Hapeville, Georgia

Hapeville is a small city of about six thousand people tucked between the runways of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and its story is essentially the story of American aviation's transformation of a Southern town. The community incorporated in eighteen ninety-one, named for Dr. Samuel Hape, an early landowner and its first mayor.

For decades it was an ordinary rail-side suburb of Atlanta. Then, in nineteen twenty-six, Candler Field opened on land south of town, a primitive dirt strip that became Atlanta's first municipal airport. The facility grew into what is now the world's busiest airport, surrounding Hapeville on three sides.

The old downtown, once lined with workers who serviced the aviation industry, today includes the Chick-fil-A corporate campus, since the chain's founder, Truett Cathy, opened his first Dwarf Grill restaurant in Hapeville in nineteen forty-six.