In 1837, the chief engineer of the Western and Atlantic Railroad predicted that the tiny settlement at the zero milepost would be good for only one tavern, a blacksmith shop, and a grocery store. That prediction proved spectacularly wrong. Within a year, the area had developed into a bustling settlement first known as Terminus, then Thrasherville, and finally Atlanta. The city was born not from a river or a port, but from the iron rails of a state-sponsored railroad designed to link the port of Savannah to the Midwest. By 1842, the town had six buildings and 30 residents, and by 1847, it was incorporated as Atlanta, a name derived from the railroad itself and reportedly a feminine version of Atlantic, honoring Governor Wilson Lumpkin's daughter Martha. This single point on a map became the convergence for several railroad lines, transforming a quiet village into the strategic heart of the Confederacy and eventually the most populous city in the Southeast.
Ashes And The New South
On the 1st of September 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood ordered the destruction of all public buildings and assets that could be of use to the Union Army before retreating from Atlanta. The next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered the city, and on September 7, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered the civilian population to evacuate. By the 11th of November 1864, Sherman prepared for his March to the Sea by ordering the destruction of Atlanta's remaining military assets, leaving the city almost entirely burned to the ground. Yet, the city rebounded dramatically in the post-war period. By 1885, the founding of the Georgia School of Technology and the Atlanta University Center had established Atlanta as a center for higher education. In 1895, the city hosted the Cotton States and International Exposition, which attracted nearly 800,000 attendees and successfully promoted the New South's development to the world. Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, championed this vision, promoting Atlanta as a city of the New South that would be based upon a modern economy and less reliant on agriculture, a strategy that allowed the city to surpass Savannah as Georgia's largest city by the 1880 Census.
The City Too Busy To Hate
In 1960, whites comprised 61.7% of the city's population, but the following decade would see a profound demographic shift driven by the civil rights movement. Atlanta became a major organizing center of the movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and students from Atlanta's historically black colleges playing major roles in the leadership. While the city had relatively minimal racial strife compared to other cities in the postwar years, blacks were limited by discrimination, segregation, and continued disenfranchisement. Public transportation was desegregated by 1959, the restaurant at Rich's department store by 1961, movie theaters by 1963, and public schools by 1973. In 1973, Atlanta elected its first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, who modernized the city's airport and strengthened its role as a transportation center. Despite these improvements, Atlanta lost more than 100,000 residents between 1970 and 1990, over 20% of its population, as white flight and suburbanization altered the city's demographics. By 1970, African Americans were the majority of the city's population, exercising their recently enforced voting rights and political influence to shape the city's future.
When Atlanta was selected as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the city government undertook several major construction projects to improve parks, sporting venues, and transportation infrastructure. For the first time, none of the $1.7 billion cost of the games was governmentally funded, yet the spectacle was a watershed event in Atlanta's history. The games generated a direct economic impact of at least 5 billion dollars and initiated a fundamental transformation of the city in the following decade. The related projects, such as Atlanta's Olympic Legacy Program and civic effort, led to significant investment in the city's universities, parks, and tourism industry. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing occurred despite extra security precautions, but the event still propelled Atlanta onto the world stage. The games also spurred the development of the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile freight railroad loop converted into an art-filled multi-use trail and light rail transit line, which increased the city's park space by 40% and stimulated retail and residential development along the loop.
The Silicon Peach And The Skyline
Atlanta has emerged as the all-time most popular destination for film production in the United States, with film and television production injecting 9.5 billion dollars into Georgia's economy in 2017. The city is home to the Tyler Perry Studios, one of the largest film production studios in the U.S., and has doubled for other parts of the world in blockbuster productions like Ant-Man and Captain America: Civil War. The city's economy is diverse, with dominant sectors including transportation, aerospace, logistics, healthcare, news and media operations, film and television production, information technology, finance, biomedical research, and public policy. Atlanta hosts the global headquarters of several corporations such as The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, and UPS. The city has the fourth-largest concentration of IT jobs in the U.S., earning the nickname the Silicon Peach. In 2021, major freight railroad Norfolk Southern moved their headquarters to Atlanta, and the city hosts major classification yards for Norfolk Southern and CSX. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world's busiest airport, and the headquarters of Delta Air Lines, which operates the world's largest airline hub at Hartsfield-Jackson.
A Forest In The Concrete
Atlanta features a unique topography that includes rolling hills, lush greenery, and the densest urban tree coverage of any major city in the United States. Vegetation covers 47.9% of the city as of 2017, the highest among all major American cities, and well above the national average of 27%. The city's main street is named after a tree, and beyond the Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead business districts, the skyline gives way to a dense canopy of woods that spreads into the suburbs. The city is home to the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, an annual arts and crafts festival held one weekend during early April, when the native dogwoods are in bloom. A 2001 study found Atlanta's heavy tree cover declined from 48% in 1974 to 38% in 1996, but community organizations and the city government are addressing the problem. Trees Atlanta, a non-profit organization founded in 1985, has planted and distributed over 113,000 shade trees in the city, and Atlanta's government has awarded 130,000 dollars in grants to neighborhood groups to plant trees. Fees are additionally imposed on developers that remove trees on their property per a citywide ordinance, active since 1993.
The Black Mecca And The Flight
Since the 1970s, Atlanta has been widely recognized as a hub of African American political activism, education, entrepreneurship, and culture, earning it the reputation of being a Black mecca. However, in the 1990s, Atlanta started to experience Black flight, with African Americans moving outside the city seeking a lower cost of living or better public schools. The African American share of Atlanta's population has declined faster than any racial group, shrinking from 67% in 1990 to 47% in 2020. Blacks made up nine percent of new Atlanta residents between 2010 and 2020. At the same time, Atlanta is home to a sizable foreign-born Black population, notably from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Somalia, Liberia, and Nigeria. The non-Hispanic White population of Atlanta began to rebound after several decades of White flight to Atlanta's suburbs. Between 2000 and 2020, the proportion of Whites in the city had strong growth, growing from 33% to 39% of the city's population. Whites made up the majority of new Atlanta residents between 2010 and 2020, while the Hispanic and Latino populations of metro Atlanta have grown significantly in recent years.
The City That Calls Itself Home
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia, with a population of 498,715 at the 2020 census and an estimated 520,070 in 2024. The city is situated among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains at an elevation of just over 1,050 feet above sea level, the highest elevation among major cities east of the Mississippi River. Atlanta straddles the Eastern Continental Divide, where rainwater that falls on the south and east side of the divide flows into the Atlantic Ocean, while rainwater on the north and west side of the divide flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The city is divided into 242 officially defined neighborhoods, with three major high-rise districts forming a north-south axis along Peachtree: Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead. Atlanta has a diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population, ranking third among major American cities with 12.8% of the city's total population identifying as LGB. The city has consistently scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index that measures how inclusive a city's laws, policies and services are for LGBT people who live or work there. Atlanta is governed by a mayor and the 15-member Atlanta City Council, with the mayor of Atlanta being Andre Dickens, a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot whose first term in office began on the 3rd of January 2022.