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South Cobb Drive has been a major commercial and commuter highway in Cobb County since the mid-1940s. In fact, until the 1940s, South Cobb Drive, or SR 280 did not even exist.
In December of 1941, after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II. The entire nation, including Atlanta and its surrounding area, was mobilized for the war effort.
In February of 1942, the plans for the construction of the Bell Bomber plant were announced after Marietta won out over East Point and Stone Mountain in competition for the plant’s location.
By March of 1943, the plant began building the B-29 bomber. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the workforce at the plant grew to over 28,000 by 1945.
The state determined that a new highway was necessary to transport workers and goods from Atlanta. At that point, the current Atlanta Road (then called Marietta-Atlanta Road) was the main route from Atlanta to Marietta.
It was determined that Marietta-Atlanta Road was not sufficient to handle the increased traffic of supplies and personnel. So a road was designed that would run roughly parallel to Marietta-Atlanta Road, make a sharp turn near Bell Bomber, and connect the two roads at the entrance to the plant.
An article in the Atlanta Constitution in April of 1942 reported on the laying of water pipe along what it simply described as “the new Marietta highway.” Another article in July of 1943 said that construction would be completed by October of that year. It described the road as follows:
“The road leading from Bolton crosses the Chattahoochee River, skirts Smyrna and Fair Oaks, and leads into the old Atlanta-Marietta Road, about one-fourth mile from the Marietta city limit. The road leads directly to the main gate of the Bell plant, and is approximately 12 miles long”
That road became State Road 280, now known as South Cobb Drive. It’s an important transportation corridor and commercial highway for dozens of communities in Cobb County. But it got its start as a single-purpose road, to connect Atlanta with a wartime bomber factory.
During WWII, the 2-lane road was known as the Access Highway and was still called that by many well up into the 1960s. It widened to 4-lanes in front of Air Force Plant #6. A concrete overpass was constructed to carry Atlanta Road over the Access Highway. Many years later when the roadway was widened to it’s current width, the machinery that was used on the demolition job was damaged when it tried to demolish the overpass. Turns out the overpass was built to withstand bombing from German aircraft and special equipment and techniques had to be employed for the demolition. Guard shacks stood on the Access Highway at each end of Air Force Plant #6 to control entry to the facility.