Written by Larry Felton Johnson
Reading old newspapers has always been an interest of mine. After developing his Georgia Historical Newspaper website, I felt like a kid in a candy store.
The Georgia Historical Newspaper is part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia.
The project team has located and scanned copies of Georgia newspapers, which currently include newspapers from the 17th century to the present day.
We digitize your article into a PDF copy and run optical character recognition (OCR) to make it searchable and available in text format (although text rendering is not perfect).
This morning I did a search for Acworth, Kennesaw, and Smyrna and decided to limit my search to the Atlanta Georgian, a Hearst paper published in Atlanta in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The first results screen had the cover of the 1918 Hearst Special Issue Sunday American with the headline, “Going to Alabama Today: From Atlanta to Borden Wheeler.”
Click this link to view a copy from the original.
As a little background, the roads in the United States in 1918 were terrible. A few years ago, I published another article from the Georgia Historical Newspaper site about a woman who drove from downtown Atlanta to Lithia Springs via Mableton and Austell in 1911. A short blurb from another Atlanta Georgian read as if she were participating in a cross-country race. By 1918 some additional paving had been done, but not much.
The Sunday American article described the itinerary in detail, including the mileage covered and a description of some of the hazards along the way.
Here is the transcription. I don’t know what “FISH” is, but it was an obvious place in 1918, so it was apparently included in the itinerary without any explanation.
itinerary
Sunday American Itinerary, Bowden Wheeler 0.0 Road to Atlanta.
From Five Points and Peachtree Streets, head north on Marietta Street. Ignore all right branches and go left until you reach the end of the trolley. (Alternatively, take the first right paved fork in Marietta and go to the river via Howell Mill Road. This route skips Inman and Bolton.)
4.8 Inman Yard. Follow the left fork. Cross the bridge over the railway road. At the north end of the bridge there is a very dangerous curve hidden by his yellow two-story office. Twelve people have died here due to head-on collisions and collisions with cars and motorcycles on the side of the bridge.
7.7 Bolton. A bridge across the river. Just stay straight.
13.8 Smyrna. Go straight through. 18.7 At the stone yard, take the right fork and cross the railway.Go left and follow the trolley
19.6 MARIETTA Turn left one block until you reach the First National Bank, then turn right. Go straight three blocks west on Church Street, past the church, and past the Church Street Library. The “third” block is the first left turn after the library. Cross the railroad between Marietta and Kennesaw and turn left at Tank.
At 33.9 miles you enter Kennesaw’s main battlefield.
26.7 Kennesaw. Turn left at the sign. Aquarium. Go one block. Turn right. Go straight.
$32.0. Go straight through.
36.6 Allatuna. Go straight through. He walks 200 meters along the railway line and sees a soldier’s grave. 39.6 Emerson. Go straight through,
41.4 Go to the right on the covered bridge.
42.6 Cross the tracks and follow the track on the right.
43.7 Cartersville. Turn left at the garage. Cross the railway in the city. Please continue straight ahead. Turn left at the sign and follow the ‘Taylorsville’ sign, where you will pass the Gin House.
58.4 Taylorsville. Enter Taylorsville, turn left and exit the station on the right.straight
65.4 Rockmart. (You can eat delicious country cuisine at this hotel.)
straight
70.7 Fish ~
79.5 Cedar Town. When you reach Cedar Town’s Main Street, turn left and drive through town. Go 3 blocks past the station and cross a concrete bridge. Two blocks from the bridge, turn right at a large white house that stands tall. Currently 21 miles from Borden Wheeler. This is a typical country road, narrow in places. It winds around, but just keep going, past Emson and Palestine, to the Borden-Wheeler station. This station is 3 miles from the Borden Wheeler Hotel. Cross the railroad tracks, pass the station and shops, and go straight to your hotel. Be sure to honk your horn as the road is narrow near curves and hotel buses and vans may be thrown up.
92.5 Borden Wheeler Station. It’s 2 miles from here to the hotel. It means that justice needs another chapter.
Georgia History Newspaper Details
The Georgia Historical Newspapers site is worth a visit, whether you’re researching historical events, people, and places, or just for fun.
You can set the scope by year, specific cities or newspapers, and limit your search in a variety of ways. Find out how newspapers and our region have changed over the past 200 years.