Transportation and Technology

Learn off-the-script facts about railroads and the making of Atlanta.

In advance of the 1996 Olympic Games, organizers in Atlanta worked to harness the power of new technologies to showcase the city as cutting edge and progressive—just as many host cities before them had done.

Linda Fay reacts to the first airport security instrument tested at Atlanta Municipal Airport (now Hartsfield-Jackson) ca. 1960.

An unidentified woman brings her horse to a halt at a WHOA sign.

E. E. McKennon pauses her welding work on a ship at the J.A. Jones Construction Company shipyard in May, 1943.

Aftermath of an airplane crash at Municipal Airport (later Hartsfield-Jackson) on June 20, 1937.

Preserving history is never easy—it’s a complicated decision whether to leave fragile historical artifacts in place, or to move them for preservation and public access.

Through the 1850s, Atlanta grew from a railroad junction to a burgeoning regional center.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) is the ninth-largest transit system in the nation and serves an average of more than 550,000 passengers a day.

Traffic congestion in Atlanta manifested itself early in the city’s history as pedestrians, horse-drawn vehicles, and electric streetcars moved sluggishly amid many at-grade railroad crossings.

Atlanta’s famous street name is widely known due in part to Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone With the Wind, which introduced the city and its most famous street to popular culture.

WSB, the South’s first radio station, went on the air on March 15, 1922. Its call letters later provided for the popular slogan “Welcome South, Brother.”

In 1925, Atlanta leased an abandoned racetrack with the goal of turning it into an airfield.

Founded in 1924 as an aerial crop dusting company, Delta Air Lines has grown to become one of the largest air carriers in the world.