Land Surveying in Shannon, GA

Land Surveying in Shannon, Georgia

Shannon sits in northeastern Floyd County, just off Highway 53 on the road between Rome and Calhoun. It is a census designated place rather than a city, so it has a boundary for counting and none for governing. Settlement here goes back to the 1830s under two earlier names, Ridge Valley and then Hermitage. The 2020 Census counted 1,919 residents, 839 households and 912 housing units on 4.98 square miles of land, and recorded every one of those residents as living in a rural area. That single figure explains the work: tracts here are large enough that where the line runs is a real question rather than a formality.

Rome holds the record. Recording happens about eight miles southwest, at the Deed Room in Suite 103 of 3 Government Plaza, where the Clerk of Superior Court files and indexes every Floyd County deed and plat. Valuation is a separate office and a separate database: the Floyd County Board of Assessors publishes parcel records, acreage and appraisals at qpublic.net/ga/floyd/, and a Shannon address searched there returns the Floyd County parcel number that ties the two together. Acreage on the assessor's card is a valuation figure, not a surveyed quantity, and on a rural tract the difference between the two is often the reason someone calls.

Flood mapping around Shannon works differently from the rest of the Rome area, and it matters more than it sounds. Within roughly a mile of the center of the community the National Flood Hazard Layer shows only Zone A and Zone X. There is no detailed study stream here, no Zone AE, and no published base flood elevation lines at all. Zone A is FEMA's approximate category, mapped without base flood elevations. When a lender or a floodplain administrator needs a number on a Shannon parcel, that number generally has to be established in the field rather than read off the map.

Water still shapes the ground. Zuber Creek drains the country immediately south, and Armuchee Creek, a tributary of the Oostanaula River, reaches its mouth about two miles west of Shannon. Relief comes in with Ward Mountain, which USGS elevation data puts near 1,156 feet, about two miles south-southeast of a community sitting near 687 feet. Almost 470 feet of fall across a couple of miles is enough to change how a driveway, a septic field or a detention pond has to be laid out, and it is enough to change the contour interval a plan is required to carry. The Unified Land Development Code sets that interval by slope: two foot contours on ground under two percent, five foot contours from two to eight percent, and ten foot contours on anything steeper than eight percent.

A division of land in Shannon is a Floyd County process governed by Article 6 of that same code. Before an application for final plat approval can even be submitted for a minor subdivision, the Public Works Director has to certify that every proposed lot is adequately served by existing streets and public utilities. On a rural tract with a long private drive and no public sewer, that certification is the step that decides whether the split is simple or whether it turns into a subdivision with improvements to install. Larger divisions go to the Rome-Floyd County Planning Commission, and only after approval can the clerk record the plat and can lots be sold.

The firm behind this work is S&S Land Surveying, at 549 West Ave in Cedartown. Its owner, William "Bart" Sims, is the licensed Georgia surveyor who seals a Shannon plat. Ask for an estimate and it costs nothing.