Colbert Report Creates Bad Rapport

Well s**t. My hometown finally gets its 15 seconds of fame, and it gets called crappy by a kooky talk show host.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that one Stephen Colbert made reference to beautiful Canton, Georgia, located north of Atlanta in the Appalachian foothills, as "crappy." Why he picked the county seat of Cherokee County is unclear. As the AJC points out, there are Cantons in 10 other states.

Mr. Colbert's report fails to note that he's never been to Canton, Georgia. I don't think he's fit to judge my little town, despite its shortcomings.

It seems to be doing just fine where it counts. It's added 12,000 residents in the last 8 years, making it one of the fastest growing communities in the nation. I don't think people would be flocking there if they thought it was "crappy."

The only people going to the Canton in Ohio are the members of Senator McCain's entourage. It's lost 2,000 people since the 2000 Census, typical of the rust belt.

I'm tempted to sink to Mr. Colbert's level and make fun of his hometown...except that it's my adopted hometown. That's right folks, he was born right here in Washington--city that I love. It's clearly not a crappy place.

So I won't sink to that level. I will encourage Mr. Colbert, however, to take the time to visit my hometown on the Etowah. I think Mr. Colbert would find that Canton is "More than a City."

The photo at top was taken (by me) in January 2008 from the Town Square, looking southeast into the intersection of Main and Church Streets.

The More Things Change....

Change, it seems, is inevitable. I grew up in a little community dominated by pastures. For my entire life, there was a barn over on East Cherokee Drive that looked a little shaky. Even so, this barn withstood a tornado and years of age. After I went off to Georgia Tech, it started to lean further and further, but I always said that nothing could knock it over. Apparently, I was wrong. Shortly after I moved out of state, it fell over.

The collapse of this rickety old structure symbolizes for me the change which is besieging my home county. Even when I was living only a 45 miles away in Atlanta, each of my visits home showed me farms turned into tract houses, forests turned into shopping centers, and hills turned into buildable lots.

Historic Gresham's Mill on Sixes Road

A rural stretch of East Cherokee Drive in Hickory Flat

And while it's true that not all change is bad, some of it makes me sick. At some level I wonder how many resources we will waste on the sprawl which will become untenable without cheap oil. Perhaps another factor in my feeling of distaste comes from seeing so much of what I knew disappear.

The Appalachian mountains are a backdrop for sprawl east of Canton

New tract housing in South Canton

Shopping and Parking just off of Interstate 575

But, as I said, not all change is bad. The city of Woodstock, about ten miles south of Canton, for many years was the second largest city in Cherokee County. With increasing suburbanization Woodstock's proximity to Atlanta caused it to surpass Canton in population. But even in the midst of the sprawlscape, a ray of hope can be seen. Centered on the old Woodstock train station on Main Street, is a new new-urbanist development. Hedgewood Properties is developing a mix of lofts, offices, and shops. The development will complement Woodstock's Main Street businesses and is adjacent to a proposed commuter rail station on the Atlanta-Marietta-Canton line. While the state has yet to fund even the first leg of Georgia's commuter rail program, this development makes the Canton line's construction even more likely.

Historic Main Street in Woodstock

The central park in Downtown Woodstock

The old Woodstock railroad station and Hedgewood redevelopment


Main Street, old and new

At any rate, on the eve of my return to Maryland, I have mixed feelings about the change that my four months of absence has wrought on Cherokee County. On the one hand, I am hopeful because of the downtown redevelopments under construction in Canton and Woodstock. And I am also disappointed in the continued reliance on sprawl to increase the tax base of the local governments here. I also wonder what my hometown will look like when I next return.

Hiding in Plain Sight?

I think that old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees doesn't apply to cell towers. A few years ago, maybe during my high school tenure, this particular cell tower was erected, about 3 miles from my home. As it was in a wooded area, one of the conditions of its zoning approval was that it be disguised.

Let's see a show of hands. Who thinks that this is a tree?

I think I'm more offended by the fact that they added branches than I am by the presence of the tower. Of course, that might not be a fair statement, because I'm not really offended by the idea of cell phone towers. It's not like the rolling hills of East Cherokee are Denali or anything. If any words could be used to describe this ZIP code, they would be 'Atlanta's next suburban frontier.'

Ignoring my opinion about the intelligence of that development pattern, it seems to me that if we are going to erect cell towers (or radio towers, for that matter)--and we are--we might as well be up front about it. Especially, when hiding the fact makes it more obvious. There are plenty of other towers in the area which chose not to be species-confused. This tower, however, is at least three times the height of the next tallest Longleaf Pine in the immediate vicinity.

Really now, what was the point? It just seems absurd to try to dress up a cell tower for Halloween (all year round).

Of course, this exercise in futility might give us some other ideas about how to disguise LULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Uses). For instance, we could disguise the controversial proposed aerial guideway for Metro through Tysons Corner as telephone lines. We could just add some fake transformers and no one would notice, right? How about billboards? My hometown has virtually banned them. Why not just add some pretend Dogwood blossoms, then people will think they were just shrubs (and they would remember to shop at Q-Mart, too).

Jokes aside, though, there are good reasons to hide less than attractive uses. When it makes sense to do so, hiding things like subway vent shafts, power substations, and even transformers, can protect the urban fabric and land values. WMATA uses shrubs to hide their vents and emergency exits, I've seen house facades used to hide substations, and rock-like covers are used fairly frequently to hide transformers for underground utilities. Church steeples, water towers, and high rises make good hiding places for broadcasting antennas. A few particularly creative instances include using tall, free-standing restaurants/observation decks to hide these facilities (like the CN Tower or Fernsehturm).

Sometimes, though, we should just call a spade a spade.

"More Than A City?"

Maybe there's something to those "Southern Nights," as Glen Campbell so affectionately refers to them. I spent many nights under those southern skys and I sometimes find myself wanting to return to my hometown. Perhaps part of that is from the perspective of a planning student who sees so much going right and so much going on in the traditional exurban fashion. Regardless, I doubt that I will ever become more than a brief holiday visitor ever again.

I grew up near the town of Canton, and since I am spending my holiday there, it seems appropriate to report back on more than just my visit. It's becoming harder and harder for me to recognize this place where I spent my entire pre-college life.


Canton only dates back to the 1830s when the Cherokee Indians were forced off of their land. The city was incorporated in 1834 as the county seat of Cherokee County. The name comes from the original aspirations of some early settlers to cultivate a silk industry here. The climate, of course, didn't support that production, but Canton was destined to stay in textiles. The town mainly served as a trading center until after the Civil War. In 1864, Union troops under the command of General William T. Sherman burned Canton in the Atlanta Campaign.


Nevertheless, Canton rebuilt and the future was much brighter with the arrival of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad in the 1870s. In 1899, the Canton Cotton Mills Company opened Mill Number 1. Canton continued to grow, and the textile industry dominated the economy. In 1924, Mill Number 2 opened and included a mill village about 1 mile north of Canton proper.

Mill Number 1, 1899-1967

Mill Number 2, now loft apartments, SR 5 Bus. in foreground.

Canton was largely a factory town for many years. Until 1981 the textile mills were just about the only game in town, but cheap labor in Asia put an end to denim manufacture in the Georgia foothills. Were we to take a look at Canton at the beginning of the 1980s, then, we would find a town of several thousand, mostly removed from the economy of far away Atlanta.

By the 1990s, however, spurred on with the 1985 opening of Interstate 575, a housing boom was beginning to show Canton as an exurb of the far-flung metropolitan region. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Census showed 7,700 residents. That estimate had almost doubled by 2005, and the construction of housing and retail is transforming this city, 40 miles north of Atlanta, into something barely distinguishable from the identical schlock which characterizes the hinterlands from Los Angeles to Bangor.

The sprawlscape, however, has not yet swallowed all of the uniqueness of the place that has been home for my predecessors since the Great Depression. And while it would still seem a bit far-fetched to think of Canton as a potential setting for "It's A Wonderful Life," that image might not be too inaccurate either. The cotton fields and verdant woodlands might have been converted into vinyl siding and striped asphalt, but the heart of my little hometown beats yet.

Downtown Canton, as the locals (and the Highway Department) call it, is doing well. The first round of decentralization, which hit in the mid-70s took much of the business away from the Town Square, but public monies and a resurgance in support for anything unique in the "Mass Production Zone " (as the band Rush calls it) has helped keep a coronary at bay.

So the few square blocks centered on Main and Church, just across the Square from the Cherokee County Courthouse remains, for me, recognizable. Recent streetscape improvements give Downtown a luster I've never seen. Now, instead of serving as a makeshift office park for law offices, restaurants, shops, and residences are beginning to return life to the quiet streets.

The historic Couthouse dates from 1928 and is made of white Georgia marble

The newer Courthouse dominates the town Square

One thing that has helped to keep people in the older part of Canton is the government. In this respect I don't mean subsidies, but rather the administration of the government. As Cherokee County's seat of government, the Courthouse bring residents to Downtown Canton for every reason from auctions to traffic tickets. Still, the massive Justice Center takes away valuable land that could be used for housing or commerce. While the tradeoff is the presence of many daytime only workers and other visitors, I'm not sure that opportunities are not being missed. At any rate, the administration of the county will likely continue in its role of securing Downtown Canton as the governmental seat of the county.

The Square was at the center of the county for many decades

Looking east from the Square on Main Street

Looking west from the Square on Main

Looking north from the Square on Church Street we see the old First UMC

The area immediately adjacent to the Square is a great place to people watch. The lunch crowd is pretty strong here during the week. With all of the county government workers, jurors, lawyers, and other businessmen, the sidewalks stay pretty busy. There are a few restaurants and shops within walking distance, but there is a lack of some of the essential needs to foster a walking community. A corner market would be a major asset to the neighborhood, as would a pharmacy. Another need for downtown is housing. Many Main Street houses have been converted to other uses. Recent efforts, however, by the Economic Development and Planning Departments have led to increased residential construction immediately adjacent to the central business district.

The Canton Theatre, center of redevelopment efforts

Canton has put significant resources into rebuilding Downtown. The first major step in these efforts was the renovation of the old Main Street moviehouse. Now a stage theatre, the Canton Theatre has injected life and monies into the older part of town. It has been spruced up with the subsequent streetscape project. Continued investment will only further this part of the city.

Recently, East Marietta Street, one block east of the Square, has seen redevelopment, including one condo-above-restaurant building.

Looking down East Marietta Street from Main

The new condo building, one block off Main

Looking north along East Marietta toward Main

One step that could be taken to improve the number of people living Downtown would be to convert the existing upper levels of commercial buildings into apartments and condos as they were in days past. Even without that, however, some good housing stock stands within a few blocks of the Square.

The Gault House stands majestically at the end of the East Marietta streetscape


A beautiful house on East Marietta

New townhouses a block from Main on West Marietta Street

Another asset of the older part of Canton is the ease with which one can walk to wonderful parks. The Square, is of course, one that has already been mentioned. Brown Park is also a beautiful green space. Now fronting City Hall (which only moved there about a year ago), the park stands on what had been Joseph Brown's home site. Joseph Brown was governor of Georgia during the Civil War, and had been a resident of Canton for some time. The city has also made a major addition to the city's parklands with the construction of a riverfront park known as Heritage Park. The park is the first section of what will eventually become a greenway along the length of the Etowah River through the city. The city's recreational services have been further bolstered with the construction of a community center just across the river from downtown. It is adjacent to the new Heritage Park.

Brown Park, the arch is the Civil War and World War I memorial

The new Heritage Park, the Waleska Street bridge in distance, new community center at right

Perhaps one day Canton's Main Street will again be the main street. One day, Americans will realize the value of the hearts of our many varied and unique small towns. Even though Canton's policies seem to indicate a preference for redevelopment, its zoning changes show that the strip shopping mall and the tract house are the preferred method of growth. As long as this bias is present, Downtown Canton will suffer. Only a true Smart Growth initiative--one that eschews sprawl--will be able to bring the glory days back to what used to be the center of this county.

"Everybody Loves the Sound of a Train"

One of my old hobbies, when I lived in Canton was trainspotting. My hometown is served by a shortline railroad constructed in the 1870s. The line, which went through many different owners over the years, is now run as the Georgia Northeastern Railroad (GNRR). The line, originally intended to run from Atlanta to Knoxville eventually came to serve the mountain and foothill communities along what is now Georgia 5.

The GNRR used to run only one train a day on weekdays, and I could easily drive the route ahead of the train, which navigates many sharp curves and has a top speed of about 25 mph. So catching the train at a crossing was always a fun pastime.

The train comes into view. The old Canton
depot stood across the tracks, in the center
of the photo, until it burned in 1971.

I haven't been railfanning the GNRR in a while, but when I was shopping with my mother on the 26th, I managed to catch sight of the train as we turned onto Highway 5. We headed over to meet the train at the Marietta Street crossing just south of Downtown Canton. I decided to play with the video function of my camera, and I was rewarded with what I think is a pretty good first try.


Here a short freight led by GNRR 2000 blows for the Marietta Street Crossing in Canton, Georgia.

I don't know why I am so drawn to trains, but I have a feeling that those roots are intertwined with this railroad. Overall, this was a wonderful reminder of days gone by and a great surprise.

Crossing Marietta Street

Incidentally, this line is part of a proposed commuter rail network for Atlanta. The GNRR is receptive, but in order for trains to reach Atlanta, they must travel over CSXT trackage between Elizabeth (Marietta) and Downtown Atlanta. The mayor of Canton, Cecil Pruitt, has long championed commuter rail, but the state legislature has continued to serve as a barrier to smart transportation not only in this corridor but throughout metro Atlanta.

Perhaps one day I'll be able to photograph restored passenger service on the line too.