The Mystery of the Blount County Plates

Yes, I know.  Another entry about license plates.  Please, do not groan just yet, as I am confident you will find this tale interesting and with a splash of intrigue.  It will also supply you with a solid piece of cocktail party trivia (as promised in this blog’s first entry!).

Back to the story at hand.  When you are constantly on the lookout for rare county plates, you begin to take notice of certain trends.  One, of course, is rather drab: the proliferation of “Big Four” county plates (Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Cobb) in Georgia – in fact, they make up over 33% of the total registered passenger vehicles in the state!  This always leaves you hungry for something fresh, and when a rare county plate does not appear for you,  it is always nice to see an out of state tag every once in a while to break the monotony.  You will never be hard pressed to find a selection of Alabamas, Floridas, and Tennessees on the roads of Atlanta.

One observation that frequently came up between John and me was the proliferation of Blount County, Tennessee plates throughout the Atlanta metro area.  Everywhere we go around Atlanta, there seems to be far more than a fair share of Blount County plates on the roadways.  Here is a just a MINUTE sampling of the Blounts I have come across:

Now you may ask – what on earth is Blount County?  Don’t fret — we were asking the same question.  Neither of us have visited Blount County, nor honestly knew where it was located, so here are some basic facts on this mysterious and elusive place:

Location: East Tennessee, part of the Knoxville MSA

County Seat: Maryville

Population: 124,177 (2012 US Census estimate; 10th most populous in TN)

Notability: None?  (Maybe aside from hosting a massive DENSO manufacturing plant that makes automotive stop/starters, employing over 3,000 in the county. Or maybe as home of Alcoa, the site of a large aluminum smelting plant that serves as the town’s namesake.  Yikes.  OK, I must concede they do have Blackberry Farm, which I would enjoy visiting at some point)

With this knowledge at hand, John and I attempted to rationalize this phenomenon, but we were left with more questions than answers, chiefly:

• Why were there so many more Blounts on the roads than plates from Hamilton,  Davidson, Rutherford, Knox or Williamson, counties with significantly greater populations and virtually the same (if not better) access to Atlanta via major roadways?
• Could these people all just be passing through town?  If, so where are they going?  In fact, there is not even an interstate highway in Blount County (with the exception of the small spur of I-140 ending in Alcoa), which made it even more perplexing.
• Is there actually a method or direction to their travels?  Is everyone in Blount County literally just an itinerant gypsy, having registered their cars back in Blount for a life of endless road wanderings, never to return?
• If Atlanta is truly their destination, what could these people possibly be doing in here? Is life so incredibly mundane in Blount County that there has been some mass exodus of Blountians to the great city of Atlanta?  But if this is the case, why would they not attempt to stimulate their senses in closer cities with a similar array of amenities, such as Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Nashville?

Alas, the presence of these plates vexed us for months.  There was even talk of an East Tennessee CountyTrip to attempt to find the source of these cars and plates. Maybe there was some secret underground factory churning out cars with Blount County plates, or some nifty contraption that surreptitiously slapped a Blount County plate on every non-local car caught passing through the county.  Maybe there was some sort of secret society or guild of freemasons that used the Blount County plate as a nifty form of identification of one of their own.  Maybe it was all government conspiracy. We thought the answer would never be discovered.

Fortunately, after months without answers, the powers of Google came to my rescue. I guess I never thought anyone would take to the Internet to inquire about such an absurd and obscure phenomenon, but I was wrong.  I found two interesting threads on the topic, and I highly recommend glancing at both.  The first message board is from a Kentucky fan in South Florida fretting about the number Blount plates he sees – and the responses he gets confirm they are rental cars!  The second board, from the flyertalk online travel community, basically confirms that these are more specifically Hertz rental cars.  Chalky White gives a most interesting statement:

Someone told me that Hertz has basically paid the salary for Blount County to hire an employee that handles renewing Hertz cars. Seems like a good deal to me–pay some bumpkin $30,000 to handle a ton of renewals for your company. Saves a lot of headache and you get the benefit of having one person to talk to for all your issues.

But of all places, why Blount? dwbf11 gives the reasoning:

Blount County, Tennessee has no “Wheel Tax” meaning there is no yearly fee to re-register a license plate there. Makes sense why a large agency such as Hertz would try to plate many of its cars there, since registration fees are probably a huge annual cost, and if they can get the plate once and keep using it free of renewal charges, that would represent a huge savings.

Just for my own confirmation, I just so happened to cruise by a Hertz office on my way home from work, and low and behold, look what I saw (pardon for the blurry images.. I was in a slow moving traffic jam):

Blounts out the kazoo!  There were probably far more hiding back there.

So there you have it, and I guess we can consider this mystery solved.  Have any of you been to Blount County?  Is it worth a visit?

What’s in an MSA?

Time for some facts and figures, brought to you in large part by The United States Census Bureau – even in light of the current federal government shutdown. The city of Atlanta, according a 2012 estimate, has a total of 443,775 residents; the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell Metropolitan Statistical Area has a mind-boggling 5,457,831 residents. But what exactly is a Metropolitan Statistical Area? According to the United States Office of Management and Budget, in order to qualify as a metropolitan statistical area, there must be at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more in population. That one is easy to understand. But also included in the MSA are counties with a minimum of 25% of workers commuting to the central counties of the metropolitan statistical area. What is still unclear to me is how the central counties are determined, but the Atlanta MSA has 15 of them: Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Newton, Paulding, Rockdale, and Spalding. When the commuting standards are applied, there are an additional 13 counties included in the Atlanta MSA for a grand total of 28 counties: Barrow, Bartow, Butts, Carroll, Dawson, Haralson, Heard, Jasper, Lamar, Meriwether, Pickens, Pike, and Walton.

Image courtesy of the Atlanta Regional Commission

It’s not hard to see how these standards can lead to an ever-expanding web of counties and communities comprising the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area. But as the number of counties included increases, the connectivity with the actual city of Atlanta and the urban core has to decrease. Let’s use Meriwether County, on the very southern fringes of the Atlanta MSA, as an example. First of all, the county is geographically distant from Atlanta. Greenville – the county seat of Meriwether County – is close to 60 miles from downtown Atlanta. It’s well over 100 miles from Greenville to Jasper – the county seat of Pickens County on the northern edge of the Atlanta MSA. Aside from the distance, the MSA standards could result in a situation where no one from Meriwether County commutes to Atlanta for work. All that is needed – and what is most likely the case – is for 25% of workers in Meriwether County to commute to a central county, which includes the much closer Coweta County and Fayette County. There may, in fact, be zero people from Meriwether County working in Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, or in the city of Atlanta itself.

Atlanta is a sprawling metropolitan area.  There is no way around that. The entire land area of the 28 counties is comparable in size to the state of Massachusetts. So, really, people of Meriwether County, how much does Atlanta figure into your daily life? How much does a place like Dawsonville or Winder figure into your daily life? My best guess for both of these questions is very little. I understand these metropolitan statistical areas are just that – statistics. And they are premised on the assumption that commuting to work is an accurate indicator of regional integration. But as more than a concept, the MSA provides only minimal value. There’s just no way these standards can cut it when it comes to determining how closely related counties and communties actually are.

Side Project: Georgia County Plate Collecting

Since we cannot embark on a CountyTrip every week (although I would certainly be happy if that were the case), John and I have undertaken a little side project in the Atlanta metro area.  The goal of the game is to collect a photograph of all 159 Georgia county license plates.  The rules are as follows:

1. The plate must be on a passenger vehicle
2. The photograph must CLEARLY depict the county name on the plate
3. The photograph must be taken within the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta Metropolitan Statistical Area

This undertaking has been quite fun (and frustrating at times), but it has definitely helped both of us get our county “fixes”, so to speak, without having to leave Atlanta. We have been doing this game for a while now (months), and have learned the following:

• Some cars with valuable plates will just “get away”.  It’s frustrating.  I had a pickup with a Quitman County plate disappear into the night on North Decatur Rd.  Who knows if I will ever live to see another one of those in the Atlanta area.  John has missed several Chattahoochee County plates in traffic.
• You will come to realize there is a major trade-off in this game.  It is quite tough to get in position to photograph a plate if you are not stopped at a light.  Often, you will have to choose between sacrificing your own safety and that of others, or getting a photo of a plate.  Please, always choose the former.
• Parking lots are the safest options for this game.
• There are several “hot spots” we have already identified for this game.  One is the parking lots for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and any of its surrounding airport hotels.  I was down in this area for work a month ago, and quickly realized what a treasure trove it was.  This makes sense, if you think about it, as people from all over Georgia drive here and leave their cars to fly out.  But it’s almost bordering on cheating to get your fill of plates here.
• Some plates will begin to hold almost legendary status to you. Counties that are rural, underpopulated, far from the interstate, extremely distant from Atlanta, and where citizens are more likely to do business in other, closer cities are among the most rare.  Currently, Clay County is the holy grail for both of us (I would say Quitman, but I magically saw one, but was unable to come away with a photo!)
• The overarching rule we have learned: if you go out looking, you will not find any.  ALL of the rare county plates we have “gotten” have been spotted just going about our daily business.  A watched pot never boils, as they say.

John & Nate’s Most Prized Plates to Date

John:

There are only 1,308 registered passenger vehicles in Webster County, Georgia.  And I have seen 2 of them.  In Atlanta.  The first was a surprise, but easy to photograph in a Buckhead grocery store parking lot (see first photo below).  The second was, at the risk of flattering myself, an exercise in patience and perseverance.  Heading east on Ponce de Leon Avenue, I was due to turn left onto Briarcliff Road when I spotted a Mercedes-Benz GLK350 adorned with a Webster County plate.  I readied myself to take a picture, but Ponce is notorious for sudden backups as cars attempt to turn left onto the numerous intersecting streets, and the Webster County car was caught behind just such a jam in the lefthand lane.  I was in the righthand lane and had no choice but to keep driving.  I began to crawl along Ponce, praying she might catch up to me.  By this point, I had already veered well off course, and just as I was about to admit defeat, I noticed in my rearview mirror the Mercedes rapidly approaching.  In a matter of seconds, she was flying past me in excess of 55 miles per hour, nearly 20 over the speed limit.  Now it was my turn to play catch up!  I felt uncomfortable driving at that speed in a regularly patrolled area, but I was already miles out of the way and had committed time and resources to documenting this luxury vehicle with a license plate from a decidedly not luxurious county.  My luck finally turned as the traffic light at North Decatur Road shifted to red, stopping both of us, and allowing me to sidle up to the SUV and snap the second shot you see below:

Nate:

Below is a photo of my most prized plate to date: a Taliaferro County.  On the way to work one morning, I saw this gentleman in his Jeep Liberty speeding up Piedmont Road toward Buckhead.  I still have no idea what this man was up to, or what business he planned to conduct in the area, but what a thrill !  It definitely took some maneuvering, but I was able to get close to the car at the intersection of Peachtree and Piedmont and snap this shot while waiting at the light. Taliaferro (pronounced “Tolliver”) is the least populous county in Georgia (with 1,703 residents), and also has the fewest registered passenger vehicles of any Georgia county (with 1,091), according to the Georgia Statistics System.  According to my calculations, that represents 0.0197% of the total registered passenger vehicles in the state.  A rare sighting indeed!

Anyway, I would definitely recommend this game to any of our readers.  If you also get a thrill from counties, you will certainly get a thrill when you see a rare county plate on the roadway.  Just make sure to stay safe out there!

P.S.: If any of our readers know the location of a Clay County, Georgia plate in the Atlanta metro area, please comment below or message us at countytrippers@gmail.com.  Thank you.

Welcome to the CountyTrip Blog!

We greatly appreciate your visit, and hope that you will soon be inspired to become one of our regular readers. We have no doubt that you will come to enjoy our journey, documenting and examining places both well-known and obscure. But before diving into the details of this project, let’s make a few things clear.

What is a county? And what is a CountyTrip?

The word county, first used in the 14th century, derives from the Old French term conté or cunté, denoting a jurisdiction in mainland Europe under the sovereignty of a count or a viscount. However, for our purposes, and according to Webster’s Dictionary, a county represents “the largest territorial division for local government within a state of the United States”. This simple unit of measurement and governance will constitute the lifeblood of the CountyTrip blog.

So we know what a county is, but what is a CountyTrip? Yes, we made up the word and the definition, but here goes:

“CountyTrip” (noun) – a deliberate trip to visit, explore, and appreciate previously unvisited counties, with the ultimate goal of “counting” the county in one’s grand total of counties visited

You get the picture. We like to travel to explore new counties, document the trip and process, and ultimately check off the county. But why? How? What’s the point? Please, let us provide some background.

Who is behind these posts?

We are John and Nate, college pals (and history majors) residing in Atlanta, Georgia, a place we have christened the best launching point for a county trip in the country, both in terms of NUMBER and QUALITY of counties within a few hour’s drive (those reading from Texas, sorry, you may match the number, but not the quality). Georgia is truly blessed when it comes to counties, boasting the second most of any U.S. state at 159, as well as easy access to counties in five neighboring states. But more (much, much more) about that later.

From a county perspective, Georgia was the first state with which we both became enamored. The reasons for this will become clearer as the blog progresses. While each of us has independently explored counties in other states across the country, you may find this blog has a slight bias toward Georgia and the Southeast more generally. But fear not, as other areas of the country will most certainly be covered.

How did this habit develop?

It is a long, meandering story, but here are the basic facts. In college, we became friends with a gentleman who hailed from historic Thomaston, Georgia, the county seat of Upson County, about an hour south of Atlanta. He was prone to complain about Thomaston’s isolation, backwardness, and lack of culture, but we remained intrigued and wanted to someday visit for ourselves. Eventually we set out from Atlanta on a mini-Georgia road trip, with a final destination of Savannah. We decided to stop in Thomaston on the way, along with a few even more obscure haunts, and had some unforgettable adventures, encounters, and experiences. Both of us were hooked, and thus, the CountyTrip was born.

Why on Earth do we do this?

You might ask why we do this, and you may argue that we are trivializing what it means to travel. Rest assured that is not the case. Below are each of our genuine reasons why we do this, and just why we find it so addicting:

John:

Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins or cars. We collect counties. Sure, counties aren’t tangible. Other than pictures or the occasional  souvenir, there’s nothing I can put on display. But county collecting is a hobby that has developed into a passion, an interest that has grown into an obsession.

I have often returned from a trip thinking the most recent batch of counties will satisfy my appetite for a while. And every time I find myself only hungrier for more counties, looking for the next opportunity to take a turn into uncharted territory. Saying that I like to travel doesn’t do justice to the singular satisfaction of stepping foot in a new county. But saying that it’s all about checking something off a list isn’t right either.

Really, it’s not about the county, essentially nothing more than lines on a map. It’s about discovering a sense of place – and that means the geography, the history, the people, the culture, and everything else that makes every place – in its own way – different from every other.

Nate:

What I have begun to call “CountyTripping” comes from a strong sense of place, and a lifelong study of history and geography. Caught amidst the everyday hustle and bustle of a city like Atlanta, it is easy to forget that monumental events in history occurred right under your nose, right on the outskirts of town, and in places you least expect. Most importantly, I have always desired to visit those unique and far-flung places on the maps that captured the imagination of my childhood. Every town, hamlet, and county, no matter how small or insignificant, has a story and deserves a chance to be appreciated. From personal experience, so many communities often overlooked offer such surprising rewards when investigated slightly below the surface.

I certainly inherited a part of this bug from my maternal grandparents, both avid amateur genealogists who spent countless hours of their retirements researching their ancestors in a dusty room at the city library. However, the pivotal moment occurred in 2010, when my grandfather dragged my cousin and me through the backwoods and dirt roads of western Virginia and West Virginia to commit to memory where our pioneer ancestors were born, lived, and currently rest. While my cousin was indifferent, I was captivated, and the rest is history.

What can you expect from this blog?

Along the way, we will post entries both individually and together and will provide:

• Anecdotes, vignettes, misadventures, and humorous tales and occurrences from our many travels

• The “Methods to Our Madness”, or in other words, how our trips are planned and executed

• Side projects we have undertaken related to counties and historical sites

• Profiles of various counties and points of interest, whether large or small

• Rankings of various county-related sites

• Random historical projects

• Trivia, perfect for cocktail parties

• Colorful snapshots and photographs

Thanks again for reading and joining us on this “CountyTrip”!

 

John & Nate