Q: I remember a city near the Fulton-Clayton County line named Mountain View back in the 1970s. Wasn’t it abolished? How did it get its name?
—Lance DeLoach, Thomaston
A: Mountain View gained its name because you could see Stone Mountain, which is about 20 miles away, but gained fame from having its city charter revoked in 1978.
A better name might have been Airplane View by the time the city was dissolved because of its proximity to Hartsfield. It was so close to the runways that the ever-growing airport has absorbed much of what was left of the town, once nicknamed “Gateway to Clayton County.”
There were about 2,300 residents still living in Mountain View when it was turned into unincorporated Clayton County by the General Assembly after a period of corruption.
Rudolph Johnson, a former state rep from Morrow, called Mountain View a “blight on Clayton County” after decades of “violations of the Sunshine Law and letting nightclubs stay open past legal closing times,” The Associated Press reported in January 1978. “It’s an accumulation of things, really,” he said.
Mountain View also was known as a speed trap in the early 1970s, using its location along I-75 to nab commuters and folks rushing to make their flights.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that Mountain View had such a tumultuous end considering its original name of Rough and Ready, which was named for a local tavern.
That town was mentioned in “Gone With the Wind,” because it was on the way to Tara.
And now Mountain View is gone with the wind.
Q: We go through Helen when we head to the mountains. Who was Helen?
A: Years before Helen was a Bavarian-themed tourist destination with a preponderance of German restaurants and Christmas stores, it was a small lumber town in need of a name.
The town was incorporated in 1913, and was given the name of Helen, who was the daughter of R.M. McCombs, one of partners in the Byrd-Matthews Lumber Co., according to the Helen Heritage & Arts Center website.
And since most of the folks worked for the company, there was little opposition to the idea, author Ken Krakow wrote in “Georgia Place-Names.”
Helen was re-invented as an Alpine village in 1969, when its nondescript downtown was transformed into what artist John Kollock, who died last year, remembered from being stationed in Germany while he was in the service.
The first Oktoberfest was held in 1970 and now Helen is one of the most recognizable towns in the state.
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