Land Surveying in Nelson, GA

Land Surveying in Nelson, Georgia

Nelson is a dual jurisdictional city. The Pickens County Joint Comprehensive Plan that Nelson adopted on June 5, 2023 states it directly: the city straddles Pickens County's southern border with Cherokee County and includes portions of both, its incorporated boundary running past the Pickens line into Cherokee. Census geography agrees and puts the city's internal point on the Cherokee side, while Nelson City Hall at 1985 Kennesaw Avenue sits in Pickens County. A Nelson mailing address therefore says nothing at all about which courthouse a plat belongs in, and that is the first thing to establish on any job here.

Land records split with the line. The Pickens portion records with the Pickens County Clerk of Superior Court at 50 North Main Street, Suite 104, in Jasper, about eight road miles north-northwest of town by Canton Road and State Route 53 Business. The Cherokee portion records with the Cherokee County Clerk of Superior Court at 90 North Street, Suite G-170, in Canton, roughly fourteen road miles southwest. Assessment data is split the same way. Pickens County publishes its Board of Tax Assessors records at qpublic.net/ga/pickens, from an office at 1266 East Church Street, Suite 121, in Jasper, and Cherokee County publishes its Board of Assessors data on qPublic from 2782 Marietta Highway in Canton. One line on the ground decides which pair of offices a Nelson parcel answers to.

Approval routes diverge as well. On the Pickens side a rezoning is filed with Pickens County Planning and Development, heard by the Pickens County Planning Commission at a public hearing where the commission's vote is advisory only, and decided by the Pickens County Board of Commissioners; staff will not accept the package without a survey and a legal description in it. On the Cherokee side, minor subdivisions and plan review sit with the Cherokee County Planning and Zoning Department at 1130 Bluffs Parkway in Canton. Inside the city limits Nelson issues its own building and demolition permits, and the city's adopted 2023 to 2027 work program still carries publishing the zoning map, ordinances and procedures online, so City Hall is where the in-city route gets confirmed before a plat is drawn for filing.

Flood work in Nelson runs off the city's own ordinance rather than a county one. Nelson adopted the FEMA flood insurance study for the City of Nelson dated September 29, 2010, and keeps the repository copy of that study and its maps at City Hall for public inspection. Under the ordinance a lowest floor certification stated against mean sea level must be prepared by or under the direct supervision of a registered land surveyor or a professional engineer, and an as-built certification is due immediately after the lowest floor is completed. An appeal from the board of zoning appeals under that ordinance goes to the Superior Court of Pickens County.

The ground itself explains the town. One of the largest marble veins in the world runs through Pickens County, at least four miles long, half a mile deep and nearly that wide in places, and the county comprehensive plan credits marble quarried at Nelson with more than sixty percent of the monuments in Washington, D.C. An 1883 rail line from Atlanta to Tate and Nelson opened those quarries. The Georgia Northeastern Railroad still serves the downtown. Old quarry tracts, rail right of way and industrial parcels leave descriptions that reward careful reading before corners are set.

The same plan describes the residential areas around Nelson as served by public water with no wastewater utilities, which keeps lots larger and puts a septic field into nearly any new layout. The 2020 Census counted 1,145 residents and 449 housing units across 1.52 square miles. Ball Ground lies south on old Highway 5, unincorporated Tate to the north, and the north end of I-575 meets the south end of State Route 515 at the county line southwest of town. Bart Sims, the licensed Georgia land surveyor at S&S Land Surveying in Cedartown, signs and seals the plat, whichever of the two counties it is filed in. Estimates are free.