I Walk the BeltLine
My original idea was to bike the 22-mile loop that makes up the BeltLine. The only problem was that I haven’t owned a bike since I was thirteen, having been too busy lending my talents to the late 90s aggressive in-line movement heightened in popularity by the X Games. Unable to find someone willing to let me ride their fixed-gear over the gravel covered terrain, I chose the old-fashion way of traveling: one foot in front of the other.
After printing off some nominal maps from the Atlanta BeltLine website, Purge founder and photographer Tim Song and I chose to start our journey at the northeast corridor (at Ponce De Leon) where I had initially discovered the BeltLine for myself; little did we know that this would be the easiest part of our two day trip. Since I had already been out on this stretch of the BeltLine, I spent duration of our time there showing Tim around the trail.
No longer just a path for taking a stroll, you can now see all of the progress that’s been made, like the recently completed Historic Old Fourth Ward Park and the Tony Hawk-funded Historic Old Fourth Ward Skate Park that is currently under construction. There’s also been some lovely make-shift condos built by the local homeless community below the bridge at Freedom Parkway. Cozy!
None of the residents were available for comment.
Our next stop was the northside corridor which runs from I-85 at Monroe up to W. Marietta Street. Our first mistake was not reading the fine print that stated:
“Freight rails remain very active, so much of the trail will run separately from the transit route and flow directly through residential neighborhoods.”
We followed the map to Armour Dr. near where the Sweet Water Brewery is located. While driving around in the industrial park we decided to ask local employees if they could point us in the right direction. Neither the mail man or the lunch-break-power-walker had any idea of what we were talking about, pointing us in random directions much like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.
With only a map and a dream, we parked the car and headed towards the tree line that surrounded the area. Peachtree Creek twisted through the woods below us as you could see where the BeltLine Corridor could potentially be according to the map. Unfortunately, at this point, nothing resembling the trail can be seen.
Eager to pick up the trail on this section of the BeltLine we headed west to Huff Rd. to try and locate forgotten tracks. We were greeted with newly constructed apartment buildings and office parks! The rejuvenation of the westside could be considered bittersweet as some areas are starting to resemble the cookie-cutter look of the suburbs. Hopefully, they’ll put in a Zaxby’s to make up for it.
After driving in circles and even discovering an abandoned warehouse that was probably used in the filming of Nightmare on Elm Street, we were forced to park again and venture into the woods. A little bit of detective work and dumb luck led us to some railroad tracks that ran along the backside of some buildings and into a creek. At the time we thought we had struck gold, but we later found out there are numerous abandoned railroad tracks around the city. Our northside excursion was a failure in terms of finding the BeltLine, but resulted in a beautiful creekside picnic behind a warehouse. The world was ours.
Spending the better part of the day trying to find a mythical railroad was pretty tiring, especially coming up empty handed. Thankfully, that was the end of our failure. Our day concluded by hitting two well-known areas of the BeltLine at MLK and over on Sampson St. behind Mint Gallery. We even managed to find an Evereman piece and an old railroad spike!
The second leg of the journey was prosperous as we headed back to the southern corridors of the BeltLine. On the southeast side we followed the route off the street at Boulevard and walked the tracks through a heavily wooded area searching for rail road spikes — we found over 50! Not only did residential property back up to the active railroad tracks, but remnants of the old BeltLine railroad ties were hastily stacked and scattered about. After walking over a mile we realized that we were not going to discover any new developments or the body of Ray Brower.
We pressed on.
If you’ve ever driven down Metropolitan Parkway on the southwest side you probably made sure that your doors were locked. Fortunately, Tim was familiar with the area due to frequent visits to Goldrush and we quickly picked up on the BeltLine’s location just south of University Avenue. We apparently looked so out of place that a cop watched us in his rear view mirror as he slowly crept by as we innocently made our way down the sidewalk.
Probably the creepiest stretch of the trail, we walked through lonely fields bordered with kudzu encased derelict structures, damp and littered tunnels, graffiti-covered underpasses and over blunt-burned bridges (We actually had to put out a fire we found consuming a wooden bridge from a roach that had been thrown out of a passing car). It felt like we were either in a Johnny Cash song or the next victims in a Karin Slaughter novel.
As stated on the BeltLine website, the abandoned Exide Battery Plant and Georgia State Farmer’s Market would be tremendous sites for re-purposing. Shadiness aside, the potential for redevelopment is exciting.
After investigating the southwest side of the BeltLine, our 2-day fact finding mission finally came to an end. There were plenty of developed areas that we didn’t venture into, but our main goal was to experience the BeltLine in its archaic and raw state. The question posed for these vacant areas of the BeltLine now is how long will it take to rejuvenate these properties that look like something out of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road?
Purge ATL Atlanta BeltLine Series
Part 2 of 3
Photo Credit: Tim Song