The Flat Rock community in northwestern Clayton County evolved out of a series of small farms that were built before the Civil War around the headwaters of the Flint River. The river first emerges from springs just southeast of the present intersection of Willingham Drive and Main Street at the southern edge of East Point. The main stream flows in a southerly direction, but it and most of its tributaries have been buried under the airport until emerging as the Flint River just west of the intersection of I–285 and Clark Howell Highway. One of those tributaries was Flat Rock Creek, which took its name from the exposed granite over which the creek flowed from its source in springs less than a mile north of Flat Rock Cemetery. Flowing south, the creek was crossed by Flat Rock Road a few hundred yards east of the cemetery. It joined Sullivan's Creek just west of where the fifth runway now crosses I–285, and their combined flow joins the Flint River near the Georgia Hwy 85 river crossing.
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Detail from Plate LX, “Atlanta Campaign,” Atlas of the War of the Rebellion, 1864, annotated with an arrow to locate the future site of Flat Rock Baptist Church, between the Hart house on W. Fayetteville Road just north of Sullivan Creek and the Dodson house on Flat Rock Road just east of where the road crossed Flat Rock Creek, both houses designated on the map. |
The present site of the Atlanta airport had its origins in the Atlanta Motor Speedway, a project of Asa Candler, of Coca–Cola fame, his son Asa Jr. and Jr.'s friend Atlanta businessman Edward M. Durant. They assembled fourteen parcels, mostly of old farmland, encompassing 287 acres of relatively flat terrain around the headwaters of the Flint River. Much of the land had been the farm of William Ervin Thrailkill (1816–1902)and his wife Lucinda (1821–1902), South Carolina natives who apparently moved to Georgia in the 1870s and acquired a land lot two or three miles northwest of the historic railroad station at Rough and Ready, later Mountain View. The Thrailkill farm is shown just above center on Plate LX of the Atlas of the War of the Rebellion, above. They and most of their descendants are buried at Mt. Zion Methodist Church cemetery in Hapeville, but several descendants are buried at Flat Rock.
The Candlers built a two–mile long oval track, oriented north–south half–way between College Park and Hapeville, which opened in November 1909 but proved unprofitable and closed the following year. The abandoned track sat idle for the better part of a decade until 31 March 1919 when it was announced that Asa Candler Sr. had agreed to donate or sell the property for the purpose of an "aero landing place."
In 1925 the City of Atlanta leased the old racetrack site from Candler and began development of an airport. The first flight landed the following year, with many more after that. In April 1929, the City paid $94,400 for Candler Field and changed the name of the airport to Atlanta Municipal Airport. In 1939 an Art Deco-style control tower and terminal were completed by the WPA. By the 1950s, the airport was the nation's busiest with traffic that required a new terminal. Costing $21 million, construction began in 1957, and the terminal opened in 1961 as the nation’s largest at that time. Ten years later, as the roar of jet engines overwhelmed the surrounding residential neighborhoods , the airport was rechristened Atlanta International Airport. In 1977, construction began on a giant midfield terminal, which opened in 1980. In 2003 the city renamed the airport Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport.
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Aerial view of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, annotated with an arrow to locate Flat Rock Cemetery. The midfield terminal is at upper center. I-285 meanders across the |
As it has always been, the airport remains an economic powerhouse for the city and the state, and except for a brief dip during the COVID pandemic of 2020, Atlanta's Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport has been the world's busiest since 1998.
In the decades after World War II, as the airport expanded and freeway construction destroyed large swaths of the Flat Rock community, the congregation at Flat Rock Baptist Church dwindled and in 1969 they sold the buildings to the airport. The following year, some of the congregation reorganized as National Heights Baptist Church at a new location a few miles away, but that church held its last service in 2017.
The cemetery was not part of the sale to the airport, and there was no provision for its continued maintenance. In 1986, descendants of some of those buried at the cemetery organized Flat Rock Cemetery Care, Inc., and, through years of effort, slowly began to rehabilitate the then badly overgrown site and raise money to support the cemetery’s long–term care. When the airport expanded to build the fifth runway in the 1990s, the group worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure the cemetery's continued preservation. Today, Flat Rock Cemetery, the Hart Cemetery, a half mile to the southwest, and fragments of some of the original streets and roads are the only tangible reminders of the once–thriving community around Flat Rock.
Construction of a fifth east–west runway began in the early twenty–first century and opened in the spring of 2006. Since it was expected to help alleviate airline congestion up and down the East Coast, it was dubbed at the time the “most important runway in America.” At 9,000 feet, construction costs of the runway ran to $1.28 billion, which included two enormous bridges crossing I–285 as well as buying our and razing entire neighborhoods. The north–south taxiway between the east–west runways is less than five hundred feet to the east of Flat Rock cemetery.
Flat Rock Cemetery, 1999. Short stretches of old Flat Rock Road (right) and Harrison Road (left) bound the cemetery on the south and west, respectively. |
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