Atlanta Georgia

Before it became a town Atlanta was an area of hills and trails made by Indians and wild animals. The unplanned streets still follow these trails that zig zaged around the hills and over the creeks and ended up at a swift flowing artisan well that was drilled in the 1880’s for the little town’s water supply. This area today is called Little Five Points. The old pump has long been paved over and this section of the city is lined with office building and banks.

Image by Lee Coursey via Flickr 

Anyone who has ever spent time in Atlanta knows of Peachtree street, Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, and Peachtree Road. Nobody agrees where the Peachtree’s ends and some smilingly say it goes all the way to New York. One Walsh Collier was interviewed by the Constitution in 1894. He said, “There was no town here when I came. It was woods, trails, and corn patches , no business, and no money. Farmers grew corn to make their bread and ate it. Walsh said he saw the original peach tree standing right where the Peachtree creek runs into the Chattahoochee. It grew on the top of a hill of dirt and bore delicious peaches. Atlanta was identified by a peach tree long before the railroads came through in 1837.

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Atlanta was a sleepy little town when it was named Terminus and then changed to Marthasville in honor of the ex Georgia governor, Wilson Lumpkin’s daughter. That name was changed to Atlanta in 1845 when Richard Peters, superintendent of the Western Atlantic Railroad decided the name Marthasville didn’t suit his taste. Peters asked J. Edgar Thompson, the chief engineer to suggest a better name. Thompson thought that one over and came up with Atlanta. He reasoned: Atlantic masculine, Atlanta feminine, and Atlanta was born. Many people have thought there was an error in spelling and that Atlanta was named for Atalanta goddess of fleetness and strength but that is not the case. She was named after the Western Atlantic Railroad.

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A druggist in Atlanta named John Pemberton mixed up a recipe in a iron pot in his back yard that he hoped to sell as a nerve tonic. He added a little wine, a little caffeine, a little extract of cola, a bit of this and a bit of that. While he was experimenting with his nerve tonic, he also changed the name to Coca-Cola. The mixture didn’t seem to do anything for the nerves but a man named Asa Griggs Candler found it helped his upset stomach so much that he paid Pemberton two thousand dollars for the recipe. And you know the rest of that story.

In 1961 integration was carried out without incident. Atlanta was the first Deep South city to peacefully desegregate its public schools. The city was praised for keeping its sanity and using its good sense which was a far cry from some southern cities. Newspaper, magazine, radio and TV reporters rushed into town to cover the event and were probably disappointed that they had no sensational stories to turn in and that integration happened so quietly and peacefully.

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North Georgia Mountain Dialect