Northeast

Danny Otter calls the whole thing a fortunate accident. After all, he wanted to buy only a small strip of land to give him better access to property he owned next to the recently abandoned Clarkesville Mill, just off the square in Clarkesville.

Fast facts about Fannin County: population, unemployment rate, top employers.

Thirty years ago they hung children's art on clothesline strung between trees in Blue Ridge's city park and called it Arts in the Park.

Louis Schubert says Atlanta traffic was driving him nuts. "If you weren't home by quarter to five, you were in serious trouble," says Schubert, who lived with his wife Sandy off Chamblee-Dunwoody Road near I-285. "We'd get home and hibernate while the traffic happened."

To Ernie Elliott, when ThunderRoad USA closed in 2004, it was like winning the pole position but not finishing the race. "Mistakes were made, there were high hopes but not high support," he says. "But there's no point in calling names. We can't go back and fix it, so we might as well move on down the road."

Fast facts about Dawson County: population, unemployment rate, top employers.

Internal combustion has been the definitive way of life in Dawson County for more than half a century.

If local leaders have their way, those popular television fishing shows will soon be broadcasting from the waters of Lake Hartwell.

Ruth and John Skelton, innkeepers at the historic Skelton House Bed and Breakfast, have watched the changing face of Hartwell and Hart County over the past decade.