For decades, a beloved wooden sign on Atlanta’s eastern edge welcomed passersby and bid them farewell.
The rustic, weathered marker — with simple painted letters that read “Leaving Atlanta” on one side and “Welcome to Atlanta” on the other — stood along Ponce de Leon Avenue. It inspired a book title, graced an album cover and became a photo backdrop for countless Atlantans departing the city or coming home.
Then, suddenly within the last year, it vanished — and no officials seemed to know what happened. Just as unexpectedly, a new sign appeared in recent days. The current version is taller and planted about a yard from the empty place its predecessor left behind.
“It’s a part of the fabric of the park and of the community,” said Sandra Kruger, executive director of the Olmsted Linear Park Alliance, the nonprofit that manages the 45-acre land where the sign is located. “We’re very happy that it’s been replaced.”
Credit: Julia Pallotta
Credit: Julia Pallotta
The roadside sign marks the boundary between Atlanta and unincorporated DeKalb County. It is in Dellwood Park, a segment of Olmsted Linear Park. Alliance officials said they don’t know who erected the original sign, who maintained it or its whereabouts. It wasn’t installed by them or by DeKalb County, park officials said.
Kruger said someone reported it missing a few months ago. She said she inquired about it with the city of Atlanta and suggested sending questions about the sign there.
The mayor’s spokesperson, Michael Smith, said he was unable to find any connection between the sign and the city of Atlanta.
As for the replacement? That’s a mini-mystery of its own. Neither the parks group nor the city could say for sure how the new one got there.
Credit: Pete Corson
Credit: Pete Corson
Locals have chimed in online with theories about the old marker’s fate. Maybe it was struck by lightning, some wondered. Maybe a car hit it, or the sign was in disrepair and fell over, Kruger suggested. Or, perhaps, someone stole it, others said.
Whatever happened, many missed it. Jessica Harlan, a freelance writer, moved to Atlanta 19 years ago while pregnant with her daughter, Sadie. She would see the sign whenever she drove to Decatur. Sadie Harlan just graduated from Maynard H. Jackson High School and is headed to Chicago to start college. She said she had hoped to take graduation photos in front of the old landmark “because I’m leaving Atlanta.”
They were disappointed in early August when they drove to the park and found it missing.
“It’s just a silly little thing, but I’ve just always had a real soft spot for this sign,” Jessica Harlan said.
The marker’s origin is tough to pin down. Experts at the Atlanta History Center didn’t have information about it at their fingertips. The nearby Druid Hills Civic Association suggested checking with park officials.
“It’s not clear when it was installed, but it is a treasured piece in the community,” Kruger said.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution archives include a photograph of the sign taken in 1993.
Credit: Julia Pallotta
Credit: Julia Pallotta
Google Street View images from late 2007 through July 2024 show the marker intact, but by March, the area is empty. In images from 2023 and 2024, a second board was added underneath the “Welcome to Atlanta” message that read “Where the players play,” an apparent reference to the Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris song “Welcome to Atlanta.” The addition also featured a drawing of a green alien head.
Over the years, the sign has served as a cultural touchstone. The local band Gentleman Jesse & His Men used it as the cover image and title of their 2012 album “Leaving Atlanta.”
It also inspired Atlanta-based author Tayari Jones, who recalls driving by it when she was younger.
“When we would pass that sign, it meant that we were far from home,” she said. “It made everything an adventure.”
Credit: www.tayarijones.com
Credit: www.tayarijones.com
She wrote her first novel about growing up in the city in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when more than two dozen Black children and young adults were killed in what became known as the Atlanta child murders. Jones needed a title and landed on “Leaving Atlanta.” Later, when she saw the sign while driving down Ponce, she knew it was fate.
“It reminded me of my childhood. And since this novel was about my childhood in Atlanta during this time, it just seemed so perfect, and that just seemed like affirmation,” she said. “The universe does not have to hit me upside the head for me to recognize a sign when I see it, but I really appreciated how much of a sign this sign was.”
Jones’ book hit shelves in 2002 and was named “novel of the year” by Atlanta Magazine and awarded the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award for Debut Fiction.
Her theory is that the sign might have been swiped.
“The significance of the sign is rooted in this location and the fact that it is a sort of collective ownership,” she said. “Once you steal it and it becomes yours, it’s no longer even what it was.”
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