My Road in Cobb County, Georgia (Part 1 of 2)

In my post of 26 September 2009 I showed how my road was closed because of flooding, so this time I would like to show my road as it looked in mid-August on a sunny day. My road is located in Cobb County northwest of Atlanta. When we moved to Georgia we first lived in Decatur, south east of Atlanta. But when in first grade our daughter Céline was tested and found to be “gifted” we decided to move in a county where the schools had challenging courses for talented children. One of my friends, Charlie, had a house in Cobb County so we decided to find a house there. Our youngest daughter Jessica was also identified as "gifted" a few years later, so they were both enrolled in the Cobb Gifted Target Program.


Gold was discovered in North Georgia before the Civil War which was one of the reasons Georgia wanted the Cherokee Indians out of the state. In 1830 a large number of white settlers came to obtain one of the 342 land and 4360 gold lots which were raffled off. The larger Cherokee County was divided into 10 smaller counties one of which was Cobb County. In 1834 Marietta was made the county seat. There are 5 other cities in Cobb County. One of them is Smyrna, where the Oscar winner Julia Roberts was born and went to school. Below is her photo in the Campbell High School yearbook.

Photo courtesy of Preston Howard

Here is a newer photograph of Julia –

The pioneers who came found beautiful meadows, streams, rolling hills, forests and mountain peaks in Cobb County. We bought a house in West Cobb County and at the time there were quite a few farms. The road was known as Rural Route No. 4. Here is the postcard I used at the time to send our change of address to family and friends. It shows the Twin Peaks of Kennesaw Mountain.


Our road goes through the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park where in June 1864 General William T. Sherman described the twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain as a scene too beautiful to be disturbed by the horrors of war. But as you can see it was the scene of a great battle.

Old photograph of battle scene

Below is how my road looked in the 1950s (photo courtesy J. B. Glover V.)


Federal Troops attacked entrenched Confederates on June 27, 1864. The attack was a brief and bloody failure. Later, the Union flanking maneuver forced the Confederates to retire to Atlanta. Below is a painting by the Louis Prang & Co. of Boston showing this battle.


We moved to our road, pass the battle site, in the mid seventies and I drove by it almost daily to go to work. It is still down the road on our way to and back from town.



This photo was taken this morning – as you can see the leaves are not turning yet.

Hikers park on my road to walk to the top of Pigeon Hill and Kennesaw Mountain. Many tourists come as well to visit this Civil War Park. Across part of the historical battlefield is a field of non historical/non native llamas. We stopped to take some pictures –

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

About ½ mile from the battlefield shown above is a small trail going into another part of the park, next to the brick sign announcing the park. This trail is not marked, but we know it. We followed it that day so I could take some pictures. Civil War trenches can still be seen close to the trail.



My road is pretty long, about 11 miles. It encompasses quite a variety of landscape. It has houses full of history like the one below –


and it also has many new and beautiful houses. Their golf course can be seen from my road –

There is another page written for this post which I was going to publish today however I found out late this afternoon that this was Homecoming Day for Harrison High School which is located about 1 mile from my road. I dropped everything and went to watch the parade and took some pictures. I decided to cut this post into two parts as it would be much too long with these additional pictures. We live closer to Kennesaw than Marietta so our daughters attended North Cobb High School in Kennesaw which is about 8.5 miles away. A few years ago Harrison High School was built and it is only 1 mile away. This high school has received many awards the latest being the invitation to have their marching band perform at the Macy’s Parade this next Thanksgiving in New York City. This is a high honor as only 11 high school bands are invited among the 50 states in the country. Several students have also been invited to perform at the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena in 2010. Many an evening we can hear the band playing from our house.

The parade started with the Cobb County Sheriff throwing Sheriff star stickers to the kids on the road – a facsimile star as seen on his police cruiser.


The Honor guard was next –


Followed by the High School Principal driving her red sports car –


The Harrison High School Band and the Flag Corps came next –

Don't forget to click on the pictures to enlarge them

The Homecoming Queens rode by throwing candy to the kids –


The HOYAS Cross Country Team following up –



The recycling trash crew came last


The Park Ranger ended the Parade.



My next post will complete “My Road in Cobb County.”