Q: I remember a long time ago, there were talks about another freeway being built to circle Atlanta well outside of I-285. It was supposed to be a much bigger loop than 285, connecting the outer counties, such as Cherokee, Paulding, Forsyth, Henry and others. What happened to that idea? Is that freeway going to be built or has it been scrapped?
—Sonny Dellinger, Atlanta
A: For a while, the discussion about the Outer Perimeter — much like the road itself — looked like it would never end.
Decades elapsed as politicians, bureaucrats, environmentalists, developers, homeowners and others debated the massive undertaking, a 211-mile highway that would encircle metro Atlanta.
Yes, you read that right.
Two hundred and 11 miles, or about the distance from downtown Atlanta to Columbia, S.C. (I-285, by comparison, is about 64 miles around).
I can’t find any truth to the rumor that the Outer Perimeter wouldn’t have had a numerical designation and simply been called I-BIG.
Anyway, you get the point.
The idea to build the Outer Perimeter was proposed in the 1980s as a way to alleviate traffic and lure development to those areas.
As with most projects of this scope, cost also was an issue, with figures running somewhere between $2 billion and $5 billion.
What do you expect from a highway that would have gone through parts of Gwinnett, Forsyth, Cherokee, Bartow, Paulding, Carroll, Coweta, Fayette, Spalding, Henry, Newton, Rockdale and Walton counties?
The project finally went flat in around 2002.
Q: I’ve always wondered about the namesake of Ben Hill County in south Georgia. Who was Ben Hill?
A: Benjamin Harvey Hill (Ben to his friends and so it would fit on those county stickers on your license plates) was born in Jasper County in 1823 and graduated from UGA before he became an attorney and politician.
He was elected to the state legislature before the Civil War and later served in the Confederate Senate.
Hill went on to serve in the U.S. Congress in 1875 and then the Senate before he died in 1882.
Ben Hill County, which is about 100 miles south of Macon and just east of I-75, was created and named in his honor in 1906.
Civil War history runs deep there.
The county seat of Fitzgerald was founded as a home for Union veterans — just 30 years after the end of the war — and streets took the names of high-profile personalities from both sides and battles.
They include Lee, Johnston, Jackson, Longstreet, Davis, Grant, Sherman and Lincoln, among others, and the city’s connection to the war can be explored at the Blue and Gray Museum in downtown Fitzgerald.
About the Author
