build their photography business again in a new area. “We got here in 2005, and by the time we got our business up and running the economy dipped in 2008 so not a lot of people wanted those photos, so we had to kind of take a step back and decide what we wanted to do,” John Seibel said. “But getting aligned with the Chamber of Commerce made them an invaluable business ally and we ended up

WHAT DO YOU LOVE THE MOST ABOUT DAWSON

COUNTY? One of the things Briana said makes Dawson County unique in her eyes is how friendly the people are. “I go running around the school and around the town and people driving by always honk and wave at me; I might not know them but they know me,” Ray said. “So if I’m having a bad day and I’m out on my run and someone honks or says hi that always just brightens up my day — you wouldn’t get that in a different county where not everyone knows

everybody else.”

starting to do a lot more commercial work.” The Seibels try to give back to Dawson as much as possible, and one of the ways they do so is through providing their services for events such as the city’s “photos with Santa” at Christmas time. “We’ve done those photos every year for about 10 years now, and that’s a way we love to give back to the community,” John Seibel said.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE THE MOST ABOUT DAWSON

COUNTY? As photographers, one of the Seibels’ favorite things about the county is its natural beauty, as well as the ability to live in a more rural area that still has access to nearby bigger cities and their resources. “This part of the country was attractive to us; we liked the idea of being close to the coast and the city, nature, the mountains, and so on,” John Seibel said. “I always get to brag about being 15 miles away from one of the tallest waterfalls east of the Mississippi, and photographically this is just a beautiful part of the country.”

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