[This article is part of an ongoing project of resurrecting evergreen articles from the Cobb County Courier’s stacks, and expanding them with newly discovered information]

By Larry Felton Johnson

The June 30, 1911, edition of the Atlanta Georgian and News contained this little blurb, with no headline.

Automobile route to Sweetwater Park Hotel via North avenue, Marietta street to Bellwood avenue, over Chattahoochee bridge, through Mableton, Austell, thence to Lithia Springs. Record time by lady driver — 45 minutes.

This is an intriguing little article for several reasons.

The first thing of interest is the mention of Bellwood Avenue. Bellwood Avenue is an earlier name for the section of what later became the Bankhead Highway closest to downtown Atlanta. It’s been renamed several times. 

It is now part of Donald Hollowell Parkway in the City of Atlanta, and Veteran’s Memorial Highway in Cobb County. 

Veterans Memorial Highway, once known as Bankhead Highway, was part of a project envisioned prior to 1920. The goal was to build a highway from Atlanta to Memphis via Birmingham. During the 1910s and 1920s, the highway was often covered in the news alongside another major highway project of the time, the Dixie Highway.

Both ran through Cobb County. The Bankhead Highway ran through Mableton and Austell, the Dixie Highway through Smyrna, Marietta and Acworth.

The original name, Bankhead Highway, was in honor of Alabama congressman (later senator) John Hollis Bankhead, the grandfather of film star Tallulah Bankhead. Bankhead was a significant promoter of road building.

So the woman’s 1911 trip was not over a continuous highway, but on a section of highway that was still under development.

The bridge over the Chattahoochee mentioned in the blurb was at the location of the current crossing of US 78/278 in South Cobb, entering Mableton. This makes sense since her route took her through Mableton and Austell.

Second, in 1911, the Atlanta area didn’t have a very well-developed road system, so navigating from downtown Atlanta to Lithia Springs, particularly in record time, was newsworthy for that era, especially since the trip was undertaken by a “lady driver.”

The widespread paving of Cobb County roads didn’t begin until after 1915, with the development of the Dixie Highway and a 1921 bond issue for the City of Marietta roads. The road she took was the second continuously paved highway in Cobb County, after Dixie Highway.

So she was probably riding over a packed-mud road.

The third interesting thing is the mention of the Sweetwater Park Hotel.  An ad from 1911 in the Atlanta Georgian and News states, “You could not pick out a more charming place to spend the summer than Sweetwater Park Hotel, at Lithia Springs, Ga.”  The ad further promised that Bowden Lithia Springs water, available both in the springs and bottled at the hotel, had

“curative properties and great medicinal value in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, kidney and bladder problems, gravel, insomnia, dyspepsia, indigestion, and constipation.”

Gravel is an archaic word for kidney stones.

Digging a little further into the history of the hotel, I found a lengthy Atlanta Constitution article from April 12, 1887, entitled “As if by Magic, a Wonderful Resort Near Atlanta”. The article announced the opening of the hotel, and described the curative powers of the water.