Oconee County: Things change, sometimes

As a young boy riding with my parents from south Georgia to visit my older siblings who were "off at school" in Athens, Oconee County has always meant one thing to me: You're almost to the Classic City!

At the time, in the 1960s, the 20-something miles of Oconee County consisted of rolling hills and what appeared to be small cattle farms, with an occasional chicken house mixed in here and there. Not long after you entered the county on south US 441, a big barn sat off to the right, with "See Rock City" painted in fresh colors. Beyond that, the wasn't much else between the county line and the small towns of Farmington, Bishop, and the county seat of Watkinsville. Even after Watkinsville, the road was mostly undeveloped until you entered Clarke County on the Macon Highway and came to the stop sign at South Milledge Avenue, where the Davis Brothers restaurant was a great place for us to meet my brother and sister and have lunch too.

Today, it's safe to say that the southern part of Oconee County is not very different than it was 40 years ago. The barn has long since collapsed, but if you know where to look, you can still see the pile of rotten boards that are gradually disintegrating. Farmington is about the same, but the train station has been fixed up into some sort of new-fangled tourist trap. In Bishop, things start to change. The antique stores beckon, selling buyers what sometimes looks like cleaned-up junk that probably sat around someone's yard for most of the 20th century.

As you leave Bishop, the subdivision signs start sprouting. And 4 miles later, where Watkinsville used to start--well, you don't even go through Watkinsville anymore. A bypass built in the 1990s takes you halfway between the actual town and an area called Butler's Crossing, an intersection that looks pretty much like north Atlanta or any other rapidly growing suburb. A Publix sits across the street from a Bell's grocery store, and the ubiquitous dualing chain drug stores are catacornered from each other.

In short, today's Oconee County is centered at Butler's Crossing. The county courthouse still sits on Main Street in Watkinsville, but most other county buildings are along Georgia 53 between town and Butler's Crossing. Subdivisions have replaced farms all along Hog Mountain and Mars Hills Roads, which form the intersection at Butler's. Businesses sit next to homes in a patchwork that only zone-lacking Georgia can produce. Both high schools are in new buildings not far away, near the recently built Civic Center for the arts and Veterans Park, which has sports fields and walking paths.

If you live in this crescent of the county, you are most likely one of the reasons that Oconee has the highest per-capita income in the state. Like 90% of other people in Oconee, you're white, and you're younger than the rest of Georgia, on the average. Everything you need is a short drive away, including the office buildings, urgent-care centers, and strip malls that have sprung up along Georgia 316 as it approaches Athens from Atlanta. In fact, that's probably the road you take to work, since at least half of the employed people in Oconee work in Athens–Clarke County, mostly at the University of Georgia. Doctors, exercise studios, all kinds of shops, veterinarians--everything is in your neighborhood.

But if you live in the rest of Oconee County, everything is far away. If you're well off, as many are, you can afford to drive to Butler's Crossing, or even to Athens or Madison, for shopping. For the 7% of Oconee residents who live in poverty, services are not very accessible. Even if you have transportation, the cost of gas to get to shopping areas could be more than you have to spend once you get there. Without a car, you're stranded in a food desert.

For this semester, I'll be getting to know Oconee County on a deeper level. By covering the heath beat in this rapidly growing but sometimes conflicted county, I hope to explore those areas of health and medicine that challenge citizens of Oconee, including those who live in affluence and those not so lucky. It should be an interesting ride, one with Oconee as the destination this time, not just the last thing that stood between me and Athens.