Fannin County was staunchly Republican during all the years of Democratic rule in Georgia, and the county seldom got any money from the state. (I believe Fannin was the only deep south county to vote against Roosevelt in 1932.) Our fortunes have changed now that the most powerful person in Georgia, David Ralston, the Speaker of the House, is from Fannin.
So Fannin is finally getting some cookies, and one of them is that funding has recently been approved for five-laning Hwy 5 from Blue Ridge to McCaysville. Property acquisition begins in 2017 with construction scheduled for 2019-2020.
The second phase involves choosing a route to bypass McCaysville on the west. This would involve tying into Hwy 64, presumably well east of the gorge.
Interestingly, the Speaker has said that Spur 60 from Mineral Bluff to the North Carolina line at Culbertson is not a priority, and that the traffic numbers related to the casino are inflated. (I haven’t seen any analysis of whether our traffic counts are actually up related to casino traffic, but it doesn’t seem there is any more traffic locally.)
Local support for the Hwy 5 project seems to be strong, but I imagine that will change some when they start taking people’s houses. There are an awful lot of homes and businesses in the path of progress.