Atlanta: CNN Birthplace, Braves Champions and the Chattahoochee Trout River
Tour the CNN Center birthplace of 24-hour news, walk Sweet Auburn richest Black street in America during segregation, follow the Hawks and Atlanta United sports culture, kayak the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area trout water, visit the apartment where Gone with the Wind was written, and see how the Braves 2021 World Series championship transformed Cumberland.
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CNN Center and Media City
CNN Center at One CNN Center, opened in 1985 as the headquarters and flagship broadcast facility of Cable News Network, is the global headquarters of CNN and a working television studio open for behind-the-scenes tours. Ted Turner founded CNN in Atlanta in 1980 as the world first 24-hour cable news network, transforming how news was produced and consumed globally. The CNN Center complex includes the Turner Broadcasting headquarters, a 14-story atrium hotel, restaurants, and the CNN Studio Tours that draw over 350,000 visitors annually. Atlanta is home to several other major media companies including Cox Enterprises, which operates newspapers and television stations across the US, and is the birthplace of the Weather Channel, founded in Atlanta in 1982. The concentration of media companies has made Atlanta one of the primary media production cities in the American South.
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Auburn Avenue and Sweet Auburn
Auburn Avenue, known as Sweet Auburn, was called by Fortune magazine in 1956 the richest Negro street in the world for the concentration of Black-owned businesses, insurance companies, banks, and professional offices that flourished there under segregation. The Citizens Trust Company, founded in 1921, was the first African American-owned federally chartered bank in the South. The Herndon Building, constructed in 1924 by Alonzo Herndon, founder of Atlanta Life Insurance Company, housed the largest Black-owned insurance company in the world. The neighborhood declined after integration as Black customers gained access to white-owned businesses, and many buildings fell into disrepair. The Sweet Auburn Curb Market has been revitalized and the historic district anchored by the King National Historical Park attracts significant visitor activity.
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Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena
The Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise, one of the original Basketball Association of America franchises that became the NBA in 1949, moved to Atlanta from St. Louis in 1968. The team plays at State Farm Arena, a 21,000-seat venue in downtown Atlanta that underwent a 192 million dollar renovation completed in 2018, transforming it from the oldest arena in the NBA to one of the most modern. The Hawks have produced All-Stars including Dominique Wilkins, known as the Human Highlight Film, who played for the team from 1982 to 1994 and scored 26,534 career points. The arena also hosts the Atlanta Dream WNBA team and major concerts. Atlanta United FC, the Major League Soccer franchise that joined MLS in 2017, set an MLS single-season attendance record of 901,033 in its first season and won the MLS Cup in 2018.
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Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area
The Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, a 48-mile stretch of the Chattahoochee River protected by the National Park Service through 16 separate units in the northern Atlanta suburbs, provides white water paddling, fishing for rainbow trout stocked from the cold tailwater below Buford Dam, and hiking along the river corridor within 30 minutes of downtown Atlanta. The river supplies drinking water to over 4 million people in the Atlanta metropolitan area and faces pressure from development and recreational overuse. The area contains over 70 miles of trails and numerous launch points for tubes, kayaks, and canoes. The Cochran Shoals unit in Marietta contains one of the most popular paved fitness loops in the metropolitan area, drawing over 1.5 million visitors annually.
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Margaret Mitchell House and Gone with the Wind
The Margaret Mitchell House at 990 Peachtree Street, where Mitchell wrote most of Gone with the Wind between 1925 and 1932 in a first-floor apartment she called The Dump, is now a museum operated by the Atlanta History Center. Gone with the Wind, published in 1936, sold over one million copies in its first six months and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. The 1939 film adaptation starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, which had its world premiere at Loews Grand Theatre in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, became the highest-grossing film in history when adjusted for inflation and won eight Academy Awards. The film Gone with the Wind and its depiction of the antebellum South and the Civil War has been the subject of ongoing critical examination for its romanticization of slavery and the Lost Cause narrative.
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Atlanta Braves and Truist Park
The Atlanta Braves MLB franchise, which played at Turner Field in downtown Atlanta from 1997 to 2016, relocated to Truist Park in Cumberland, Georgia in 2017. Truist Park, a 41,084-seat stadium that cost 672 million dollars, is the centerpiece of The Battery Atlanta, a mixed-use development with restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment venues that surround the stadium creating a year-round destination beyond game days. The Braves won the World Series in 2021, their first championship since 1995, defeating the Houston Astros in six games. The team has won more division titles than any other team in baseball since 1991. Hank Aaron, who played for the Braves from 1954 to 1976 in Milwaukee and Atlanta, held the all-time home run record of 755 from 1974 to 2007 and remains one of the most significant figures in baseball history.