Developer Bulldozes Artillery Fort, Trenches Near Atlanta
By Joe Kirby
December 2003

MARIETTA, Ga. - A Union artillery fort built by Sherman's army as it faced what today is known as "Johnston's River Line" defending Atlanta was bulldozed in late October, along with adjacent trenches, to make way for a Publix grocery store and shopping center.

The destruction took place despite pleas to the developer to save the fort by shifting the center's planned retention pond a few feet.

"It's a shame," Dan Coleman, commander of the Mableton camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, told the local Marietta Daily Journal. "If we had known they were going to do it, we would have come out earlier to demonstrate or called the countycommissioners, but I guess we were a little tardy on this one."

The four-gun earthen fort was on a hill near the Chattahoochee River just northwest of Atlanta. Johnston's River Line was erected by Confederate Gen. Joe Johnston as his Army of Tennessee was flanked out of its Kennesaw Mountain line by Sherman.

Johnston first withdrew five miles south to what was known as the Smyrna Line, then fell back after a few more days to theRiver Line. That pre-planned line was anchored by 13 infantry forts, each arrowhead-shaped and double-decked, withtwo-cannon artillery emplacements interspersed between each fort.

The forts are now known as "Shoupades," after theirdesigner, Johnston's chief engineer, Brig. Gen. Francis Shoup. Sherman's army dug in as well as it ran headlong into Johnston's prepared position. Sherman later described Johnston's lineas the most formidable fieldworks he encountered in the war, and with the carnage of Kennesaw Mountain still fresh in mind, chose to go around them rather than try to batter his way through them. Johnston then was forced to retreat again, and wasrelieved of his command shortly thereafter by Jefferson Davis.

The Union fort in question sat atop a ridge and was believed to have been prepared by the 15th Ohio Light Battery on July 5, 1864, and armed with 12 pdr. Napoleons. The fort and several sections of Union trenches were part of a wooded/pastureland 22-acre tract on Bankhead Highway (also known, ironically in this case, as Veteran's Memorial Highway) just northwest of
the City of Atlanta.

A small, well preserved section of Johnston's River Line containing several Shoupades is owned by Cobb County, but thecounty owns none of the facing Union earthworks. Two archaeological
studies of the shopping center site were conducted andnoted that the trenches and battery site had been heavily searched by relic hunters through the years.

Developer Columbia Properties said reengineering the shopping center plans would be too costly. Instead, it agreed to give thecounty $10,000 to spend on historic preservation elsewhere, and to put up a historic marker on the trench site.

"When people asked us to just redraw the pond, they're looking at the plan on a flat piece of paper, but the area they're talkingabout is actually 75 feet above the road," said developer Daniel O'Neill of Columbia. "We have to grade everything to thesame level. If all we had to do was change the shape of the pond, we would gladly have done it."

The Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved the rezoning for the site in April, with the commissioner for the part ofthe county in question, Woody Thompson, being left with final say on the plan's particulars. He said in early October that hewould not ask the developer to save the artillery fort.

"It was tough choice for me, but this center is a $12 million or $15 million investment in this community," he said. "I felt like this was too big an investment for us to pass up. We need to preserve as much history as we can, but there are a lot of newresidential developments down there and those residents have a need for some first-class shopping."

Publix, Kroger and other grocery giants have made the metro Atlanta area the scene of a grocery war in recent years - and history looks to be the latest casualty.

"What better veterans' memorial would there have been than these earthworks built by the soldiers themselves?" asked Rhonda Cook, an activist trying to save the trenches.

John Cissell, superintendent of the nearby Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, was philosophical. "These trenchessat there for 134 years and no one did anything to save them.

"It's only when someone wants to come along and level them that people start trying to save them. We need to be more pro-active about protecting these sites."

Said the SCV's Coleman: "We need our heritage preservation societies and our community to get involved to keep more ofthese sites from being bulldozed. Some states preserve entire battlefields covering hundreds of acres. It's a shame we couldn'tpreserve 800 square feet."