What to See in Dawsonville - Top Sights and Attractions

Sports facility in Dawson County, Georgia. Atlanta Motorsports Park is an American auto racing facility that contains two driving circuits in the North Georgia mountains. Designed by Formula One architect Hermann Tilke, Atlanta Motorsports Park's two-mile main road course is held in high regard by outlets such as Road & Track, who named it to its list of Top 10 Tracks in North America. The park is known for the aggressive elevation changes and technical layout. Atlanta Motorsports Park has two “signature” corners as a tribute to Europe's road circuits – Belgium's Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and Germany's Nürburgring.

In close proximity to the main circuit, Atlanta Motorsports Park's Driver Development Center has an on-site skid pad and an ice hill, providing a place to test in both wet and dry conditions. Atlanta Motorsports Park's second circuit is a professional kart circuit built to CIK Level A/1 Standards. It is.83 miles in length and has 43 feet of elevation changes.^[1]

Dawson Forest is a 10,130-acre public-use forest located in Dawson County, Georgia, southwest of Dawsonville. It is owned by the city of Atlanta, but is considered a state forest, as it is managed by the Georgia Forestry Commission.

It was purchased in 1971 from Lockheed, and was the previous site of the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory (GNAL). The property is currently referred to as the Dawson Forest City of Atlanta Tract and managed by the Georgia Forestry Commission with a trail system open to the public. The tract is located approximately ten miles from the end of limited access on Georgia 400 in Cumming. An area of 3 acres (12,000 m2) previously occupied by GNAL was restricted following 1978 testing which found residual nuclear radiation from the experiments performed there. Subsequent studies in 1991 and 1997 found radiation levels to be at or slightly above normal background radiation levels. The property also encompasses Amicalola Creek, which various groups are lobbying to be designated as a scenic river, and which flows over Amicalola Falls within Amicalola Falls State Park.

It was intended and retained by the city as a potential site for Atlanta's second airport, however in late summer 2009 it was made known that part may be used for the Shoal Creek Reservoir, a reservoir that would send water mainly to the city of Atlanta system, at its water works in Sandy Springs. However, this 38-mile (61 km) pipeline would result in an interbasin transfer from the Etowah River to the Chattahoochee River, which is currently prohibited by the metro Atlanta water district, and would leave less water in Lake Allatoona. Additionally, Alabama has sued to stop nearly everything Georgia has tried to do with the upstream water supply, including the Hickory Log Creek reservoir. In 2009, it was estimated that these lawsuits prevented permitting and construction that would take only four years. The lake would be 2,000 acres (8.1 km2), leaving the remainder as forest.^[3]

The Dawson County Jail in Dawsonville, Georgia, also known as Old Dawson County Jail, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1881 and modified in 1931, 1974, and 1979. It was built by M.B. McGinty, a builder from Athens, Georgia.

The jail is a two-story 33 feet (10 m) by 26 feet (7.9 m) red brick, Italianate-style building with a hipped roof that used to be covered by "good heart-pine shingles laid 5 inches to the weather". The exterior walls are 13-inch (0.33 m) thick and its interior walls are 9-inch (0.23 m) thick.

It is the third building to be Dawson County's jail; the first, built in 1858, was destroyed by fire set by a prisoner in 1865 or 1866. The second jail, with wooden walls and floors, had a "criminal floor" which was noted in 1873 to be "fine", but the "debtor's floor" was "not secure".^[5]