Canton is the county seat of Cherokee County, sitting at the southern tip of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the Etowah River. The city has grown rapidly from a small mill town into a busy suburb, and that growth brought thousands of new driveways, parking lots, and commercial pads built over the last two decades. The red Piedmont clay that underlies most of Cherokee County drains poorly, so water that gets under asphalt stays there, softening the subgrade and triggering alligator cracking in low spots. Subdivisions like Bridgemill, River Green, Laurel Canyon, and Governors Preserve all have aging asphalt surfaces that are now entering the repair and resurfacing window.