Vinings, located on the Piedmont plateau of Georgia beside the Chattahoochee River, has always been a place of preference and transition.
From 6,000 BC until the late 18th century, Native Indian presence predominated. The later period, known as the Creek hunting grounds, was largely abandoned to an agreed upon Cherokee Indian occupancy by the early 1800's.
The 1820’s establishment of white Georgia settlements and efforts to integrate agriculture and trade eventually became Atlanta; which rapidly over whelmed all of Northwest Georgia beyond the Chattahoochee River known as Cherokee Territory. The quest for land, rumors of gold, and visions of building a railroad, caused a porous flow of white pioneers, including one Hardy Pace.
The 1832 Gold Lottery, six years before the final removal of the Cherokee in 1838, awarded 40 acre land lots in the newly named county of Cobb. Hardy Pace capitalized on the accumulation of lots, in anticipation of expanding settlement and placement of the railroad around the eastern side of Vinings Mountain [mapped by 1836]. Pace’s interest included the named take over of an Indian trading inn, Harris’s Ferry across the river, and several thousand acres on both sides thereof.
By 1838, Pace had moved his family across the river, and established himself through a grist mill, inn, ferry, post office, and farming interests. Known initially and briefly in the beginning as Paces “Crossroads,” Pace had positioned himself to be fully cooperative and beneficial to the coming railroad.
The Western & Atlantic Railroad was initially completed between Atlanta and Marietta by 1842. A particular trestle being constructed across a gorge on the north side of the then “Pace’s” Mountain from Crossroads around 1839-40, began a two year project under a 26 year old young Civil Engineer by the name of William H. Vining.
By the late 1840’s a growing railroad camp of slave labor and white railroad craftsmen such as Richard Robinson, known as the Vinings Camp, with a train stop and telegraph was eventually established as the Vinings Station. Many of the original workers became an integral part of the community maintaining the railroad. Hardy Pace, along with his friend and business partner P. H. Randal mentored the business of “Vinings Station.”
“Vinings Station” was captured and occupied by Union forces en-route to Atlanta in 1864. Pace fled to and died in Milledgeville, Georgia in the same year. He is interred with his wife and members of his family in the Pace Cemetery on Vinings Mountain.
The then “Vinings” community, still a railroad stop and small community in the late 1800’s, rebuilt and survived the Civil War. In 1904 a steel one-lane bridge replaced the Paces Ferry, for which the road between Buckhead and Cobb County was known. In that same year, the unincorporated community and bridge were officially recognized by Cobb County as Vinings…....a long way from 1838, when Hardy Pace stood in the midst of a dusty ferry road and could see a perfect place to live.
