Artwork
The Zero Mile Post
Where Atlanta Began
Authored by Stories of Atlanta
As the industrial revolution swept the United States, opportunities for profit in the shipping and transportation industries grew exponentially. The cities of Charleston and Savannah were locked in an ongoing competition to capture the lucrative agricultural business of the rural South.
Taking advantage of the newest 1833 era technology, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company substantially raised the shipping stakes between the two cities by constructing a railroad line that ran from the Port of Charleston to the tiny hamlet of Hamburg, S.C. on the Savannah River. Known as the “Best Friend of Charleston.” The railroad line quickly caught the attention of the State of Georgia.
Hamburg was directly across the river from Augusta, a major Georgia marketplace that transported goods from the interior of the state down the Savannah River to Georgia’s Port of Savannah. South Carolina’s offer of a faster, more reliable way to transport goods to port was appealing to farmers who lived off the proceeds of their crops. The threat of a significant loss of business to the Port of Savannah motivated the Georgia legislature to action.
In 1833, 3-years after the Charleston to Hamburg line opened, the State of Georgia issued charters for the construction of 3-railroad lines which would directly connect the State’s major cities to the Port of Savannah. Four years later, in an effort to expand Georgia’s agricultural market, the State would authorize construction of a 4th railroad line. Unlike the three initial chartered lines which were issued to private companies, the 4th line, named the Western & Atlantic, would be built and operated by the State of Georgia.
By act of the Georgia legislature, the route of the “State Road,” as the W&A line would come to be known, began at a point on the Tennessee River known as Ross’ Landing (future Chattanooga) and would terminate in the foothills of North Georgia at an unspecified point, somewhere just south of the Chattahoochee River. Two of the original three rail lines charted by the state would also connect at the terminus point of the Western and Atlantic line...effectively linking the Port of Savannah with the growing western frontier of America.
It was U.S. Army civil engineer, Stephen Harriman Long, working for the State of Georgia as the Chief Engineer of the Western and Atlantic rail line, who surveyed and marked the unspecified point south of the Chattahoochee River which represented the terminus or end of the rail line. It and the area around, would give rise to Atlanta’s unofficial name...Terminus. Displaying an astounding lack of ability to perceive the future, a few years later Chief Engineer Long was offered half interest in a plot of Terminus land that would one day become the heart of downtown Atlanta. In declining the offer, Long is quoted as saying that Terminus would only be capable of supporting “...one tavern, a blacksmith shop, a grocery store and nothing else.”
In the early days of railroading, markers, known as “Mile Posts,” were placed along a train’s route as a way of tracking the trains progress. The posts were numbered to indicate how many miles a train had traveled from its beginning location. The marker at the Terminus location became known as the “Zero Mile Post.”
The rest of the story is well-known. Connecting the “iron triangle” of the Macon and Western and the Georgia Railroad lines to the terminus point of the Western & Atlantic rail line would ultimately result in the creation of arguably America’s first great inland city...Atlanta. Atlanta would grow up around the railroad tracks which, in part, explains the city’s confusing system of roads but, more importantly, explains how Atlanta was able to position itself for success.
The commerce created by the railroads propelled Atlanta forward and helped to support the as generally held opinion of the day that Atlanta was a city on the move, where one could find opportunity and the chance to have a better life. It could also be argued that Atlanta’s success, generated in part by the railroads, was ultimately responsible for Atlanta’s Civil War destruction. The distribution capabilities afforded the city by its web of rail lines also enabled Atlanta to become a primary producer of war supplies and that attracted the attention of U.S. Generals Grant and Sherman.
In a graphic display of the importance of rail transportation to the City of Atlanta, two years after the end of the Civil War, which saw the complete destruction of Atlanta’s rail capabilities, the City had rebuilt its railroad system and was growing faster than ever.
It is hard to overstate the symbolic importance of the Zero-Mile post. If Atlanta was the universe, then the Zero Mile Post would be the location of the Big Bang. Contrary to most of America’s early cities, Atlanta was not a river town or a port city. Had it not been for the web of rail lines that connected at that unspecified point somewhere south of the Chattahoochee River, there would have been no motivation for building, in that location, a city the size of Atlanta. Atlanta was a “railroad town” ...one of America’s first. The railroads sustained and nurtured Atlanta well into the 1930’s, when, just as it had done in the 1830s, Atlanta turned its eye toward the next great technological advancement in transportation...the airplane.
Though the glory days of Atlanta’s rail transportation system that, at its peak saw over 300-trains a day come and go through the city, would ultimately give way to an even faster more efficient transportation method, the Zero Mile Post would remain in the minds and hearts of Atlantans. . . the point where Atlanta began.
For more information, see:
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/atlanta/wes.htm
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/preserving-atlanta-history-the-zero-milepost/
https://georgiahistory.com/ghmi_marker_updated/zero-mile-post/
Michi Meko is a multidisciplinary artist whose works engage metaphorically and abstractly with the paradoxes and contradictions that have shaped his personal history and the shared history of Black Americans, particularly in the American South.
Recent exhibitions of Meko's work include Realms of Refuge, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, Michi Meko: Black and Blur, Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Atlanta GA; Michi Meko: It Doesn’t Prepare You for Arrival, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA), Atlanta, GA; Michi Meko: Before We Blast off: The Journey of Divine Forces, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA and Abstraction Today, MOCA GA, Atlanta, GA. His work is held in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; King & Spalding, Atlanta, GA; Scion (Toyota Motor Corporation), Los Angeles, CA; MetroPark USA Inc., Atlanta, GA; and CW Network, Atlanta, GA, among others. Meko is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and the Atlanta Artadia Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 Hudgens Prize.