For roughly 70 years, people incarcerated at the Atlanta Prison Farm worked the land off Key Road. Some dug and maintained graves for animals from Zoo Atlanta. The prison farm closed in the mid-1990s, and in 2009 a fire destroyed the roof of its main building. The ruins are still there. Now they’re part of a proposal to open the land to the public and tell the story of what happened there.
On Nov. 16, Atlanta’s Department of Parks and Recreation will present the final master plan for the Restoration Memorial and Preserve. For the people who have been calling for green space here since the 1990s, it’s a chance to see what that idea could look like on the ground.
Who wanted a park here?
Save the Old Atlanta Prison Farm and the South River Watershed Alliance formed in the 1990s and advocated for cleaning up the site and making it green space. In 2002, a task force created by Mayor Shirley Franklin recommended making the land a priority for green space. The site later appeared in the proposed South River Forest in the 2017 Atlanta City Design.
The current planning effort also builds on recommendations from the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center’s Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee and task force to give the public access to the historic landscape. The park idea goes back decades. The design taking shape now draws on research and community input gathered over the past year.
What could a visit look like?
Picture following a trail along Intrenchment Creek, then stopping at the remains of the prison farm to learn about the people who lived and worked there. That’s the experience the plan is exploring, with trails and public green space alongside historic ruins that could be preserved as places for reflection.
The City of Atlanta owns the property, which sits outside city limits in southwest DeKalb County, off Key Road near the Starlight Drive-In and next to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. The city describes the study area as more than 100 acres along Intrenchment Creek. The plan also proposes connections to existing trails around the historic ponds on the neighboring training center property. City of Atlanta project page
What Atlanta will share on Nov. 16
Parks and Recreation worked with Atlanta design studio HGOR and a team that included archaeologists, historians and ecologists. The team held four public meetings from February through April, and the city posted a separate report from a Thomasville Heights community meeting. The Nov. 16 presentation will bring that input and the research together with the proposed design. One finding from the archaeological work was that the team found no cemetery or unmarked graves within the area it surveyed.
The free presentation runs from 6 to 8 p.m. on Nov. 16 at the Overlook at the Oakland Visitor Center, 374 M.L.K. Jr. Drive SE, at Oakland Cemetery. RSVP is required.
My Take
I see value in planning trails and historical reflection together here. Public access should help us understand the place, not simply pass through it. The Nov. 16 presentation offers a useful opportunity to see how research and neighborhood input shaped that balance. After decades of park advocacy, a finished plan is worth our attention, with funding and an opening timeline still needed to turn the design into a place we can visit.
What have you seen at another park that helped you understand the history of the land?
