Citation: Bramlett, Andrew J.. “’Cobb Out Front in Bid for Stadium’: Professional Baseball and the Rise of Suburbia, 1957-1962.” Atlanta Studies. October 20, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18737/atls20251020
For years, Cobb County leaders worked to plan a massive stadium project and attract professional sports north of Atlanta. The site was close enough to the city that the stadium’s baseball team could plausibly tie itself to Atlanta. It was situated just over the Chattahoochee River, along a major highway, which was enough for Cobb County to claim the stadium as its own. The arrival of professional baseball in the area was heralded as a significant moment in the county’s history. New leadership in Atlanta, however, threatened the county’s grand plans, as the city’s latest mayor was a big believer in the power of baseball and in building a “Major League City.”1 As Atlanta tried to claim professional sports for itself, the Cobb County project eventually took a backseat. The grand Cobb stadium plan was shelved and forgotten. This suburban stadium is not today’s Truist Park, but an earlier, forgotten plan of the late 1950s. As white Atlantans moved to the suburbs, Cobb County Commissioner Herbert C. McCollum sought to attract them to his county with projects such as the stadium, a public country club, and an airport.
A little over half a century later, this odd saga gained new relevance. In 2017, SunTrust Park (now Truist Park) opened outside the Interstate 285 perimeter in Atlanta in the Cumberland Community Improvement District, four years after the new stadium was announced. The fact that it was in suburban Cobb County to the northwest of Atlanta, rather than in urban Fulton County, was a major point of contention. Safety was often cited as a key reason for the move. Mike Boyce, chairman of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners, said that fans could visit the new stadium at any time “knowing you’re going to be safe, no matter where you parked your car.”2 Critics of the project saw these concerns as a sign of suburban fears of Atlanta’s majority black population. Kevin Kruse, a professor of history from Princeton, told Sports Illustrated in 2019 that he viewed the “movement of the stadium as the culmination of white flight.”3 A quick Google search for the phrase “white flight stadium” brings up results about Truist Park. Lost in these debates is the story of how, at the start of white flight from Atlanta in the 1950s, Cobb County leaders attempted to bring a similar stadium to a nearby site. The story of this plan reveals how Atlanta’s suburban leaders tried to capitalize on the city’s boosterism and began to realize the new power suburbia could hold over Atlanta.
In the 1950s, Atlanta’s baseball culture revolved around the Atlanta Crackers. Belonging to the Southern Association, the Crackers never became part of the Major Leagues but retained a devoted fan base in Atlanta. While they were affiliated with Major League teams throughout the 1950s and 1960s, “fans did not necessarily embrace the big league team with whom Atlanta was affiliated at the moment.”4 For a variety of reasons – including desegregation, the aging Ponce de Leon Park (“Poncey”) east of downtown, and the increasing broadcasts of MLB teams by Atlanta television stations – Atlantans became less inclined to attend the Crackers’ games.5 After several years of stagnation, the Crackers had two fantastic seasons in 1956 and 1957 and regained their place as one of the Southern Association’s best teams.6 Atlanta’s mayor, William B. Hartsfield, recognized the value of baseball to the city’s culture but saw the building of stadiums as a private matter and not the concern of the City of Atlanta. While Hartsfield supported the improvement of Atlanta’s baseball scene, he “stymied every attempt to involve the city in the planning, financing, or construction of a large stadium or arena.”7 According to one contemporary observer, the mayor rarely attended sporting events unless it was wrestling matches at the city-owned Municipal Auditorium.8 Jesse Outlar, the sports editor of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote during the 1957 election season that “unless the mayor and the city and county fathers show some interest in constructing a stadium, Atlanta will soon become a bush league sports city.”9 Outlar encouraged the city to start construction of a stadium, even without a major league team ready to move to Atlanta.
With Atlantans losing interest in the Crackers, there was some concern that the entire Southern Association would collapse. Outlar shared these concerns and mentioned them when speaking to the Marietta Civitan Club in July 1957.10 According to the Marietta Daily Journal, Outlar told the crowd in the Cobb County seat that a larger stadium was needed in Atlanta.11 Evidently, this Marietta meeting was enough for Cobb Countians to begin thinking about building such a facility. One month later, on August 16, county commissioner Herbert McCollum was quoted as saying, “We would definitely like to have a Triple-A or Major League stadium here, and we stand ready, willing and anxious to help [the] Crackers in discussing it.”12 The proposed stadium site was on land owned by the Georgia Power Company along U.S. Route 41, just north of the Chattahoochee River. The goal at this time was a stadium that could hold “75,000-100,000 spectators,” making it twice as large as the modern-day Truist Park.13 Over time, this number ranged from 50,000 to 100,000; every number put forth is larger than Truist’s current seating capacity. For comparison, Dodger Stadium opened in Los Angeles in 1962 with 56,000 seats and remains the largest ballpark in the MLB.14 The idea of building the stadium for both baseball and football was discussed, but there was a feeling that the two might be in conflict with each other.15 Baseball was clearly the priority of the two sports. While McCollum and county officials had not discussed the stadium idea with Crackers owner Earl Mann, Mann told the Atlanta Constitution, “I will be happy to meet and talk with them… I cannot stress too much that ample parking space is a prerequisite for Triple-A or Major League baseball.”16 McCollum also said he hoped to meet with Mann “as soon as possible.”17
Though Herbert McCollum was only in his second year as Cobb County Commissioner, he had been working in the county government since returning home from World War II.18 More than being a fan of baseball, he had once worked as a baseball umpire.19 In the 1950s, Cobb County had only one commissioner rather than a board. As such, McCollum played a very important role in the county’s plans for a new stadium. McCollum was in his forties at the time and would later recall that he believed he won the 1956 commissioner election because “the people were just ready for a young man.”20
Cobb County was undergoing a period of unparalleled growth. Following the construction of the Bell Bomber Plant in Marietta during World War II, the county began to transition from a rural, agrarian community into a more suburban one. Just before the war, fewer than 40,000 people lived in the county. That number would jump to over 60,000 by 1950 and to over 100,000 by 1960.21 While the white flight that led to the growth of Atlanta’s suburbs is often associated with the 1960s and ‘70s, these trends can be traced back to white Atlantans fleeing neighborhoods such as Mozley Park in the early 1950s.22 To attract white Atlantans, suburban leaders had to find ways to make their communities stand out. Sometimes, this took the form of explicitly racist initiatives, like the segregation academies promoted by the Cobb County White Citizens for Segregation group in 1960.23 As McCollum’s stadium plans indicate, at least some of the county’s leaders viewed amenities like the baseball stadium as a means of attracting both businesses and residents to the suburbs and away from the City of Atlanta. While the issue of race was never discussed in newspapers in connection with the proposed stadium, county leaders must have recognized the impact it would have on their project.
When news of the stadium plan hit the Atlanta newspapers, McCollum was visiting Augusta. He was shocked to be “besieged” with phone calls from journalists about the stadium, as he believed “only two or three people knew about the plan.”24 It was just a preliminary idea, and there was no intention of making it public until Earl Mann was consulted. He was, however, “delighted” that Mann was amenable to the idea.25 McCollum told the Marietta Daily Journal that there were two possible ways to fund the project. Private capital could build the stadium on the Georgia Power land, or the Cobb County Recreation Authority could issue bonds to fund the proposal. If Mann were willing to move and lease the stadium at a high price, McCollum predicted “no difficulty in retiring the certificates.”26
The first newspaper reports described the land as being “100 acres of Georgia Power-owned property on the north side of the Chattahoochee River bank.”27 Later reports stated that it was “just east of Plant Atkinson,” while a 1959 article said the site was “inside the proposed perimeter road around Atlanta… about halfway between the present Four Lane [U.S. 41, or Cobb Parkway] and the proposed U.S. Highway 75 [I-75].”28 In late 1959, county officials announced they were looking at a site closer to Interstate 75 to capitalize on highway traffic.29 A map from August of that year shows a location similar to the later description.30 This map would place the stadium in the Vinings area, around two miles south of where Truist Park would eventually be built.
The initial reaction to the idea was positive in newspapers. The Atlanta Journal said on August 17 that private funding for the stadium was impossible without county or municipal involvement.31 Outlar added that Cobb County “may never pour an ounce of concrete, but you have to doff their top hat to them for looking into the future; for admitting that a stadium is desperately needed.”32 William Hartsfield, however, initially had fewer words of encouragement. Hartsfield supported expanding Ponce de Leon Park and condemning area buildings for parking lots.33 The legal issues surrounding condemning private property for mere parking, combined with congested traffic in the area, caused some boosters (including Marietta Daily Journal sports editor Horace Crowe) to promote the Cobb County site.34 The Cobb stadium plan would fade into the background for two years, though Crowe would occasionally mention the idea in his columns in 1958.35
While the stadium idea stalled, the Cobb County Recreation Authority focused on attracting suburbanites to the county. The board had been formed in early 1957 to construct a golf course; in 1958 the board was reorganized and given more authority.36 Crowe was its at-large member. A site in Kennesaw, located north of Marietta, was selected for the golf course in September, and construction began in 1959.37 Around the course and Olympic-sized swimming pool, land was set aside for house lots that would be sold to fund the project. As white flight began, these initiatives were an effective way to market the area to white Atlanta residents looking to move to the suburbs. Cobb County’s boosters were able to promote the county as an alternative to Civil Rights-era Atlanta. Indeed, the county would grow significantly throughout the 1950s and ‘60s.
In January 1959, Jesse Outlar pronounced the Southern Association “shaky,” as Ponce de Leon Park was a “million-dollar property sinking in Southern [Association] quicksand.”38 When Earl Mann announced his plans to sell Poncey later that month, the Cobb County plans found themselves in newspapers again. Herbert McCollum announced he had met with Mann and Harvey Hester, the onetime owner of the then-defunct Miami Seahawks professional football franchise, about the new Cobb County stadium. As before, McCollum went to the Marietta Daily Journal to emphasize that all discussions were preliminary and that nothing was set in stone. Yet again, the story leaked before the county was ready.39
Furman Bisher, the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal, said that “The Cobb County people are new at the game, but they see a chance to steal a march on Atlanta. They are not monkeying around with fantasy.”40 The project then received a major boost when Mayor Hartsfield announced his support for the Cobb County plan. Due to the amount of land needed, Hartsfield saw building a stadium downtown as “a recognized impossibility… If Cobb County can develop this stadium, they will have the cooperation and best wishes of the City of Atlanta.”41 Funding the stadium would still be a difficult task. McCollum recognized that revenue bonds would have to be financed but looked to the Milwaukee Braves for inspiration on how to lighten the burden. In Milwaukee, parking revenues and concessions helped pay off their stadium’s debt. McCollum believed that, with a similar set-up involving both baseball and football teams, the stadium could break even. The secret to turning a profit would be “extras,” meaning any championships and bowl games.42 While baseball had been the focus just two years before, gradually, an understanding emerged that a stadium was not possible without both baseball and football revenues.
A headline in September 1959 summed up the situation well: “Cobb Stadium Waits on Franchise and Franchise Waits on Stadium.”43 As Jim Minter of the Atlanta Journal explained, the county was unwilling to move forward with any plan without a professional football team, but no football team was willing to move to Atlanta without a stadium. While Hester with the defunct Miami Seahawks had been consulted earlier that year, McCollum was also in conversations with the Chicago Cardinals and Washington Redskins. Minter mentioned that there were hopes that the University of Georgia would use the stadium as well. In a plan that resembled the later Georgia Dome and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the idea was also floated of building a covered stadium so bowling and hockey could be played when it was not in use by baseball and football teams.44
There were several reasons why the Atlanta Crackers seemed like the best choice for the new stadium. No MLB team had expressed interest in moving to Atlanta, and an expansion franchise seemed unlikely as team owners were unwilling to grow beyond the existing sixteen teams that had been divided into two leagues, the American and National Leagues. In the summer of 1959, those calculations had to be revised when a new league suddenly emerged. Lawyer William “Bill” Shea sought to create a third league within Major League Baseball, the Continental League, as a way of expanding the MLB into new markets without moving teams or expanding the existing leagues.45 Even before the official formation of the Continental League in July, Atlanta newspapers were already aware of the plan and of the fact that Atlanta was seen as likely to get one of the new teams. Other teams deemed “virtually certain entries” by the Atlanta Constitution were “New York, Toronto, Houston, Denver… Dallas-Fort Worth and Minneapolis-St. Paul areas.”46 Shea had discussed Atlanta plans with the Coca-Cola Company and Chicago investors, but not with Cobb County. McCollum said that “if they are interested in assisting us get the stadium built, we are ready to talk to them – at any time.”47 Earl Mann also worked to establish an Atlanta team in the Continental League. Branch Rickey, president of the League, believed that Mann’s status as owner of the Crackers would make him a perfect franchise owner in the new league.48 In mid-August, Shea was quoted as saying, “I’ve said all along that Atlanta was one of the nation’s great cities. It’s an important factor in the Continental League plans.”49
At around the same time, professional football became more viable for very similar reasons. The National Football League (NFL) had long been a leader in professional football, though it had also faced many competing leagues over its history. One of these began to form in 1959. Called the American Football League, or AFL, the new league sought to directly rival the NFL, rather than work within an existing organization like Shea’s Continental League. The AFL bore some similarity to the earlier All-American Football Conference, or AAFC, which Harvey Hester’s Miami Seahawks had competed in during the 1940s.50 While the AFL played its first game in 1960, not all the teams had been chosen in 1959. Atlanta was cited as a viable contender for the two remaining spaces, along with Miami, Seattle, and Buffalo.51 Hester supported both Miami and Atlanta for the remaining spots, with McCollum offering assurances that the Cobb County stadium could be built in time.
The task of building a stadium was made easier in August 1959, when Atlanta businessman Alfred Kennedy offered to donate land for the stadium to Cobb County. Two other Atlanta businessmen had previously offered to give land on the south side of the Chattahoochee River, in Fulton County, to the City of Atlanta and the Fulton County government but were turned down. With this lack of support from Atlanta’s civic leaders, the Cobb County project must have seemed much more viable.52 A few days after this announcement, McCollum revealed that he, Hester, and county official Luther Hames were meeting with attorneys representing Chicago businessmen, who were interested in buying the Atlanta Crackers and making them part of the Continental League.53 This Chicago group would gather together under the name Atlanta Sports Inc. While Cobb County figured prominently in coverage of their activities, they were also looking at stadium plans near the Lakewood Amphitheater.54
McCollum and the Marietta Daily Journal treated the stadium’s construction as a foregone conclusion. McCollum said he could not “help but believe that fans in this section will be seeing major league baseball in a Cobb County park in the spring of 1961.”55 In Marietta, residents evidently felt trepidation. Horace Crowe wrote in August 1959 that the “general public is prone to charge off Commissioner Herbert McCollum’s desire” as a fantasy, but added that “everyone would join the clamor for the facility” if they “could look below the surface of McCollum’s enthusiasm.”56 When the Grand Jury of Cobb County met in August 1959 to review that month’s county government activities, they did express a favorable opinion of the plan.57 However, Crowe had to assure his readers the very same month that the plan was not a fantasy like the “general public is prone to charge… To keep pace nowadays, one has to think ‘big.’”58 To promote the idea, Hervey Hester spoke at the Marietta Country Club in November 1959.59 That same month, Mann sold the Crackers to the Los Angeles Dodgers, ending his association with Atlanta baseball.60
Little was done in the latter half of 1959 to move the project forward. In early 1960, State Representative Harold Willingham introduced a resolution in the Georgia House to amend the Cobb County Recreation Authority’s charter that would allow the Authority to build the stadium.61 When the bill was proposed, construction was nearing completion on the Authority’s project near Kennesaw; it was thus logical for the Authority to pivot its mission towards the stadium project. The Cobb bill was not the only legislation affecting Atlanta sports in the legislature. At the same time, Fulton County legislators proposed a bill to create an Atlanta Stadium Authority for the Lakewood site, though the project faced pushback from DeKalb County legislators.62 The Cobb bill was approved by a unanimous vote in the House just a few days after it was submitted. With this, the Cobb County site continued to look like the best option. It had the backing of county leaders, potential team owner Hervey Hester, and it had received Mayor Hartsfield’s support a year before. Talks were already underway with both the Continental League and the AFL. Now, a legal mechanism was in place to operate the stadium.
The Atlanta Stadium Authority bill reveals the seeds of the Cobb plan’s downfall. The bill was supported by Ivan Allen Jr., a member of Atlanta’s Chamber of Commerce and son of visionary city booster Ivan Allen Sr. The elder Allen led the Forward Atlanta campaign in the 1920s, which promoted Atlanta to outside investment in much the same way Henry Grady had in the 1880s.63 The campaign emphasized Atlanta as the “most sensible and fiscally prudent city from which to serve the South.64 Ivan Jr. wished to ensure that Atlanta remained the leader of the South and drew inspiration from both his father and his mentor William Hartsfield. A major area where Allen disagreed with Hartsfield was on sports. Allen wanted to make Atlanta a Major League City by bringing sports downtown with municipal support, unlike Hartsfield, who preferred private financing. As Allen became an increasingly prominent figure in Atlanta, his vision of Atlanta sports gradually prevailed.
As grand as the Cobb plans were, they did not exist in a vacuum. A key portion of the plan was turning the Atlanta Crackers into a Continental League team, but their 1960 losing streak made this harder and harder to justify. Crowe wrote in May 1960 that “Atlanta folks, who stubbornly persist in a dream of building a giant stadium in Atlanta, picked a bad time to reactivate their planning talks.”65
Newspaper coverage recognized that the Lakewood proposal posed a threat to Cobb County’s plan. Herbert McCollum assured the Marietta paper on May 12, 1960, that negotiations were still underway, while the Constitution that same day noted that the Fulton County commissioners were taking actions to encourage the Lakewood plan.66 Concurrently, McCollum met with salesman Eaton Chalkley (husband of actress Susan Hayward), who had been granted an AFL franchise that month and had been selected as the owner of the new Atlanta Continental League franchise after Earl Mann retired from baseball.67 Chalkley was granted the franchise on two conditions: progress would be made towards building a stadium, and the franchise would temporarily lease Grant Field at Georgia Institute of Technology. Chalkley could not arrange a deal with Georgia Tech, in part because the university refused to desegregate the stadium. Difficulties with the Lakewood project have also been cited as the reason why no stadium was ever built.68 The failure of the Cobb County plan must also be taken into account.
In 1960, the county opened two major facilities near Kennesaw to attract well-to-do Atlantans seeking to relocate to the suburbs. The first was the Cobb County Recreation Area, managed by the Cobb County Recreation Authority. The golf course officially opened in April, while the Olympic-sized pool opened the next month.69 The course became a point of contention in the 1960 county commissioner election with allegations that McCollum had misled citizens about the burden it would cause taxpayers. McCollum won the election by a very narrow margin, partly because of this issue. The original plan was for the house lots to be sold one by one in order to repay bonds passed to fund the project. When the county realized it could not sell homes just to whites, the decision was made to sell the entire project to private investors. In 1962, the Cobb County Recreation Area was sold and was soon renamed Pinetree Country Club. The sale (allegedly at a loss) remained a point of controversy in county politics for the next few years, especially after accusations of corruption surfaced.70 The other major project, just down the road from the Recreation Area, was McCollum Airport. The airport opened in September 1960 with Susan Hayward in attendance, possibly due to the connection forged between the county leaders and her husband, Chalkley.71 McCollum promoted the airport project in his reelection campaign. Advertisements placed in the Marietta Daily Journal called it “another in the series of Cobb County’s parade of progress” and said that it answered “the need for a multitude of services needed to insure [sic] future growth and expansion of Cobb County.”72
After mid-1960, talk of the stadium died down, even though Horace Crowe was positive in June that “Cobb County may be a whole lot closer to the stadium than the average man on the street realizes.”73 In 1962, the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce suggested that a stadium be placed on the county’s ten-year plan, indicating it was no longer seen as an imminent possibility.74 This was the last major mention of the plan. When Furman Bisher published his memoir of the arrival of professional baseball in Atlanta just four years later, he neglected to mention the seemingly viable plan he had written about on several occasions. Instead, he focused on efforts in the City of Atlanta and the very short-lived America Field in DeKalb County.75
There are several reasons that the Cobb County stadium idea fizzled out. Because of Eaton Chalkley’s failure to secure a stadium, Atlanta never received an AFL franchise. Herbert McCollum and other county leaders had all acknowledged by 1959 that a stadium was not feasible without football. They had also placed their hopes in the Continental League, but that effort failed as well. In 1960, the National League and American League voted to expand, removing the original impetus for creating the Continental League.76 In August 1960, the Continental League officially disbanded, though some of its owners were still ecstatic because new MLB teams were being formed.77
One final factor played a critical role in the demise of the stadium plans. In the 1961 Atlanta mayoral election, Ivan Allen Jr. was elected to the first of his two terms. Allen proposed a six-point plan called the Forward Atlanta plan, which, like his father’s initiative, sought to put Atlanta on track to become a “national city.”78 A key part of this plan was the building of a stadium to attract major league teams. With a leader at the helm who recognized the importance of professional sports and who sought to use the power of municipal government to bring that dream to life, it became much less likely that a suburban county would usurp Atlanta and build a major stadium. In 1964, ground was broken on what would eventually become the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, home of the relocated Milwaukee Braves.79 It opened in April 1965, and Atlanta was granted an expansion NFL franchise two months later. The Atlanta Falcons spent their first twenty-five years at the Braves’ stadium, much like what McCollum had hoped would happen in Cobb County less than a decade before. Allen called this stadium “the real symbol of the new Atlanta – the single structure that signified our arrival as a national city… visible and literal proof that Atlanta was a big-league city.”80
Allen succeeded where others failed by putting the cart before the horse – his stadium was built “on land we didn’t own, with money we didn’t have, and for teams we had not signed.”81 For this fact, sports editor Furman Bisher called Allen’s stadium the “Miracle in Atlanta.”82 At the time ground was broken for the stadium, no team was officially ready to move to Atlanta. While McCollum found himself waiting on a team before building a stadium, and the teams found themselves waiting on a stadium before moving, Allen decided to proceed where McCollum hesitated. This, perhaps more than anything, is the reason Atlanta built a stadium and Cobb County did not.
Andrew J. Bramlett is a sophomore student at Kennesaw State University, where he is a student assistant in the Department of Museums, Archives, Rare Books, and Libraries. A native of Kennesaw, he serves on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission and volunteers at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park and the Kennesaw City Cemetery. His research interests include the history of Georgia, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, suburban history, and the history of the printed word.