‘Awesome Bill from Dawsonville’ is selling 330 acres to Dawson Forest. Here’s why

The Elliott family of NASCAR drivers and engineers has been closely associated with Dawson County for decades.

A siren sounded at the Dawsonville Pool Room after each of Awesome Bill from Dawsonville’s racing victories, an honor that has since been passed down to his son, Chase Elliott, whose triumphs are now celebrated by the same siren.

Now, Bill Elliott and his brother, the engine builder Ernie Elliott, are giving back to north Georgia by selling hundreds of acres of their land to the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area for preservation.

Last month, the board of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) voted to approve the purchase of two tracts of land from the Elliott brothers in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains using federal funds from a grant from the Fish and Wildlife Service. The sale now awaits approval by the state properties commission.

Steve Friedman, chief of real estate at the DNR, told the DNR board, “Both tracts are available because the Elliott brothers wanted to see them protected, and as such they’re selling them for below appraised value.”

Don McGowan, the DNR’s region operations manager for Northeast Georgia, told the Telegraph the area is subject to growing development pressure, noting that its mountain views offer a desirable location for second homes a short drive from Metro Atlanta.

McGowan said the purchase of the Elliott’s land will help the state preserve protected species of fish in the Upper Amicalola Creek watershed.

“By getting that property and preserving the upper reaches of that watershed we’re helping to prevent the siltation and erosion that sometimes can come when land is cleared for development. That’s of huge ecological importance,” McGowan said.

When McGowan visited the site last spring to discuss the sale with the Elliott brothers, “they expressed their desire for it to be conserved because of the beauty of it,” he said.

McGowan described the land as “real wooded, mostly mature hardwood forest. It’s got some spectacular mountain views especially in the winter time when the leaves are off, and very little development.”

The Dawson Forest WMA is a 25,500-acre tract of land whose southernmost chunk is owned by the city of Atlanta, which bought a section of it in the 1970s to use for the site of an airport that was never built, and then turned it over to the state for management.

The area is used by hunters, fishermen, hikers and rafters.

One of the land parcels is a 62-acre property solely owned by Bill Elliott, which Friedman said “has road frontage which will open up a part of the WMA that has been very difficult for the public to get to.” The second, 275-acre tract, is owned by both Bill and Ernie Elliott.

The proposed purchase prices of the two pieces of land are $301,279 and $1,324,312, respectively.

While the DNR says this is less than market value for the land, the sale price nevertheless perhaps justifies another of Awesome Bill’s nicknames.

The racer gained the moniker ‘Million Dollar Bill’ after his 1985 season’s triumphs won him a cash prize of that amount from a tobacco company.

If approved, the purchase “fills a gap in the WMA, which will improve the public’s ability to recreate and our ability to manage,” Friedman said.