Hapeville: Where Delta Was Born

The small city of Hapeville sits at the fence line of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and that proximity is no accident. In nineteen forty-one, Delta Air Lines moved its corporate headquarters to this spot, planting itself beside what was then Atlanta's municipal airfield. From Hapeville, Delta grew from a regional passenger carrier into one of the largest airlines in the world.

Delta had started life in nineteen twenty-five as a crop-dusting company in Macon, Georgia, then migrated to Louisiana before C. E. Woolman and a group of investors bought it in nineteen twenty-eight and renamed it Delta Air Service. Passenger service launched in nineteen twenty-nine. By the time the company anchored itself in Hapeville, it had chosen its permanent home well. The Delta Flight Museum still sits on two of those original nineteen forties hangars, preserved as a Historic Aerospace Site. Atlanta became an aviation hub in no small part because Delta decided this quiet suburb was where it would grow.