News Details (Posted: February 8, 2008):

The History of Vinings

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Early on, Vinings was known as Crossroads, and then Paces, after Hardy Pace around 1830. He operated Pace's Ferry across the Chattahoochee River, in this area between Atlanta, Buckhead, and Smyrna. Paces Ferry Road is still the main east-west road through town. The Western and Atlantic Railroad laid tracks from Atlanta, northwest to Chattanooga in the 1840s. Vinings became a construction station for the railroad, and was reportedly named for a civil engineer who helped to lay the tracks through the area. The railroad is still state-owned as it was from the beginning, and is now leased to CSX.

General William T. Sherman liberated the Vinings area during the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War in 1864 on his March to the Sea. Unfortunately, Pace's home which had been used as a hospital for American (Union) troops was destroyed in the process. Vinings recovered after the war as Governor Brown leased the railroad to Vinings to bring passengers to the springs and pavilions built to encourage a respite from the reconstruction of Atlanta.

The Vinings Historic Preservation Society seeks to keep the town's history alive.