dirt road – Building a better South

VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer offers a simple, satisfying photo of the rural South here with this orange clay-sand road through a field in Tattnall County, Ga.

“In my opinion, there’s no better way of experiencing rural South Georgia’s beautiful countryside than a ramble on a dirt road,” he writes here. We agree and have added this to our list of favorite photos published on this site.

Tattnall County in eastern Georgia just south of Interstate 16, is home to about 25,000 people, some 24 percent of whom live below the federal poverty line including 33 percent of children. It’s county seat is Reidsville, known as home for one of the state’s toughest prisons.

Over 1,000 miles of dirt roads criss-cross the 937 square miles of rural Williamsburg County, retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown of Kingstree, S.C. writes.

“The county’s public works department is responsible for maintaining these roads, which is a large expense in the county’s budget, so much so that the county charges residents an annual $15 road maintenance fee in addition to regular property taxes. This one, Mill Dam Road, is in northeastern Williamsburg County.

Williamsburg County, which is about 75 miles north of Charleston, S.C., has a population of just under 34,000 people. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.

About two-thirds of county residents are black, with almost all of those remaining being white. Only 2 percent of those in the county are of Hispanic descent. Some 32.8 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Of the county’s 1,921 firms, 36.5 percent are black-owned — a percentage that is three times South Carolina’s average.

Williamsburg County on Wikipedia.

QuickFacts from the U.S. Census.

Tag: dirt road

Dirt road, Tattnall County, Ga.

Mill Dam Road, Williamsburg County, S.C.