Fairburn: The Town That Said Yes to the Railroad

Near here is Fairburn, Georgia, a town that owes its existence to its neighbor's stubbornness.

In the early eighteen fifties, the Atlanta and West Point Railroad was laying track southwest from Atlanta. The original Campbell County seat, Campbellton, wanted nothing to do with a noisy locomotive rolling through town and refused the right-of-way. Railroad planners simply shifted the route a few miles east and drove the line through a spot that would become Fairburn. Fairburn was chartered in eighteen fifty-four, with its town boundaries set within six hundred yards of the new depot.

The gamble paid off immediately. Fairburn boomed, Campbellton withered, and by eighteen seventy-one Fairburn had become the new county seat. It held that title until nineteen thirty-two, when Campbell County was dissolved and absorbed by Fulton County. Fairburn became an ordinary city in the Atlanta suburbs, but one that got its start by saying yes when Campbellton said no.