Before I-75, the Dixie Highway funneled travelers through North Georgia.
U.S. 41 is a north-south route from Michigan to Florida. The section that runs through small town main-street communities such as Acworth, Adairsville, Kennesaw and Cartersville is North Georgia’s version of Route 66 and is famed for introducing some of the earliest motor hotels and fast food spots, including the Four-Way Lunch in Cartersville and the Chow Time Drive-In in Ringgold, which was destroyed in April’s tornadoes.
“The 1920s and 1930s were they're heyday,” said local historian and author Abbie Parks. “Acworthians could expect anywhere from 2- to 4,000 visitors during the snowbird season. We had a large hotel downtown to accommodate the travelers, which we lost in the ’60s.”
That regional slice of Americana is being celebrated June 3-5, 7 a.m. to dusk, with the Dixie Highway Yard Sale, where hundreds of vendors hawking everything from basement junk to fine art sculpture will be lined up along the 90-mile stretch that runs from Ringgold to Kennesaw.
“There will probably be four families set up on my yard alone,” Parks said, who lives along the highway.
The road played a big role in the identity of the towns it connects. The area’s carpet industry headquartered in Dalton even traces its origins to the resourceful entrepreneurship of women along the highway who sold chenille bedspreads, the signature souvenir from a road trip though Dixie.
“It used to be a joke on the Dixie Highway that you followed the chenille bedspreads from Chattanooga to Atlanta,” Parks said.
The craft of candlewicking, a pioneer-era sewing technique, is credited for giving the blankets their unique look. According to the book Parks contributed to, “Images of America: North Georgia’s Dixie Highway,” it was impossible to launch the chenille bedspread industry in areas outside North Georgia because workers weren't as familiar with the sewing skills.
“You’ll still find the bedspreads at the yard sale,” said Regina Wheeler, member of the Georgia Dixie Highway Association and Deputy Director of the Cartersville-Bartow County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“People often share stories with me about traveling the route as children and wanting the bedspreads so badly. They’d be literally beckoning to you as they blew in the wind."
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