Georgia Natural Wonder #281 - Shirley Clarke Franklin Park - Fulton County (Part 10)

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #281 - Shirley Clarke Franklin Park

Still several places in Atlanta and Fulton County to support our recount of all the tangents surrounding Georgia's main city. We come to Atlanta's newest and largest park. A former Rock Quarry of some notoriety, turned to something of use for the greater good of Atlanta. 

 

Our first TRD Scrolling Nugget comes from the earliest Beatles doing a Buddy Holly song.



The Atlanta Beltline is a massive 22-mile loop of multi-use trails, parks, and transit built on former railway corridors. Encircling the core of Atlanta, it connects 45 intown neighborhoods with walking and biking paths, public art, and dining. I'm familiar with the East side but our wonder today includes the West side. I've always wanted to see this wonder but you could not get past the fences for the old Bell Quarry. I finally visited the park with my friend Jean, the Bolton Cafeteria Cashier. 

 
Went from Bell Quarry to Atlanta Freshwater Reservoir.

Wikipedia

Shirley Clarke Franklin Park (formerly Westside Park) is a park in Atlanta, Georgia located on the site of the former Bellwood Quarry. The park is between Johnson Road and Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and between the neighborhoods of Bankhead, Grove Park, and Knight Park/Howell Station. 


This Whalebone entrance art work sculpture. 

Westside Park at Bellwood Quarry was a major green space project of the Atlanta Beltline master plan.

  

History

The land, which was owned by Fulton County, was previously leased to Vulcan Materials. On December 10, 2005, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin announced a plan to acquire the land in order to create a 351-acre park with a 45-acre lake which would also serve as a drinking water reservoir. 



The plan was a portion of the extensive Beltline project to construct a ring of parks, trails, and transit surrounding the core of Atlanta. As proposed, Westside Reservoir Park was nearly twice the size of Atlanta's premiere greenspace, Piedmont Park. Acquisition by the city was completed on June 30, 2006.



On December 29, 2017, outgoing mayor Kasim Reed unveiled plans for phase one of the park's construction. The cost of the first phase was approximately $26.5 million.


Phase one includes a gateway to the park and a "grand overlook" of both the quarry and the Atlanta skyline.

 
There are pedestrian connections to the Proctor Creek Greenway. 

 
Wow, future Atlanta Wonder, Proctor Creek?


The grand pump house filling the reservoir. 

On August 27, 2019, Westside Park received a major boost with the announcement that the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation had awarded a $17.5 million grant for the Beltline project. 


The Blank grant accelerated the development of parks and trails along the 22-mile circular corridor – especially on the West side.


At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on August 20, 2021, Atlanta's Westside Park was opened to the public.


On February 3, 2025, Westside Park was renamed to Shirley Clarke Franklin Park, in honor of the former mayor of Atlanta. She helped acquire the quarry before it turned into a park. 

Bellwood Quarry


The south side of Bellwood Quarry (c. 2014) prior to the site being flooded.

The Bellwood Quarry (often referred to as Bell Quarry) is a century-old granite pit in northwest Atlanta. Once a site of forced labor and commercial mining, it was purchased by the city in 2006 to become a 2.4-billion-gallon emergency water reservoir and the centerpiece of Westside Park.



The site's history is characterized by rapid civic development alongside a legacy of systemic racial injustice, commercial enterprise. 



Our second TRD Scrolling Nugget comes from the Pretenders.



Late 19th Century Convict Camps: The property initially operated as the Bellwood Convict Camp, a notorious Fulton County chain gang site. During the Jim Crow era, white leaders used these camps to subjugate Black citizens, forcing them into grueling, lethal labor to rebuild Atlanta's railways and infrastructure.



Bellwood was one of a number of chain gang camps in Atlanta and across the state that lasted into the second half of the 20th century. Their creation coincided with the early decades of Black freedom, against the backdrop of a rebuilding South: “Atlanta has just been destroyed in the Civil War. There’s this emergence of African American communities migrating from all across the state to Atlanta,” says Darrin Sims, the director of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights’ Truth and Transformation Initiative, which is exploring this chapter of the city’s history. “There’s also this need for cheap labor.”



For the white leaders of Georgia, the camps—and a system of convict leasing whereby mostly Black prisoners were leased to private businesses, including the infamous Chattahoochee Brick Company—were ways that nominally free Black citizens could still be held in bondage, while providing labor to rebuild the city. “People are being rounded up. There’s really no other way to put it,” Sims says. “They’re being targeted systemically. People would leave home and not come back.” In addition to being its own work camp, Bellwood was a “dispersement site” for Fulton County, which operated it; from this central location, prisoners could be sent to rock quarries around the area.



“Bellwood was the headquarters for the Fulton County chain gang system. That’s why the Fulton County jail is out there today,” says Douglas Blackmon, who’s leading the research component for the initiative; now a professor at Georgia State University, Blackmon won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book Slavery by Another Name, which explored the rise of convict leasing in the post–Civil War South. The chain gang system, Blackmon says, was “the ultimate fulfillment of the old stereotype, of prisoners in stripes being sent to break rocks in the quarry. It’s the oldest cliche there is about jails.”

 

The systematic violence of the convict lease system was so extreme that it was abandoned in the wake of scandal, including public hearings, in the first decade of the 20th century. But the chain gangs continued for decades longer, with prisoners sent out from the quarries to labor on the roads. “There was a big movement, the Good Roads Movement, that said: These prisoners, instead of them being in that terrible brick factory, or doing this other work for somebody who’s making a profit off of it—these folks ought to be working on the roads. Let’s put all the prisoners on the road in chain gangs,” Blackmon says. “It was viewed as a big improvement. But then, of course, the chain gang becomes the most infamous cruelty that people are generally aware of in the 20th century in terms of treatment of prisoners.” (Chain gangs entered the popular imagination through films like 1932’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and, later, 1967’s Cool Hand Luke.)

 

“We know that the conditions were absolutely horrendous at this site,” Sims says about Bellwood. “Just making gravel 10, 12 hours a day—really backbreaking work like that.” On the historical podcast Archive Atlanta, Victoria Lemos has shared details of several incidents she learned about in her research, such as the case of Charley Stevens—a 28-year-old Black man sentenced on a charge of “gaming” and offered the choice of a $45 fine or eight months’ hard labor. He died of heatstroke in the Bellwood quarry in 1913. Also that year, Lemos found, a former convict named Henry Shivers filed a lawsuit against the camp’s “whipping boss,” claiming that he’d been beaten with a club for 20 minutes in front of an entire mess hall full of incarcerated people, over the alleged infraction of smoking a cigarette after dinner.



Sung by an incarcerated man named Jesse Wadley, “I Promised Mr. Tyree” was recorded by the folklorist John Lomax in 1934 during travels throughout the South; partnering with the Library of Congress, Lomax captured tens of thousands of folk songs over the course of his career. A few days after his visit to Bellwood, Lomax traveled to a penitentiary in Milledgeville, where he continued to hear complaints about Georgia’s capital city, as in a song called “We Don’t Get No Justice in Atlanta.”



With the Truth and Transformation Initiative, Sims, the Center for Civil and Human Rights, and partner organizations including Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendants coalition are gathering information about this history, sources for which are relatively sparse: lawsuits from families seeking relatives who have disappeared, wanted posters for escapees, records from cemeteries and medical institutions. Blackmon is working with students from local universities to try to identify the names of people who worked on the chain gang, as well as find any living descendants. The goal is to create a memorial at Westside Park to the victims and survivors of convict leasing and the chain gang camps. (Following the disappearance of the chain gang system, private mining operations at Bellwood continued throughout the 20th century; in 2006, Vulcan Materials sold the site to the City of Atlanta.)



“We’ve got to tell the truth, and that’s how we get to the transformation,” Sims says. “Acknowledging the history allows us to work together to transform what we want for the future. To have something on the west side of Atlanta that pays homage to the bodies that rebuilt Atlanta and were lost and abused and terrorized allows us to discuss: How do we make things different?”

Granite Extraction: Alongside prison labor, commercial machines operated a 350-foot-deep granite pit here. 



Mining operations finally ceased in 2003, and the site was purchased by the city a few years later.



The former granite quarry, which closed in 2007, was a popular hangout spot for local teens. The site was used as a location for the filming of the AMC's series The Walking Dead in the summer of 2010. 



 

It was also used as a filming location for season four episode 14 of The Vampire Diaries.



There was a scene in Mockingjay Part 1, and the final scene of The Fundamentals of Caring. In 2016, it was featured prominently in several episodes of the Netflix series Stranger Things.



The quarry was used to film lunar surface sequences in the Neil Armstrong biographical film, First Man, released in 2018.

Driller Mike: During construction of the reservoir and the park, the area was closed to the public. A five-mile tunnel was dug to connect the quarry to the Chattahoochee River. The reservoir began filling in April of 2020, and completed filling in February 2021.

 

The 400-foot-long tunnel boring machine (TBM) that dug the 5-mile-long tunnel from the Chattahoochee River to the Bellwood Quarry (now Westside Park) is named Driller Mike. 

 

The machine was named in a public vote after Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike.

  

In addition to its recreational role, Shirley Clarke Franklin Park functions as a critical piece of Atlanta’s water infrastructure. The reservoir significantly increases the city’s emergency water storage capacity, holding a backup water supply of more than two billion gallons, which would last more than 30 days.

 

Swimming at Bellwood Quarry (now officially known as the Westside Reservoir Park) is strictly prohibited. The quarry functions as a 2.4-billion-gallon emergency drinking water reservoir for the City of Atlanta. 

  
Attempting to swim here is a federal crime and poses severe safety hazards.

Why Swimming is Banned

Emergency Water Supply: The city converted the site to protect critical drinking water reserves from contamination.

Deadly Pumping Systems: The reservoir is up to 350 feet deep. It contains massive, automated water pumps that, when activated, can drag a swimmer underwater and cause severe injury or death.

Strict Security: The area is enclosed by fencing and monitored by security and the Atlanta Police. Trespassers are subject to arrest.

TRD Visit to this Natural (Man Made) Wonder of Atlanta. 

We parked and made our way to the main entrance.

 
Jean models the Phoenix Bird Sculpture (Rebirth Pavilion)

 
Made our way to bathroom, much more important at end of visit.

 
TRD and Jean at the Shirley Clarke Franklin Pavilion. 

 
Then we found a man struggling to carry a canopy to the Family Reunion ahead. Jean helped him out and jumped right in to the Double Dutch jump rope with the ladies.



  
Look at Jean spinning the ropes. 

  
Dang Jean was really good I had to beg them to let me have my girlfriend back so we could visit the park.


Made our way past playground. Jean still a little miffed about having to leave the Family Reunion.

 
Got a kid to go down slide for me to take photo. 

 
Past the valley's of quarry rock fill and kudzu.

 
Then you come upon the lake on the other side of the chain link fence. Jean rested while I wandered trying to take images through the fence. 

 
Waterline on West side of Quarry. 

 
Spinning round to the Southwest corner of Quarry. 

 
South side in distance, near bank vegetation. 

 
Rocky Quarry cliffs. 

 
Then you spin to East side of Quarry.


Panel shows Tunnel Path and Driller Mike in upper right corner. 

 
Trying to capture the Natural Wonder of the cliffs. 

 
More cliffs to East.


Getting in some near shore plants. 

 
Big cliff to East. 


Walked over to Pump House. 

  
Big ole chain link fence, Jean still waiting in distance. Stopped to notice flowers. 

 
 Then we made our way past the Kudzu valley to the Overlook. 

  
Wildlife - Dragonfly - Frog - Butterfly.
 
 
Pine cone on way to Overlook.


Jean at the Overlook. 

 
East shore across pond and West shore down below. 


Panoramic.

 
Jean took some pictures.

 
TRD gets to be in some pictures. 

 
Thumb eclipse in the one image, and just as a suggestion, flip flops are not ideal footwear for this park.  


Panel shows just how big the Quarry Lake is. 

 
There is a memorial marker for Edith Marie McGuire the second African American women to win 3 medals at one Olympics, 1964. 

   
TRD notices some flowers.

 
Multiple maps around park, marker at main pavilion. 

 
Back to that Phoenix Bird statue at park entrance. Snake chased us out of park. Get out and get a picture says Jean. Zoom from driver's seat instead. 

 
I had to take some pictures of the Whalebone entrance to park. 

  
Jean taking pictures of me in case I got run over. 


Flower ID Panel. 

  
TRD and Jean at the Shirley Clarke Franklin Park northwest Atlanta. Good deal for Atlanta. 

Fulton County (Part 10)

We concluded our listings for 247 National Register of Historic Places listings in Fulton County, Georgia. We now turn to the 573 Historical Markers in Fulton County. Now we have already covered a bulk of these on our 10 post on the Civil War in Atlanta and Oakland Cemetery. 

Delta Air Lines World Headquarters - AIAA Historic Aerospace Site



Located in the Delta Flight Museum.

 

God's Acre / Rest Haven

 

God's Acre Marker side next to Westview Cemetery Water Tower.

 

In Memory of Our Comrades

 

 
In Westview Cemetery.



Lugenia Burns Hope (1871-1947)

 
Located near Graves Hall on the campus of Morehouse College.

National Medical Association: Medicine in the Civil Rights Movement



At the First Congregational Church United Church of Christ.

 

Rush Memorial Congregational Church

 
It is on James P. Brawley Drive SW 0.1 miles south of Parsons Street SW.

Westview Receiving Vault

 
Westview Cemetery.

William L. Scruggs L.L.D. Author, Lawyer, Diplomat

 
Located in Section 1 at Westview Cemetery.

Habersham Memorial Hall

 
It is in Ansley Park on 15th Street just west of Piedmont Road.

 

Booker T. Washington High School

 

An Appeal for Human Rights March 9, 1960

 

Marker is in Atlanta University Center.



Atlanta Student Movement



Nearby Clark Atlanta University entrance gate.

 

Atlanta Student Movement Planned

 

It is at the intersection of Atlanta Student Movement Boulevard and Chestnut Street NW.

 

The Atlanta Student Movement 1960-1965

 

By the other Markers.

Montgomery Cemetery



It is on Marietta Boulevard NW ¼ mile south of Bolton Road NW, on the right when traveling south. The marker is located in heavy brush and trees well off the roadway, adjacent to a building (currently a restaurant). It can be very difficult to see (and even more difficult to reach). 


It is the resting place of Major James McConnell Montgomery (1768–1842), who is widely considered the first white man to settle permanently in what is now Fulton County.

Birthplace of Allison Nelson

 
The Chattahoochee River is in the background. (The tower on the right is for an approach to the Fulton County/Charlie Brown Airport.)

“The Storyteller” Frank Fleming, Sculptor

 
The marker stands in Charlie Loudermilk Park, a triangle formed by Roswell Road, Peachtree Road, and Sardis Way.

  

Gov. John M. Slaton 1866-1955

 

Miss Jane Donaldson Business Estabished — 1886 - 1931 

 

The first Donaldson store was Miss Jane Donaldson. Miss Jane Donaldson was a little old lady that was really, really elderly, with a long dress and high-topped shoes and all. She lived right behind the store. Of course, everybody thought it was so funny. If you went to the store, most of the time she wasn’t there. She had a thing to pull for a bell. You’d ring the bell and she’d come out, even if you wanted a nickel’s worth of candy. Most of the time we wanted that old hoop cheese, that round hoop cheese. She’d come out there. She lived with her brother, uh, she lived with her brother and his wife. Yes, Miss Jane Donaldson, everybody knew her, because she had that Donaldson store for years.

Sardis Methodist Church


It is in Buckhead. It is on Powers Ferry Road NW 0.1 miles north of Roswell Road.

 

Sardis Methodist Church Cemetery.

 

Swan House

 

3099 Andrews Drive NW, Atlanta GA 30305.

 

Swan House

 
Marker is along the driveway that leads directly to the front portico.

The Indian Trail Echota

 
It is at the intersection of Peachtree Road (U.S. 19) and Palisades Road.

 

Jacob Elsas and the Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills

 
Marker is in Cabbagetown. It is on Carroll Street Southeast south of Tennelle Street Southeast.

 
The Former Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills Redeveloped into a mix of apartments, condominiums, office space and film studios. Jacob Elsas

1996 Summer Olympics Games of the XXVI Olympiad

 
Marker is next to the visitor/information center in Centennial Olympic Park.

1998 Shining Light Award Honoring Zell Miller

  
It is at the intersection of Centennial Olympic Park Drive and Marietta Street.

CNN Cable News Network

  
It is on Centennial Olympic Park Drive NW near Marietta Street NW.

Dr. John S. Pemberton

 
Located just to the west of the World of Coca-Cola Museum.

  

Welcome to Centennial Olympic Park

 
Marker is next to the Centennial park's visitor/information center.

Historic Owl Rock Church


It is at the intersection of Campbellton Road (Georgia Route 166) and Union Road SW.

 
Historic Owl Rock Church. Owl Rock – located behind the church.

One last TRD Scrolling Nugget for today's Post, an Owl Song written by Al "Blind Owl" Wilson and Canned Heat. 



Georgia Dome

 
Marker is accessible by foot at the northwest corner of the Home Depot Backyard venue.


The House that Dion Sanders built, where Kerri Strug landed one more vault. 



Grady Health System


It is on Jesse Hill, Jr. Drive south of Cocoa Cola Place. The marker is located where the original hospital once stood.

 
Early Grady

Sandtown

 
It is at the intersection of Fulton Industrial Boulevard (Georgia Route 70) and Boat Rock Road SW, on the right when traveling south on Fulton Industrial Boulevard.

The Winecoff Fire

 
119 People died. 

   

Thrasherville Where Atlanta Began

 
Marker is located in front of the State Bar of Georgia building. 

 
Plaque dedicated to "Atlanta's First Baby". Located beside the Thrasherville Marker.

Birthplace of Coca-Cola

 

 
Marker is in front of Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Where Jacob's Pharmacy was located. 

SunTrust Bank

 
It is at the intersection of Edgewood Avenue SE and Park Place NE.

On the wall by the marker is the Prophecy of John C. Calhoun November 13, 1845.



Willis Carlisle's Store 1845

 
It is in Five Points. It is at the intersection of Park Place Southeast and Decatur Street Southeast.

 
Site of the Trout House during Civil War.

Fort McPherson

 
It is in Fort McPherson at the intersection of Hardee Avenue SW and Haney Plaza.

 

Georgia Institute of Technology


It is in Georgia Tech. It is on Cherry Street 0.1 miles west of North Avenue. It is in front of Tech Tower. 



Georgia Tech Origins A Tech Giant's Hand-tooled History

 
Marker is missing, it was located just beyond the two security bollards on the left.

"Out in the Rain" (1913)

 
Marker and sculpture is in Oakland Cemetery.

Roosevelt High School

 

It originally opened as an all girls school, and was named, Girls High School, from 1924 - 1947. Shortly after World War II, the Atlanta high schools became co-educational. The Girls High School was renamed Roosevelt High School for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the school continued as an Atlanta institution until 1985. The building was then renovated into apartments during the late 1980s, and continues to be used for residential apartment living to this very day.

   

The Bobby Jones Story


From the Oakland Cemetery entrance (Oakland at Martin Luther King), take the 10th right turn. 

 
 
Mt. Zion Methodist Church

 
It is in Hammond Park. It is at the intersection of Metropolitan Parkway SW (U.S. 41) and Old Jonesboro Road

The Honorable Isabel Gates Webster (April 16, 1931 - July 2, 1991)

 
It is in Harland Terrace. It is on Peyton Place Southwest 0.1 miles north of Peyton Road Southwest

Alonzo Herndon 1858-1927

 
Located at Georgia State University Centennial Hall.

 
Herndon Home and Herndon himself. 

Atlanta's "Main Street" Auburn Avenue - Integration of the Police Department
 
  
There is a series of signs up and down Auburn Avenue. 

Auburn Avenue Underpass Auburn Avenue - Bronner Brothers Store

 
Under I-85 and I-75 Downtown Connector. 

Big Bethel A.M.E. Church 220 Auburn Avenue



Big Bethel A.M.E. Church Auburn Avenue

 

Whew! Reviewed the first 200 Historical Markers of Fulton County, and culled 54 Markers that weren't covered in the earlier 10 post on the Civil War in Atlanta and Oakland Cemetery. A lot of these Markers covered our listings for the 247 National Register of Historic Places listings in Fulton County so we did not repeat those. We have 373 Historical Markers left in Fulton County, but we will only list the Markers we have not covered in earlier post.

Our GNW Girls today are Chain Gang Women.

 

 
Only in Arizona.