Marietta, GA

Aircraft production has shaped Marietta's southern edge for over eight decades. Bell Aircraft opened Plant 6 in 1943 to build B-29 bombers, and the neighboring Marietta Army Airfield handled acceptance testing. Lockheed took over the plant in 1951 and flew the first production C-130A from Marietta on April 7, 1955. The relationship continues: as of May 2026, Lockheed Martin reported over 5,600 employees at the Marietta site, where crews build C-130J Super Hercules aircraft and F-35 center-wing assemblies and work on other advanced programs. Next door, Dobbins Air Reserve Base hosts the 94th Airlift Wing and military units from several services. Manufacturing hangars and the active airfield form a working district several miles south of the courthouse square.

ATTRHowardSF at English Wikipedia / Public domain

The square predates that aviation complex by a century. Marietta became Cobb County's seat in 1834, and the state placed Western and Atlantic Railroad construction headquarters there from 1838 to 1842. Rail service began in 1845, securing the town's regional role. During the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Confederate lines around Marietta protected the rail connection, and some of the heaviest fighting took place at nearby Kennesaw Mountain. The battlefield now preserves 2,923 acres beside the city's northwestern neighborhoods. Marietta's historic core still follows the older grid around Glover Park, the former rail depot, and county government buildings.

ATTRThomson200 / CC0

Glover Park is the center of present-day downtown life. Restaurants, shops, museums, offices, and three theater stages occupy the blocks around its fountain and gazebo; nearby residential historic districts extend along Church, Cherokee, Whitlock, and Kennesaw avenues. The city has five National Register districts as well as locally protected neighborhoods, so renovation and new construction in several areas receive design review. A full calendar keeps the square in active civic use. In 2026, the free Glover Park Concert Series marked its 40th year with monthly performances from April through September, and the square's calendar also included the Cobb County NAACP's 23rd annual Juneteenth celebration. These events put stages, vendors, and audiences into the same blocks used by city and county offices during the week.

ATTRJohn Margolies / Public domain

Another major center lies just north of the square along Church Street. Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in its health system, occupies a broad campus there. A two-year clinical campus for Augusta University's Medical College of Georgia opened at Kennestone in 2025, and a nine-story patient tower opened in April 2026. CobbLinc Route 40 connects the Marietta Transfer Center, square, hospital, Town Center, and Kennesaw State's Kennesaw campus. The Mountain to River Trail connects many of the same landmarks on foot or by bicycle. Within Marietta, it runs 3.5 miles from the Kennesaw Mountain area through Kennestone and the square to Brown Park and the City Cemetery, forming part of a 13.5-mile regional path toward the Chattahoochee River. On foot or bicycle, that city segment places a battlefield, hospital district, courthouse square, and cemetery in the same north-south sequence.