What makes River Line historic

Barry Brown remembers growing up in southeast Cobb County when fortifications from a longago war extended six miles along the north bank of the Chattahoochee River.

A series of Civil War forts or “shoupades” – dirt mounds forming curious triangular shapes in the woods – made up the river line, constructed by 1,000 slaves in the summer of 1864 to keep the Federals out of Atlanta.

“Growing up in the 1970s, you could walk the line between shoupades for hundreds of yards,” Brown said. Of the 36 forts originally, only nine survive – too few to walk between any two of them, “except for right here.”

“Right here” is the Shoupade Park at 4770 Oakdale Road, Smyrna. A ridge between two apartment complexes, it contains the remnants of two shoupades. Elsewhere, what nature didn’t destroy, strip malls, industrial parks and tract housing did.

“Along the rest of the line, there are individual shoupades, but the artillery lines between them are gone,” said Brown, a Marietta resident and board member of the River Line Historic Area. “That’s what’s significant about this park. There’s no other place where you have the original pattern remaining.”

The Cobb County Board of Commissioners created the preserve out of 1.5 acres donated by Pulte Homes in 2010. The River Line organization recently had a ribbon-cutting and rededication to celebrate the land’s listing on the Cobb County Register of Historic Places, a volunteer group to help maintain the property, and new interpretive signs.

The signs explain that Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston ordered the River Line’s construction as Northern troops closed in on Atlanta. The shoupades were named for Brig. Gen. Francis A. Shoup, who designed the line.

Each shoupade, shaped like an arrowhead and constructed of earth and tree trunks, would have 80 soldiers firing rifles. Timber walls ran between the forts, interrupted at intervals by openings where cannons poked out to blast the enemy.

Union General William T. Sherman declared it the strongest fortification he’d ever seen – and sent troops northeast to cross the Chattahoochee in Roswell. Outflanked, the Confederates abandoned the River Line and fell back into Atlanta.

Just because the line failed in its purpose doesn’t make it any less historic.

“This was a first in military technology and design ... the first time anyone designed fortifications this way,” said Mary-Elizabeth Ellard, vice president of the Georgia Battlefields Association.

At the park rededication, Cobb Chairman Mike Boyce said, “We want to make sure we continue to protect our diminishing historic resources we have of a critical part our nation’s history.”

It’s a never-ending battle. River Line members in October are seeking to protect 6 acres in Mableton where a townhouse project is planned.

“It’s not a monument,” Ellard said of the River Line. “It’s not anyone’s interpretation or propaganda. It’s preserving the land itself. All of us can come together over this.”