Q: Hog Mountain Road is a long, winding road, sprawled across Gwinnett, Barrow and Hall counties (and perhaps beyond those counties). Where is (or was) Hog Mountain located?
—Bill Fokes, Braselton
A: There aren't many reminders of Hog Mountain, so you'll be happy as a pig in mud to find out the community is, or was, at the intersection of Ga. 324 and Ga. 124/Braselton Highway.
Hog Mountain was one of the oldest communities in Gwinnett County, dating to the early 1800s, when settlers moved into the area and built Fort Daniel to protect them from Native Americans.
The fort provided security, which led to business.
Farmers brought their pigs to the community’s market, which gives me a sneaky suspicion, led to its name.
An inn, appropriately called the Hog Mountain House, was built. The Hog Mountain Baptist Church opened in 1854 and the community was a stop on the stagecoach service between Monticello and Gainesville, and Stone Mountain and Gainesville, the Gwinnett Historical Society states on its website.
Time and progress has practically wiped Hog Mountain from the map.
Huge neighborhoods were built, shopping centers sprouted up and many other establishments now thrive at the once rural intersection.
So perhaps it’s fitting that Holy Smokes BBQ is one of the restaurants now dotting the landscape in what once was Hog Mountain.
Q: What can you tell us about the explosion on Marietta Square many years ago? I’ve heard people talk about that, but I don’t know the details.
A: Locals still remember the Halloween explosion of 1963, a blast that killed seven people as it ripped apart a drugstore on Whitlock Avenue, across the street from the town's famous square.
Downtown was packed that night for Marietta’s annual Halloween festival and there were many shoppers in Atherton’s Drugstore – where the Marietta Pizza Company is now located — when a gas main ruptured.
It ignited and exploded underneath the store.
“The explosion splintered booths inside the store, shattered the prescription department, blew out gaily decorated display windows facing on both Whitlock Avenue and Powder Springs Street and destroyed the drugstore’s store-room on Powder Springs Street,” the AJC reported Nov. 1.
Five shoppers, including a 7-year-old boy, and two cashiers were killed.
Glass and debris injured about 35 other people, including three police officers standing in front of the store.
“I don’t know exactly what to say. It is the most horrible tragedy ever to happen in Marietta,” Mayor Sam Welch said at the time.
My colleague Fiza Pirani wrote about this explosion recently. You can read her story here.
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