The numbers keep growing

In 1926, an airplane hangar was constructed on a dirt field south of town. History would ultimately describe that act as the work of visionaries. That vision was articulated by Alderman William Hartsfield when he said, “The skies will be to the 20th century what the seas have been to centuries past, and the city that makes its port on this new ocean will be the city of the future.” At the time Hartsfield made that statement, the City of Atlanta had a population of less than 280 thousand, which is almost equal to the number of passengers that, on the average, travel through Hartsfield-Jackson in one day. And that is a statistic that sounded to us like one of the Stories of Atlanta.