In its earliest days, folks referred to the area around the Zero Mile Post as Thrasherville. John Thrasher had come to the region in 1839 to build an embankment for the Monroe Railroad and, to accommodate his workers, he had constructed a community of small cabins.
It seems natural that Thrasher’s name would come into play when describing the barely settled area. But, in 1842, at the suggestion of the Chief Engineer of the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Charles Fenton Mercer Garnett, the location of the Zero Mile Post, which was the terminus point of the Western & Atlantic Railroad, was moved 1,200 feet southeast.
As a result, the name Terminus became the preferred moniker for the budding railroad community, though it was never an officially chartered name. That honor would not happen until 1843.
The two men to whom history gives credit for picking the community’s first official name also happen to be two of the three men most responsible for the relocation of the terminus point. The third man was the guy for whom they wanted to name the town.
It’s a tale with a few twists and turns on this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
