Land Surveying in Rocky Face, GA

Land Surveying at Rocky Face, Georgia

Rocky Face has no city limits. The Census Bureau carries no incorporated place and no census designated place under that name in Georgia, which means there is no municipal zoning counter here and no city plat review. Whitfield County's rules apply to the land directly. The 30740 ZIP code that carries the Rocky Face name is a different shape again: it covers roughly fifty square miles and reaches across the county line into Walker County. A Rocky Face mailing address therefore settles nothing about which county a deed records in. Only the land does.

On the Whitfield side, deeds and plats go to the Clerk of Superior Court at 205 North Selvidge Street in Dalton, about five miles southeast by US 41. Plat review and zoning are handled by Dalton-Whitfield Zoning, whose planning and zoning office sits at 201 South Hamilton Street on the fifth floor. The county sorts divisions of land into three categories, and which one applies changes the whole timeline. An exempt subdivision covers narrow cases, among them a division between beneficiaries in a pending probate estate and the sale of a piece to an adjoining landowner where the remaining donor parcel stays at three acres or more. A minor subdivision creates two or more lots without any new or improved road. Everything else is a major subdivision.

Major subdivisions go before the Dalton-Whitfield Planning Commission, and the path is fixed. The survey is reviewed by zoning staff, then circulated for whatever agency signatures the plat needs, which can include the health department, Dalton Utilities, the fire department and public works. It comes back to zoning staff for the final recording signature. Parcel data for checking a tract beforehand is published by the Whitfield County Board of Assessors at whitfieldassessor.com, which the county links from its own home page.

Mill Creek drains this side of the ridge and FEMA studied it in detail. The profile baselines mapped around Rocky Face cover Mill Creek, Mill Creek Tributary No. 1, Mill Creek Tributary No. 2 and McLellan Creek, with Zone AE and a mapped regulatory floodway on the studied reaches and Zone A elsewhere. The governing Flood Insurance Rate Map panels for the county carry an effective date of September 19, 2007. Anyone buying bottom land along Mill Creek should know which of those two zones the parcel falls in before a closing date is set, because the paperwork each one triggers is different.

The ridge itself is the local complication. Rocky Face Ridge Park, a 1,000 acre Whitfield County park, occupies the high ground, and from the top the view runs south to Kennesaw Mountain, east to Fort Mountain and north to Lookout Mountain. Mill Creek Gap, known here as Buzzard Roost, and Dug Gap cut through the ridge, with Crow Valley opening to the east. Ground that steep needs more instrument setups and more control to hold the same accuracy a level lot would take, and a topographic survey usually becomes the document a grading plan or a septic layout is built on rather than an extra.

Zoning matters before a line is ever drawn. The unified zoning ordinance shared by unincorporated Whitfield County, the City of Dalton and the City of Varnell sets a five acre minimum lot in its General Agriculture district, so the district on a parcel decides whether a proposed split is even possible. The office is at 549 West Ave in Cedartown. William "Bart" Sims is the licensed Georgia land surveyor here, and his seal and signature are what make a Rocky Face plat recordable. Estimates are free.