After a brief holiday jaunt into Florida, where Ponce de Leon is a local celeb, the question came up: How did Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue get its name?
Apparently, we had a fountain something like what Juan was looking for.
Ponce de Leon Avenue owes its name to freshwater springs located near what is now City Hall East. They emerged after construction buried a spring that railway workers relied on for drinking water. They searched for another in the woods and found cold, fresh water that seemed to carry another benefit: health.
"It is said that a considerable amount of sickness prevailed among the men of the railroad camp at the time it was established, " Franklin Garrett wrote in "Atlanta and Environs."
"Yet, after being in the vicinity of the springs for a few weeks, and drinking the spring water exclusively, most of those who were sick found themselves growing steadily better."
What came next was a miracle of marketing, if not really medicine: The springs' fame spread and Atlantans began to travel the dusty two miles to have a drink. Dr. Henry L. Wilson, a former physician and big-time property owner, named it "Ponce de Leon" to stir "fountain of youth" feelings about it. Wagon delivery of the water began, The Atlanta Constitution published stories about it and a resort, of sorts, sprung up around it. People behind the street car system saw the chance for big business and extended the Peachtree Street Line north to what is now Ponce de Leon Avenue.
The site would later be home to Ponce de Leon Park and early in the 20th century, Ponce de Leon Ballpark and the Atlanta Crackers baseball team. Ford built a headquarters there, then Sears Roebuck built a distribution center.
What we have there now is a Whole Foods, Home Depot and City Hall East.
Does that photo at the top look familiar? That's the Sears, Roebuck building on its opening day in 1926, with no sign of the springs.
Additional sources on this are "Atlanta and its Environs, Volume 1" by Franklin Garrett; "What's in a Name?" by Eva Galambos and "Georgia Place Names" by Kenneth Krakow, with thanks to the AJC librarians and Don Rooney at the Atlanta History Center.
