The waymark coordinates are for the central fountain in Glover Park, which has been the heart of downtown Marietta since the 1850s.
In the 19-teens, the Dixie Highway passed through downtown Marietta, going right beside Glover Park. Travelers would have relished the chance to get out of their cars and picnic on the grass, run around, or dip their feet in the cool water of the central fountain.
From Wikipedia: (
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"Marietta Square
Marietta Square, also called Glover Park, is a park and traditional city center in Marietta, Georgia, United States.
History
When the Cobb County courthouse burned in 1848, Mayor John Glover donated the land to the city on the condition that it would stay a park or return to its heirs. Since then, the new courthouse has moved to its existing location, across the street from the southeast corner of the park. During the Civil War, the park was used as a training ground for the militia. On the north end of the park, a well provided water to parched men and women with a trough for horses. In the early 1900s the Atlanta trolley system was extended to Marietta and the trolley would turn around by circling the park. There was a maintenance shed across the street from the northeast corner."
From the Encyclopedia of Georgia: (
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"The Dixie Highway, a network of roads connecting Canada to Florida in the early decades of the twentieth century, was an ambitious undertaking to build the nation's first north–south paved interstate highway. As the largest state in terms of area east of the Mississippi River, Georgia proved critical to the project's success, mainly because the state's size and location controlled access to Florida for anyone driving by car.
Signs marked "Dixie Highway" still exist on roadways throughout Georgia, particularly on old U.S. Highway 41. References to the Dixie Highway no longer appear on Georgia's official state highway map, nor is it mentioned in most Georgia or U.S. history textbooks, yet this overlooked highway had a dramatic impact on Georgia and Florida before the arrival of interstate highways in the 1960s. . .
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Launching of the Dixie Highway
On April 3, 1915, Georgia governor John M. Slaton and his counterparts (or their representatives) from five other states met in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the inaugural meeting of the Dixie Highway Association (DHA). While the new highway generated enthusiasm, selecting its route became a highly politicized task. Initially, Chicago, Illinois, was the northern terminus, but after Michigan joined the DHA in May, things became complicated. Fisher initially had conceived of a single route for the Dixie Highway from Chicago to Miami, but Michigan wanted Detroit included as well.
In the midst of this debate, Georgia's two members of the DHA played an important role. Macon Telegraph editor and owner William T. Anderson proposed that the DHA approve western and eastern divisions of the Dixie Highway where dual routes were warranted. Atlanta Constitution editor and owner Clark Howell also wanted to abandon the idea of a single highway and urged that the Dixie Highway be constructed as a system of roads in order to promote economic development in more communities.
As a result, the Dixie Highway became a network with Sault Ste. Marie on the Canadian border as the northern terminus. From there, the highway extended southward through upper Michigan and then via ferry to Mackinaw, where the highway split into a Western Division that included Chicago and an Eastern Division that included Detroit. Following roughly parallel paths southward, the two divisions reunited at Chattanooga.
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...[T]he DHA approved two routes south from Chattanooga—one through Dalton and one through Rome—with both routes converging near Cartersville, where they rejoined the Dixie Highway's Western Division. This division then followed a route south in Georgia to Atlanta, Macon, Americus, Albany, and then on to Tallahassee, Florida. In 1916 the DHA approved a new Eastern Division running southeast from Atlanta to Waynesboro to Savannah, before continuing on to Jacksonville, Florida. That same year, a new Central Dixie Highway was added linking the Georgia towns Perry, Waycross, and Folkston, and then heading southward to Jacksonville.
Two years later, the DHA authorized a new Carolina Division running from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Asheville, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina; and Augusta and Waynesboro, Georgia, where it connected with Georgia's Eastern Division. Instead of being a single highway, the Dixie Highway developed as a network of major divisions and connecting routes.
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World War I (1917-18) temporarily stalled highway construction, but following the war Georgia's new State Highway Department (later Department of Transportation) took over building and maintaining state roads—including the Dixie Highway.
Driving the Dixie Highway
The development of affordable automobiles and the Dixie Highway meant that anyone with a car could head south for a summer or winter vacation. . .
The Dixie Highway ceased to exist by that name in 1926, when federal and state highway officials replaced named trails across America with numbered highways. Because the Dixie Highway was not a single highway, its various divisions became parts of the new U.S. numbered highway system (most notably U.S. 1, 17, 19, 25, 27, 41, and 129), plus a variety of state-numbered highways."