Via Gary Pugh
Home of Pugh Boat Works and Knox Enduro 1989-2023. The building has stood for a long time but a four lane road project has caused it to meet its demise.
It was built in the 1940s as a country grocery store and the owners lived upstairs. Somewhere in its history an addition was built on to the side and car repair was done. In 1989 I was really needing more space for boat building and maintaining my race boats when I heard this place was for sale. I talked to my long-time boat racing friend and Atlanta real estate tycoon Ralph Donald about it and he came up and took a look at it for me. When I asked him if I should buy it, he said if I didn’t he would, so that was all I needed to know. It was in a bad state of repair when I bought it, we did some work to it but I was so busy building and racing boats could only do so much at that time. The first few years I used it mostly for keeping my own race boats, then in 1993 I started building all of the boats there. Through the years a lot of wood and resin came in one door and lots of boats went out another. I hated when they came right back for repair after a crash, it was painful to see my hard work destroyed.
By 2013 I was getting tired of breathing dust and chemicals so when an opportunity to start a dealership for Beta Motorcycles came along we jumped at it. We were surprised at how quickly it grew, and while I was still building boats, the bike shop started taking more and more time so I built my last boat in 2019 but continued to do a few repairs and vintage restorations.
Pictures are not all in order, and there is a gap from 2000 when we first went digital to 2016 so most of those pics are stuck on random computers. I am sorry for the people that got left out, hopefully, some day we recover those photos.
I spent 30 years of my life in that building so there are a lot of memories, and a lot of hard work, but more importantly between new boats and new bikes, we made a lot of people very happy.
We kept making the building nicer as the years went on but we knew since the mid nineties that the road would someday take it away, we had to limit what we put into it.
If any of you seeing this have been part of boat racing or dirt bike riding/racing, then there is a good chance you have been a part of this buildings story.
We are very sad to see it go, but there will be a brand new building in our future so it is time for Beverly and I to say goodbye to this one.
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