Fulton Industrial District

THE CONCRETE CORRIDOR: A Comprehensive History of the Fulton Industrial District

Today, Fulton Industrial Boulevard is the pulsing, concrete artery of Southwest Atlanta’s economy. Stretching for miles along the Chattahoochee River, it is a relentless corridor of massive warehouses, distribution centers, and eighteen-wheelers. It is widely recognized as the largest industrial corridor in the eastern half of the United States. Yet, to the thousands of commuters and truck drivers who navigate its lanes daily, the landscape appears entirely devoid of history. The sheer scale of the concrete and steel masks a deeply layered, often violent, and tragic past.

The story of the Fulton Industrial District is not just a tale of post-war economic triumph and corporate real estate. It is the story of ancient indigenous capitals, Civil War bloodshed, brutal convict labor camps, a forgotten utopian botanical garden, and a lost open-air museum of contemporary art. It is the ultimate story of Atlanta’s relentless drive for progress, and the history that was paved over to achieve it.

Chapter 1: The Ancient Crossroads and the Pioneer Scars

Long before the first warehouse was erected, the land bordering the Chattahoochee River in Southwest Fulton County was a thriving metropolis of a different kind. For over 12,000 years, the river valley supported continuous human habitation. By the time of the Mississippian period, the area was a vital indigenous crossroads where the Creek and Cherokee nations converged.

The epicenter of this ancient civilization was a sprawling village known as Sandtown, archaeologically designated as 9-Fu-14, located near the modern intersection of Fulton Industrial Boulevard and the Chattahoochee River. Sandtown, alongside the nearby settlement of Buzzard Roost, served as a provincial center of immense cultural and economic importance. The inhabitants utilized the rich, fertile soil of the river basin, leaving behind a dense archaeological record of cooking pits, Swift Creek pottery, and the foundations of dozens of structures.¹

However, the fate of Sandtown was sealed by the relentless westward expansion of the United States. Following the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was forced to cede the land to the State of Georgia. The ancient trails that once connected indigenous trade routes were soon traversed by white settlers, and the land was divided and distributed through the Georgia Land Lotteries. The ancient village of Sandtown was abandoned, its physical remains slowly swallowed by the encroaching forest.²

As the indigenous populations were forcibly removed, American pioneers quickly moved in to exploit the river valley. In 1834, Joseph H. Coryell purchased the land that would become the Sandtown Plantation.³ The area was soon populated by rugged, agrarian families who carved out a living in the dense Georgia woods.

Among these early settlers was the Mayson family, who established a vital ferry crossing over the Chattahoochee River in 1844, and Clem Greene (1829 to 1889), a stern planter who built a sprawling plantation near modern-day Fulton Industrial Boulevard. Greene built the first schoolhouse in Fulton County on his property in 1857. He originally built it to educate his own children and those of his tenants, before opening it to children from the nearby crossroads of Lick Skillet (now Adamsville) for five cents a day. Greene’s life was one of constant battle against the elements. In the summer of 1877, he famously reported to local papers that his fields were infested with millions of grasshoppers devouring his cotton and corn.⁴

The agrarian quiet of the river valley was shattered in the summer of 1864 during the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War. The geography of the future industrial district, specifically Lick Skillet Road (which would later become Gordon Road and then Martin Luther King Jr. Drive), became a staging ground for massive troop movements. During the Battle of Ezra Church, Confederate Lieutenant General Stephen D. Lee moved his corps across Lick Skillet Road to attack Union forces. The fighting was horrific, leaving the land soaked in blood and the pioneer homesteads, including the Mayson Methodist Church, burned to ash. Clem Greene’s 1843 plantation home survived the inferno, though it bore the physical scars of a Yankee soldier’s rifle butt for the rest of its existence.⁵

Chapter 2: Blood, Clay, and the River Camp

In the decades following the Civil War, the land along the Chattahoochee River transitioned from pioneer agriculture to brutal industrial exploitation. The epicenter of this dark era was the Chattahoochee Brick Company, founded by former Atlanta Mayor James W. English. The company utilized the horrific convict lease system, forcing predominantly Black men, often arrested for minor or fabricated offenses, to labor in deadly conditions along the riverbanks to produce the bricks that rebuilt post-war Atlanta.

Fulton County also utilized the area for its own penal infrastructure, establishing the sprawling, 3,000-acre River Convict Camp. Here, county inmates were forced to crush rock, pave roads, and maintain a model dairy. This camp was fiercely defended by Fulton County Commissioner Dr. Charles R. Adams as a vital county asset before it was ultimately abandoned in 1942.⁶

In the 1930s, the county sought to expand its holdings in the area. In 1931, the Fulton County Commission began hotly debating a land swap involving the county’s old Alms House property and a massive 1,200-acre tract owned by the Chattahoochee Brick Company on Adamsville Road.⁷ After years of debate, the county ultimately finalized the purchase of 1,304 acres near the River Convict Camp directly from the Chattahoochee Brick Company in March 1937 for $52,160.⁸

It was upon this bloodied, labor-scarred soil that civic leaders would soon attempt to build a paradise.

Chapter 3: The Lost Eden

During the late 1930s, ambitious city planners and civic leaders set their sights on the newly acquired tracts along Gordon Road to establish a monumental project: the Fulton County Botanical Gardens. Driven by a brilliant but uncompromising botanist named Eugene Schofield Heath, and backed by Fulton County Commissioner Troy G. Chastain, the project aimed to rival the world’s most famous horticultural institutions.

Advocacy was highly coordinated among local garden clubs and businessmen’s associations. In April 1938, the Fulton County Commission officially set aside 450 acres for the project, securing a massive federal grant from the Works Progress Administration.⁹

The county invested heavily in the site’s infrastructure, spending over $40,000 to construct a curved, terraced amphitheater, a grass-banked reservoir, and two stone gatehouses. Given the horrific history of the Chattahoochee Brick property, the construction of the garden’s water features relied on a grimly familiar exploitation of the penal system. Utilizing convict labor, specifically 125 boys from the local Reformatory, a small stream was dammed to create an artificial lake that eventually expanded to nearly 20 acres.¹⁰ By 1941, the garden boasted 518 varieties of rare and native flora, with Heath planting Spanish moss, carnivorous pitcher plants, and rare orchids.¹¹

However, the outbreak of World War II halted the project’s momentum. The war years also brought an end to the county’s penal operations on the site. In September 1942, amidst heated accusations of political maneuvering, the Fulton County Commission voted 3 to 2 to permanently abandon the River Convict Camp, citing a drop in the county’s convict population and a desire to save $50,000 annually.¹² The county subsequently leased the newly vacated land to the U.S. Navy for a flying field, laying the groundwork for the Fulton County Airport (Charlie Brown Field) and signaling the area’s permanent shift toward modern infrastructure.

Despite post-war efforts to revive the botanical garden, including a highly publicized “Miss Atlanta Tree Contest” in 1948, the pristine woodlands were increasingly squeezed by the relentless push for industrial zoning. The fatal blow occurred in September 1950, when the Fulton County Commission voted in a narrow split to sell the timber rights on a 2,500-acre tract to a commercial sawmill operator for $30,500.¹³ The sale authorized the clear-cutting of the very forests Eugene Heath had meticulously curated.

In May 1951, the Planning Commission officially approved the rezoning of the 2,500-acre tract along the Chattahoochee River for heavy industry. The rezoning was spearheaded by zoning administrator Paul Van Hedden, who noted the tract explicitly included the abandoned Botanical Garden.¹⁴ The utopian dream was officially dead, and the era of concrete had begun.

Chapter 4: Asphalt and Adrenaline

With the timber cleared and the botanical garden erased, the county moved swiftly to realize its industrial ambitions. Paul Van Hedden was appointed Executive Director of the newly formed Fulton Industrial Authority. By late 1954, Hedden was actively advertising 800 acres of fully planned land with river frontage, water, sewerage, and railroad access.¹⁵

In early 1955, the county passed a $1.5 million bond issue to construct the necessary water and sewer lines.¹⁶ To service this massive new district, the county constructed a wide, modern thoroughfare: Fulton Industrial Boulevard. However, before the warehouses were built, the boulevard was simply a long, smooth, empty stretch of fresh asphalt. Naturally, it became a magnet for illicit entertainment.

By early 1957, the new boulevard had become the premier destination for illegal drag racing in Metro Atlanta. On Sunday afternoons, crowds of young men would gather on the long straightaways between Cascade Road and Gordon Road to test the limits of their souped-up late-model cars. The situation escalated to the point that Fulton County Police Chief Herbert T. Jenkins had to deploy additional patrol cars and men to the unincorporated area specifically to break up the races. Patrolmen Hiram Mosley and D.H. Crawford reported that the boulevard was frequently jammed with traffic on Sundays as racers practiced their art while police were changing watches in nearby Fairburn. “Whether the racers simply mixed with the other drivers or left while we were trying to thread through the traffic, we can’t say,” Mosley reported to the Atlanta Constitution in January 1957. “When we got there they were gone.”¹⁷

The area was also home to early roadside entertainment. The Bankhead Drive-In Theatre opened nearby in 1950, followed by the Fulton Boulevard Drive-In Theater in 1962 at the intersection of Fulton Industrial Boulevard and Bucknell Drive.¹⁸ But the days of empty roads and drive-in movies were numbered. The real estate speculators had arrived.

Chapter 5: The Visionaries

The true transformation of the Fulton Industrial District required visionaries in both the private and public sectors. Prior to the 1960s, much of the land along the corridor was controlled by a few prominent local families, most notably the M.D. Hodges family.¹⁹

In 1958, local developer Mark Durward Hodges founded M.D. Hodges Enterprises and began purchasing large tracts of land along the newly paved corridor. Hodges possessed a unique foresight regarding the future of logistics. Long before the modern e-commerce boom made such features standard, Hodges began building warehouses with significantly higher clear heights and much larger truck courts than his competitors.²⁰ His forward-thinking designs attracted major corporate tenants, and M.D. Hodges Enterprises quickly became the dominant player in the Atlanta industrial market, laying the literal concrete foundation for the district’s future.

While private developers like Hodges were building the warehouses, the true catalyst for the district’s explosion was a combination of federal highway funding and aggressive local politics. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 mandated the creation of the national interstate system. The routing of Interstate 20 directly through the City of Atlanta and into Cobb and Fulton counties ensured that the area would become a major ground transportation hub. A trip to the Chattahoochee River valley that might have previously taken an hour from downtown Atlanta was suddenly reduced to a brief highway commute.²¹

The political driving force behind the area’s industrialization was Ernest W. Barrett, who was elected chairman of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners in 1965. Barrett understood that highways alone were not enough to attract mega-corporations; the land needed modern utilities. Upon taking office, Barrett persuaded the public to approve a $14.9 million bond referendum. A significant portion of these funds was used to build massive water and sewer lines through the southern portion of the county, effectively preparing the raw land for heavy industry.²²

With the infrastructure in place, Barrett went hunting for a flagship investor.

Chapter 6: The Great Southwest Gamble

Barrett set his sights on Angus G. Wynne Jr., a Texas real estate developer and president of the Great Southwest Corporation (GWC). Wynne had already successfully pioneered a dual-income real estate model in Arlington, Texas, where he built a massive industrial park funded by the daily cash flow of an adjacent amusement park named Six Flags Over Texas.

In October 1965, Barrett quietly led a delegation to Texas to lobby for GWC to expand into Georgia. The delegation included Commissioner Bill Oliver and Harold Nix, the special projects director for the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce. They met with John C. Hunt, a vice president of GWC. Hunt was highly impressed by the Cobb delegation’s eagerness and was particularly swayed by the large water and sewer lines that Barrett had already pushed into the area.²³

The lobbying effort was a massive success. GWC quietly began purchasing large parcels of land along the river. To secure the footprint for the amusement park on the Cobb County side, the company purchased 276 acres from three primary owners. These included local investor Hue Lee, the Chattahoochee Brick Company (which was still selling off its vast land holdings), and Cobb County school board member Sollie Cole, whose property operated as the Cole Brothers Dairy farm.²⁴

In August 1965, GWC publicly announced the purchase of a 3,000-acre tract of land spanning both sides of the river for $5 million. It was heralded as the largest industrial real estate transaction in the history of the Southeast. The deal was brokered by prominent local real estate agents Ewell Pope and Frank Carter. Wynne boldly proclaimed that the tract would become the site of a $7 million recreation facility and the nation’s second largest industrial district. Governor Carl Sanders and Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. publicly celebrated the deal, viewing it as a massive victory for Georgia’s economy.²⁵

GWC’s strategy was brilliant in its simplicity. The amusement park would be built on the Cobb County side of the river to generate immediate, daily revenue. Meanwhile, the massive Great Southwest Industrial Park would be methodically developed on the Fulton County side.

To design the amusement park, Wynne hired former Hollywood art directors Randall Duell and Hans Peters. Duell had spent 23 years designing film sets for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and he brought a cinematic flair to the Georgia landscape.²⁶

In July 1966, Wynne officially announced the name of the amusement park would be Six Flags Over Georgia. The name immediately sparked a bizarre historical controversy. William Mitchell, a staff historian for the Georgia Historical Commission, publicly questioned Wynne’s claim that France had ever flown a flag over Georgia. Atlanta historian Norman Shavin quickly fired back in the local papers, defending the French flag by citing the 1562 coastal explorations of Frenchman Jean Ribaut.²⁷

As GWC prepared the amusement park for its 1967 opening, they physically uprooted the historic 1857 Clem Greene Schoolhouse from its original site near the Fulton County Airport. The pioneer log cabin was moved inside the gates of Six Flags, where it was repurposed as the “School for Lost Parents.”²⁸

Chapter 7: Terminal Archaeology

While the public debated the historical accuracy of the amusement park’s French flag, a genuine historical tragedy was unfolding across the river. As the bulldozers tore into the earth to lay the foundations for the Great Southwest Industrial Park on the Fulton side, they unearthed a ghost that had been sleeping for centuries: the ancient village of Sandtown.

In 1968, Larry Meier, an archaeological conservator hired by GWC to conduct a preliminary survey, realized the staggering historical significance of the site (9-Fu-14). He found the foundations of 43 ancient structures, cooking pits, and artifacts dating back thousands of years. Meier, alongside renowned University of Georgia archaeologist Arthur Kelly, desperately petitioned the developers and the Atlanta Civic Design Commission to halt construction and preserve the site.²⁹

For a brief moment, it seemed preservation might win. John C. Hunt temporarily halted construction in the immediate area, a delay that cost the company an estimated $100,000. The discovery was leaked to the press in November 1968, with the Atlanta Journal running sensational headlines about a city of the dead and rites of black magic.³⁰

However, the corporate patience for archaeology was thin. GWC refused to fund a full excavation, leaving Meier and Kelly to rely on a meager $1,200 budget from the University of Georgia and the free labor of local high school students to conduct frantic salvage archaeology. In an August 1969 editorial, Kelly praised GWC for allowing them on the site but bitterly noted that the emergency excavations should be renamed “terminal archaeology.”³¹

Despite their valiant efforts to extract as much knowledge as possible, time ran out. The land was simply too valuable. By the spring of 1970, the public excavation of Sandtown was officially closed. The bulldozers returned, and the ancient indigenous capital was permanently erased, buried beneath the concrete slabs of modern warehouses.³²

Chapter 8: The Open-Air Museum

In a staggering twist of irony, after bulldozing a 2,000-year-old Native American city and a 1930s botanical garden, Angus Wynne Jr. decided that his new industrial park needed culture. Wynne envisioned the Great Southwest Industrial Park not as a sterile concrete slum, but as a place of reason and beauty. To achieve this, he hired art director Douglas McAgy to transform the warehouse district into an open-air museum.

In the late 1960s, GWC commissioned 30 monumental contemporary sculptures to line the streets of Great Southwest Parkway. At the time, it was considered the largest public collection of monumental contemporary sculptures in the world.³³

The artists commissioned for the project were given immense freedom. Renowned American sculptor Dorothy Dehner was asked to create a piece for a massive brick wall, 25 feet long and 18 feet high. Because the park had no sidewalks and the art would primarily be viewed by workers driving by in cars, Dehner knew the piece had to be bold. She designed a 7-by-11-foot relief made of thick red, black, and white Plexiglas. Her husband, Ferdinand Mann, engineered custom aluminum brackets to attach the 14 geometric Plexiglas shapes to the pinkish-tan brick wall, allowing the plastic to expand and contract in the Georgia heat.³⁴

The crown jewel of the collection, however, was commissioned from world-renowned sculptor Peter Forakis. Forakis delivered the “Atlanta Gateway Sculpture,” a gigantic, minimalist geometric structure measuring 180 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 90 feet tall. Painted in a brilliant Sunrise Red, the massive steel structure served as the defining centerpiece of the industrial park.³⁵

Chapter 9: Collapse and Decay

While the art park flourished briefly, the corporate empire behind it crumbled. In late 1968, in a complex financial maneuver to generate cash, GWC sold Six Flags Over Georgia to a limited partnership for $23 million while retaining operational control.³⁶

The true collapse came in 1970 when GWC’s parent company, the Penn Central Railroad, suffered a catastrophic bankruptcy. It was, at the time, the largest corporate bankruptcy in United States history. The financial contagion immediately infected GWC. Angus Wynne Jr. and president Victor Palmieri were deposed from their executive roles amidst lawsuits alleging overcompensation and financial mismanagement.³⁷

To resolve its severe liquidity problems, GWC was forced to liquidate its assets. In October 1970, the Great Southwest Industrial Park was sold to the Milwaukee-based Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp. (MGIC), who rebranded it as the Atlanta Gateway Park.³⁸

Under new ownership, the district experienced an explosive building boom. In 1973 alone, 64 new structures were built. The 1980s saw even more rapid expansion, with 190 new warehouses and manufacturing centers added to the corridor.³⁹

However, as the district grew, its cultural amenities were abandoned. By the 1980s and 1990s, the Fulton Industrial Boulevard corridor fell into deep decline. The area was plagued by aging buildings, deferred infrastructure improvements, and a sharp increase in crime. Construction ground to a halt, with only 50 structures built in the 1990s and a mere 25 added between 2000 and 2005.⁴⁰

During this period of urban decay, the world’s largest collection of contemporary sculpture was quietly dismantled. Due to the economic decline and changing property ownership, 29 of the 30 monumental sculptures were sold off, transferred to Fulton County facilities, moved to the High Museum, or simply vanished into private collections.⁴¹ The only piece that survived the purge was Peter Forakis’s massive Atlanta Gateway sculpture, which remained standing, slowly fading and rusting amidst the aging warehouses.

Chapter 10: Renaissance

While the original Texas developers fled the market, local visionary Mark Durward Hodges and his family remained deeply invested in the corridor. In 1997, Hodges’s grandson, Jeffrey Small Jr., took over as president and CEO of M.D. Hodges Enterprises. Small, who holds degrees from Yale and Harvard, orchestrated the sale of the family firm to the private equity giant Blackstone in 1999. He remained at the helm under Blackstone’s ownership until 2005, when the firm was sold again to ING Clarion, generating massive returns for investors.⁴²

Following the sale, Small launched his own firm, MDH Partners, naming it in honor of his grandfather’s legacy. MDH Partners continued to invest heavily in the industrial market, proving that the concrete corridor still held immense economic potential.⁴³

The broader trajectory of the corridor finally shifted in 2010 when local business leaders banded together to form the Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, also known as the Boulevard CID. Operating as a self-taxing organization, the CID was established to revitalize the corridor, which by then boasted 553 warehouses and 46 million square feet of industrial space, through public safety initiatives, landscaping, and infrastructure improvements.⁴⁴

Under the leadership of Executive Director Gil Prado, the CID initiated a massive turnaround. Crime in the district decreased by 81 percent over the next decade.⁴⁵ But Prado and the CID also recognized the lost cultural history of the corridor.

In 2015, the CID launched an initiative to bring public art back to Fulton Industrial Boulevard. They hired public art conservator Jeffry Loy to restore the sole surviving piece of the 1960s art park. Peter Forakis’s Atlanta Gateway sculpture was painstakingly repaired and repainted to its original, vibrant Sunrise Red. “The revitalization of the Gateway is symbolic of the CID’s efforts to return Fulton Industrial Boulevard to its stature as a catalyst for economic development,” noted CID board secretary Kent Walker.⁴⁶

Building on that momentum, the CID commissioned a brand new signature sculpture in 2019 to mark the completion of a $1.8 million interchange improvement project at Interstate 20 and Fulton Industrial Boulevard. Atlanta-based artist David Landis created “Stella Nova” (New Star), a striking modern piece designed to welcome visitors to the district.⁴⁷

The modern era has brought further sweeping changes to the corridor’s political and physical landscape. In 2016, the City of Atlanta attempted to annex the 4,800-acre Fulton Industrial District, the last unincorporated area in Fulton County, to capture an estimated $18 to $19 million in annual tax revenue. The bitter legal battle went all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ultimately dismissed the city’s lawsuit, leaving the district in the hands of the county.⁴⁸

In 2019, the local airfield was rebranded as the Fulton County Executive Airport to reflect its status as a major corporate aviation hub. In 2021, the City of South Fulton officially annexed the portion of Fulton Industrial Boulevard south of Interstate 20, shifting the jurisdictional boundaries of the historic land once again.⁴⁹ Furthermore, the CID and Fulton County began aggressively targeting the blight that had accumulated during the district’s decline. Between 2024 and 2026, the county purchased and demolished five long-vacant, crime-ridden hotels at the interchange, clearing the way for future redevelopment.⁵⁰

Epilogue

Today, the Fulton Industrial District stands as a monument to the mid-century American drive for economic progress, and its modern renaissance ensures it will remain a vital engine of commerce for decades to come. Yet, the true cost of that progress is written in the erased landscapes beneath the asphalt. The pioneer homesteads, the blood-soaked battlefields of Ezra Church, the brutal convict camps of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, the utopian dreams of the Botanical Garden, the ancient, sacred grounds of Sandtown, and the lost sculptures of the 1960s have all been silenced. They exist now only in archival records and faded newspaper clippings, ghosts lingering in the shadows of the concrete corridor.

Bibliography

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• The Atlanta Constitution. “Four Sued by Great Southwest.” December 1, 1970.
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• The Atlanta Constitution. “Ten Dismissals Are Approved By Commission.” November 5, 1942.
• The Atlanta Journal. “As Ever There Such A Name As Lick Skillet.” May 13, 1931.
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1. John Ely, “Establishment of Six Flags Over the Deconstruction of Sandtown,” Master’s Thesis, Kennesaw State University, 2025, 83, 86.
2. John Ely, “Establishment of Six Flags Over the Deconstruction of Sandtown,” Master’s Thesis, Kennesaw State University, 2025, 49, 51.
3. Georgia Historical Society, “Clem Greene Schoolhouse” Historical Marker.
4. “Millions of Grasshoppers,” Columbus Daily Enquirer, June 8, 1877.
5. “As Ever There Such A Name As Lick Skillet,” The Atlanta Journal, May 13, 1931, 13; Thomas J. Brown, “John Bell Hood: Extracting Truth From History” (Master’s thesis, San Jose State University, 2011), 32, 34; Don Long, “Old Fulton Home Will Be Made Southern Museum,” The Atlanta Journal, September 4, 1940, 8.
6. “River Convict Camp Will Be Abandoned,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 23, 1942.
7. “New County Commissioner To Decide Almshouse Swap,” The Atlanta Journal, May 7, 1931, 12; “Appraisers Value Almshouse Tract,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 23, 1931, 5.
8. “County Acquires 1,304-Acre Tract,” The Atlanta Journal, March 24, 1937; “Southside Property Is Showing Activity,” The Atlanta Constitution, March 28, 1937, 32.
9. “450 Acres Voted For County Garden,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 14, 1938, 11; “County Assists Botanical Garden Plan,” The Atlanta Journal, April 14, 1938, 25.
10. Frank Drake, “Fulton County Botany Display Project Begun,” The Atlanta Constitution, June 30, 1940, 9A.
11. “Garden Films Will Be Shown To Atlantans,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 12, 1941, 4A.
12. “Board Votes To Drop River Convict Camp,” The Atlanta Journal, September 22, 1942, 6; “Ten Dismissals Are Approved By Commission,” The Atlanta Constitution, November 5, 1942, 22.
13. Margaret Shannon, “Fulton Board To Sell Trees At Adamsville,” The Atlanta Journal, September 19, 1950, 1.
14. “Planners’ Okay Virtually Assures Industrial Area,” The Atlanta Journal, May 2, 1951, 10.
15. “Fulton Industrial District,” The Atlanta Journal, October 31, 1954, 179.
16. Joe Hamilton, “Construction to Begin in 1955 In Fulton Industrial District,” The Atlanta Journal, January 9, 1955, 25; Joe Hamilton, “Fulton Industrial District Turns Dream Into Reality,” The Atlanta Journal, August 18, 1955, 29.
17. “Pleasure drivers again thwarted police efforts Sunday,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 14, 1957, 10.
18. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
19. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
20. Tony Wilbert, “Robust Warehouse Market Disrupts CEO’s Side Hustle as Best-Selling Novelist,” CoStar News, January 24, 2023.
21. John D. Toon, “Interstate Highway System,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, April 21, 2017.
22. Thomas A. Scott, Cobb County Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South (2003).
23. Larry Felton Johnson, “Why was Six Flags built in Cobb County?” Cobb Courier, April 10, 2025.
24. Larry Felton Johnson, “Why was Six Flags built in Cobb County?” Cobb Courier, April 10, 2025; Tim Hollis, Six Flags Over Georgia: Images of America (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006).
25. Charles Moore, “5 Million Tract Sold for Industry Complex,” The Atlanta Constitution, August 17, 1965, 1; Richard Hammock, “Industry, Recreation to Be in Vast Project,” The Atlanta Journal, August 17, 1965, 2.
26. Tim Hollis, Six Flags Over Georgia: Images of America (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006).
27. Charles Moore, “Amusement Center Shaping,” The Atlanta Constitution, July 12, 1966, 44; Norman Shavin, “The French And Us,” The Atlanta Journal, July 17, 1966, 26.
28. John Ely, “Establishment of Six Flags Over the Deconstruction of Sandtown,” Master’s Thesis, Kennesaw State University, 2025, 57, 58.
29. John Ely, “Establishment of Six Flags Over the Deconstruction of Sandtown,” Master’s Thesis, Kennesaw State University, 2025, 73, 74.
30. Phil Garner, “Indian Site a Bonanza to Archaeology,” The Atlanta Journal, November 20, 1969, 14-E.
31. John Pennington, “Digging Up 2,000 Years Ago,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 11, 1970, SM14; A.R. Kelly, “Salvage Archeology in Georgia,” The Atlanta Journal, August 2, 1969, 2.
32. John Ely, “Establishment of Six Flags Over the Deconstruction of Sandtown,” Master’s Thesis, Kennesaw State University, 2025, 89, 90.
33. Boulevard CID, “New Sculpture Defines District’s Time and Space,” Press Release.
34. Dorothy Dehner, “Plexiglas Relief for the Great Southwest Industrial Park, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.,” Leonardo 2, no. 2 (April 1969): 171, 173.
35. “Sculpture Restoration Boosts Fulton Industrial Art Revival,” WABE 90.1 FM, May 20, 2015; “District restores Fulton Industrial gateway sculpture,” Neighbor Newspapers, May 18, 2015.
36. Bill Hughes, “Partnership Deal Offered on 6 Flags,” The Atlanta Journal, October 14, 1968, 59; Jim Montgomery, “Six Flags Sold For 23 Million,” The Atlanta Journal, January 1, 1969, 49.
37. Jan Nugent Pearce, “Non-Railroad Activities Cited in Penn Central Fall,” The Atlanta Journal, November 2, 1970, 15-D; “Four Sued by Great Southwest,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 1, 1970, 6C.
38. Tom Walker, “Industrial Park to Roll Again,” The Atlanta Journal, March 18, 1971, 15-E; Tom Walker, “Industrial Park Sold in Fulton,” The Atlanta Journal, October 19, 1970, 56.
39. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
40. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
41. Boulevard CID, “New Sculpture Defines District’s Time and Space,” Press Release.
42. Christina R. Wing and Sarah Mehta, “MDH Partners: Evolving a Family Legacy,” Harvard Business School Cases, October 16, 2024.
43. Tony Wilbert, “Robust Warehouse Market Disrupts CEO’s Side Hustle as Best-Selling Novelist,” CoStar News, January 24, 2023.
44. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
45. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
46. “District restores Fulton Industrial gateway sculpture,” Neighbor Newspapers, May 18, 2015.
47. Boulevard CID, “New Sculpture Defines District’s Time and Space,” Press Release; Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “Stella Nova Sculpture,” accessed July 28, 2026.
48. Kristina Torres, “Atlanta’s plan to add Fulton Industrial District stymied,” The Atlanta Constitution, October 4, 2016, B1.
49. Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District, “History,” accessed July 28, 2026.
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