Course History

A little history on Dawson Forest's southern tract, known as "City Tract". This is where the race's name was derived. It is currently owned by Hartesfield International and overseen by the GA Dept of Natural Resources. Before that, it was the home of the GA Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory, a nuclear facility in conjunction with Lockheed Martin, the USAF, and the Atomic Energy Commission from the 1950s until 1971, with a goal of creating a nuclear propulsion system for military aircraft. There is a hot cell building, nuclear reactor site, and a cooling site for irradiated materials. The sites were connected by a railway system, that you should see on your topo maps (but are no longer present), and there were underground facilities to protect the workers.

In 1958, they did extensive testing on the affects of radiation on animals in the surrounding area. 500-650 rads is lethal for rats (and humans). They released 7000+ rads for 3 weeks. They released neutron and gamma rays. The rat population was wiped out.... Residents of Dawson, Pickens, & Forsyth Counties remember the red sky during this period of radiation release. Not knowing what caused it, some feared the Apocalypse.

In 1960, it was noted that the percentage of birds in the area had dramatically dropped. It also affected the normal growth pattern of the forest, and was noted that this was a good example of the effects of radiation. The test were deemed necessary to study the affects of a nuclear war (due to the Cold War threat). The custom MyTopo maps racers received include a overlaid green circle representing the area exposed to radiation. One can see the remnants of the perimeter fence in satellite photography (shown here to the keen eye), and teams may run across some of the radiation monitor stations (pipe sticking up out of the ground with some wires).

Within the green circle, the hot cell building still stands, surrounded by 3 layers of barbed wire fencing. Racers have been instructed to stay away from the hot cell building fences if you enjoy your fertility. The Cobalt 50 and Europium 152 traces in the green circle have already spent there half-lives plus an additional decade and a half, so their radiation threat is stated to be no more than normal levels of background radiation. But just to be safe, we've instructed teams to kick it up a notch, when traveling through the green circle area...