In 1959, the Atlanta History Center asked journalists and prominent community leaders to write letters describing their vision of Atlanta decades in the future. The letters were placed in a time capsule and buried nearby on West Paces Ferry Road. When opened in 1998, capsule letters revealed dreams that had been realized as well as predictions that seemed a long way off.
If you were asked to envision Atlanta’s future, what would you say? Think about your hopes and dreams for our city and share them on our Instagram or Facebook.
May 20, 1959
To Those in 1998 Whom It May Concern:
On this the 20th of May 1959 I predict that when the Time Capsule is first opened, in 1998, Greater Atlanta will be a metropolitan area of 2,500,000 with Marietta, Lawrenceville and Fayetteville contiguous in the Atlanta residential pattern.
Stone Mountain Park will have become the Central Park of Atlanta, an oasis of beauty and nature set in a general aridity of residences and shopping centers.
The county unit system will have been abolished by court decision, but even the abolition thereof will not have saved Georgia from the politicians, human nature being what it is.
Helicopter service will make it easier for commuters, but there will have to be a traffic patrol of the air to regulate crossings and altitude.
In 1959 I am not as interested in seeing man get to the moon as I am in seeing a way found to reach from one man’s heart to another. Between the two, there still exists the greatest of all space gaps.
I doubt that the gap will have been closed by the time you of 1998 read this prediction.
Good luck, God bless you and happy landings on lunar and stellar fields!
Leo Aikman
Columnist
Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta of the Past.
Time Capsule. Media Announcement.
Detail of The Atlanta Journal (Atlanta, Georgia) | Apr 14, 1959 , Page 37 | Newspapers.com