An Influx of Boomers Is Putting a Strain on Southern Appalachia

“They ought to go back where they come from,” said one Georgia resident

By Cameron McWhirter | Photographs by Alyssa Pointer for The Wall Street Journal
March 20, 2024
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Helen Anderson remembers when Georgia’s Dawson County had only about three residents who owned cars. One was her father, a poor chicken farmer.

These days, cars and trucks congest what were once sleepy country roads. Wineries on hillsides near Dawson and high-end retirement communities are starting up or expanding.

Dawson is changing in ways big and small, as baby boomers known as “halfbacks” transform southern Appalachia—a reference to how many first moved from the Northeast and Midwest down to Florida before settling somewhere in between.

Dawsonville, Ga.

An older, wealthier population is being drawn by lower housing costs and living expenses, lower taxes, lower insurance costs, low crime, warm weather (but with seasons) and less chance of hurricanes.

Construction of homes within a new subdivision in Dawsonville.

The influx of retirees flooding into southern Appalachia is transforming the region from poor, serene and rustic to a bustling retirement haven.

From April 2020 to July 2022, the population in counties in southern Appalachia designated retirement or recreational areas grew by 3.8%—more than six times the national average, according to Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia.

No county in the Appalachia region had more growth in recent years than Georgia’s Dawson, which saw a 12.5% increase from 2020 to 2022, reaching just over 30,000, according to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Arguments erupt regularly on Dawson Facebook pages over newcomer-spurred traffic, which has been a shock to the folksy culture for which this Republican-dominated county is known. “They ought to go back where they come from,” Anderson said of the halfbacks, pursing her lips.

Old images of Anderson and her family.

Ed Helms, 75, and his wife, Johnnie Helms, moved up from Panama City Beach, Fla., about four years ago to a gated community called Big Canoe, which sits half in Dawson and half in a neighboring county.

Ed and Johnnie Helms in their traveling days.

“Our property insurance was going sky high,” said Helms, who retired after decades of working in mergers and acquisitions. “We got tired of being unable to find a place to sit in restaurants. Everything was getting out of reason. We wouldn’t go back for anything.”

The boomer migration to North Georgia, East Tennessee, the Carolinas and western Virginia is reshaping housing prices, traffic patterns, restaurant options and how local governments cope with something they haven’t had to handle before: explosive growth.

Medical calls to eldercare facilities in Dawson are increasingly taking up resources. County officials are considering splitting up staff, to dedicate some to just emergency calls, freeing up teams to respond to fire calls, said County Manager Joey Leverette.

Participants in an exercise class at the Dawson County Senior Center.

Asked about what other demands have been made on local government by retired newcomers, Leverette sighed. “Pickleball courts.”

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Photo Editor: Ariel Zambelich
Produced by Brian Patrick Byrne

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