Terminus: Atlanta's Iron Heart

Lyrics

[Intro]
Before the name.
Before the smoke.
Just the eastern ridge, red clay and oak.
A thought in a statehouse, a line on a map.
A future waiting to be unwrapped.

[Verse 1]
December twenty-first, eighteen thirty-six.
A governor's signature, a quill pen's clicks.
Wilson Lumpkin dreams of a road made of steel.
To make the state's rugged interior real.
Stephen Long had surveyed the path through the trees,
a line for the Western and Atlantic breeze.
Just a promise whispered, an act to connect
the river, the coast... what they'd come to expect.

[Chorus]
Terminus.
Where the iron heart beats.
Terminus.
Where the wilderness retreats.
A stake in the ground, a spark in the dark.
Red clay and ambition leaving their mark.
This is the pulse. This is the start.

[Verse 2]
The next year, 'thirty-seven, the work has begun.
Under the unforgiving Georgia sun.
Samuel Warner's crew, with axes and chains,
clearing a future through seasonal rains.
And there, the Zero Mile Post is driven down deep.
A secret the clay and the pine roots will keep.
The scent of the sap, the sound of the blade.
The very first piece of the city is laid.

[Chorus]
Terminus.
Where the iron heart beats.
Terminus.
Where the wilderness retreats.
A stake in the ground, a spark in the dark.
Red clay and ambition leaving their mark.
This is the pulse. This is the start.

[Bridge]
September, 'forty-two, a whistle screams.
The locomotive 'General' shatters the dreams
of silence. The hiss of the steam, the smell of the coal,
a new kind of thunder taking its toll.
First, you were Marthasville, for a governor's girl.
A name for a season in a fast-moving world.
Then J. Edgar Thomson, from the Georgia line,
speaks a new word, a feminized sign...
Atlanta.

[Chorus]
Terminus.
Where the iron heart beats.
Terminus.
Where the new city meets.
A stake in the ground, a spark in the dark.
Red clay and ambition leaving their mark.
This is the pulse. This is the heart.

[Outro]
The clang of the hammer.
The groan of the wheel.
An iron heart, beating.
So terribly real.