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New dilemma confronts county TO THE EDITOR: Thirty-four years ago I returned to Wilkes County - specifically to live in Tignall and work in Washington. Tignall is where I was born, on Independence Street, on Mallorysville Road. The Tignall and North Wilkes communities are very special places indeed. My brother John would echo these sentiments. We both shared the same dreams for the future of our North Wilkes community, as well as for Wilkes County as a whole. I like to think that I am speaking for John, too, when I express my concern about the current quandary regarding chicken houses, and how this quandary reflects back to previous problems the county has gone through. The first agricultural problem in Wilkes County was one of overplanting. From 1773 to 1793, after the first settlers arrived on Georgia soil, the money crop was tobacco. These settlers had left worn-out land in Virginia and North Carolina - soil like ours, which had been depleted of its nutrients and was affected by erosion. Why, then, did they repeat these same destructive farming practices in Wilkes County? Why did they not profit from earlier mistakes? Was it ignorance, carelessness, or just a matter of sheer survival? Whatever the answers, the results, as pertaining to our lands, should alert us to the danger of short-sightedness. But no, in 1793, the cotton gin was invented and upland short staple cotton replaced tobacco almost overnight with the same results as far as denuding the land. No thought was given to terracing (a necessity in our rolling hills) or to rotation of crops. Did our ancestors realize these problems, or were they so excited over the prospect of wealth and prosperity that they were blinded to the dangers of uncontrolled planting? Tignall's history indicates that Tignall itself came about as the result of cotton. Tignall thrived during the first and second decades of the 20th Century. Then the boll weevil and a drop in cotton prices put our town in a very precarious position. Many properties burned - and before we knew what was happening, it seems, there was an invasion of sawmills and planing mills. Consequently, down came the forests, full scale. Loss of wind breaks, along with additional loss of topsoil to the creeks and rivers further aggravated the land debacle that the over-planting cotton had caused. There seemed to be no restrictions - just wholesale destruction of forests and soil. The picture was bleak. I remember the profuse amounts of dust generated during this time - a true health hazard of my childhood and young adulthood. The decade of the 1930s was, of course, the time of the Great Depression and the wholesale exodus of the younger generation to cities near and far. Then history gave us the New Deal, reforestation, the dairy industry, and the beef cattle industry. Wilkes County, it seemed, had waked up; it became a county "gone to grass." What a wonderful slogan. I like to think that Wilkes County folk "saw the light" and profited from its mistakes and the past. Agricultural courses soon became an integral part of our educational system, and the University of Georgia in nearby Athens thrived with the growth of pertinent agricultural departments. All are there to help answer our questions, then and now. Now we are confronted with a new dilemma - what to do to control a rapidly expanding poultry farm industry. Are we going to allow unrestricted building of this industry in our county? Are we going to close our eyes to all of its possible health ramifications, or are we going to address the problem, here and now, taking everyone's needs into consideration? Health matters are indeed a big concern when addressing this issue, as are property values, the influx of illegal immigrants, and tourists. I urge all citizens to consider these questions as they reflect on our history when deciding in which direction they want our county to go.
SOPHIA B. BAMFORD
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