4.0 Min-Read
The following are embedded links to the eight (8) articles I’ve written and consider to be “The Really-Good Stuff” on this particular blog.
Linked Index: These links will take you directly to the full articles, but also serve as a table of contents
- A Chronological History of Marietta, Cobb County & The State of Georgia
- Marietta, Georgia: A Photo Compilation of “Now & Then”
- The Establishment of Kennesaw National Battlefield Park (KNBP)
- The Bell Bomber Plant: A Chronology & Image-Based History Trip
- The Background on What Possessed Me To Produce These Articles
1 – A 30-minute read through the history of Marietta, Cobb County & Georgia from 10,000 B.C. to present, in summary format with a linked-index to allow readers to “jump” to times or subjects of interest. There are sections that deal with subjects at right outlined and linked in the aforementioned index, and I find myself adding more recent history as I recall or find things of interest in the last few decades, e.g., I probably should add an item on Six Flags.
2 – A virtual, photo-based walk around the Marietta Square, adjacent streets and a few other areas of interest that provides images of what Marietta looks like today, and back in time using historic photos on an enthusiast’s FB page which has since been commercialized so it’s hard to know.
2a – Although they’re referenced and linked in the two previous articles that focus on Marietta, its history and what buildings were where when, the following are two articles I wrote to capture the Sanborn Map Company’s Insurance Maps produced for Marietta between 1885 and 1923. In fact, if it weren’t for these maps I wouldn’t have known about the Jonesville community that was displaced by the construction of the Marietta Army Airfield. Some of the images I’ve included can be enlarged to glean additional information regarding each of the structures illustrated on these very informative maps, but only to a point. However, I’ve included links to the source files at the Congressional Library and Digital Library of Georgia that can be used to obtain better than original copy viewing copy.
2b – After completing the consolidated article on the Sanborn Maps focused on Central Marietta and the Marietta Square, I felt the large businesses located outside Central Marietta warranted some additional attention, as it was these Marietta-based businesses that fed the economic engine in a community that had been devastated a mere 30-years after it was formally established and then struggled for many years during the Reconstruction Period that followed the Civil War.
3 – This is the original subject matter and article that first sent me down many rabbit holes. The very first one caused my attention to turn from understanding the history of the Civil War battles fought near Kennesaw Mountain, to how all of this mostly undeveloped land that now comprises the current National Battlefield Park came to be acquired some 70-years after the Civil War. And, perhaps more importantly, how it evolved from the sprawling, north-to-south collection of battlefields into a single, contiguous park in the midst of the Great Depression.
3a – True to the current name of my blog, these were two of the rabbit holes I fell down while developing the Kennesaw National Battlefield Park article. Given how much time we spent hiking at the park, the mountain road and Camp Brumby were ever-present, but nothing about their history was self-evident despite some signage at Camp Brumby. And, like all of these history-based articles, as I continue to learn more, I find myself having to go back and correct, update or add-to these articles. But, this was the first, official sequel article.
4 – Like a great-many residents in Cobb and surrounding Counties, I spent many years working at Air Force Plant 6 (AFP-6) from 1991 until retiring in 2018. While I understood the history of Lockheed’s aircraft development in Marietta, what I thought I knew about how AFP-6 came to be built in Cobb County and Marietta was incomplete, as was the total impact it had on the culture and economy of both the city and county. Having just finished the photo compilation of “now and then” on Marietta, it was hard to avoid the scale and significance of “The Bomber Plant” as where were so many linkages and, well, photos from various sources dating back to the 1940’s when ground was broken first for the Marietta Army Airfield, Air Force Plant 6, and the evolution of farmland and parts of the Jonesville’s community into the sprawling facility it remains today.
4a – As it has with several of these history-based articles, the more I learn and write the more thoughts I have about “what did that looked like” or “when did that happen” and so it was with this collection of annotated overhead and satellite photo comparisons, annotated to show what Air Force Plant 6 and Lockheed’s South Campus changed over time. When I stumbled onto a very detailed article a friend shared, I also created a updated graphs and tables to illustrate the plant workforce size over time, the major programs time periods and when which buildings were built when, where and for what. This information is all in the massive Bell Bomber Plant Chronology, but I broke-it-out since it might be “just enough” for many readers.
4b – The following is a collection of links to other blogs/articles I’ve composed and published with background information that includes the major production programs Lockheed established at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia from the 1950’s thorough the 1980’s. The latter would include the L-100 / C-130 Hercules, the L-1329 / C-140 JetStar, the L-300 / C-141 Starlifter and the L-500 / C-5 Galaxy. In other words, it’s more or less, an ala carte entry that allows readers to pick and choose the subject matter from the Lockheed Georgia History, vs. trying to sift through or navigate the hyperlinked table of contents.
4c – The rabbit hole lives, as in much in the same way that my photo time capsule article and images on Marietta inspired me to do the same for the Bell Bomber Plant, the photo time capsule article and images on the Bell Bomber Plant sent me down a rabbit hole regarding the C-130 program, something near and dear to my heart which was far-too-hard to summarize in a few short paragraphs and photos in the Bell Bomber article. So, it now has it’s own.
A Post-Script Introduction to The Article, For Those Who Are Curious
“Once More, Down the Rabbit Hole“ is a blog I created back in March of 2020 when I was highly-engaged in following the Covid Pandemic and either sharing information I’d come across, commenting on things that caught my attention, keeping track of key metrics, or just offering my own opinions. There are still about 160 of the 200+ articles I wrote in 2020 through June 2020 that were sitting in the archives when I decided to “move-on” as it was something of a stress-inducing practice.
The blog sat dormant until this past January when I realized Facebook had become something less than a great way of staying in touch with friends, and yet-another stress-inducing venue based on what was showing-up in my news feed, and my use of Facebook to “vent” my frustrations. In addition to pulling way-back from Facebook — something I addressed in a blog entry back in January — I decided to rename this blog “Getting it Off my Chest” and moved my weekly metric updates on Covid, Gas & Oil Prices and other economic-related current events I was posting to Facebook here, along with my occasional need to comment or offer opinions on current events.
This past March I decided to re-direct my interests and writing energy to something more productive, essentially local history beginning with how Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park came to be in April, and by March was digging-into and writing about the history of Georgia, Cobb County & Marietta.
By the end of May, I decided to re-name this blog “Once More, Down the Rabbit Hole We Go“ as that’s what tends to happen when I begin to research and write about history. As it was many years ago when I conducted investigations, as I make new discoveries that require further research, before I know it, several hours have gone as I learn things I didn’t know or fully-appreciate, or found “facts” that were incorrect. And, quite frankly, that’s what I now consider to be “The Really Good Stuff” and presently eight of my more recent (8) articles that fall into that category; however, I’m sure there are still a lot of rabbit holes to come.
A History Trip to Cobb County Georgia 
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