Terminus: The Tracks That Built A City

Lyrics

Eighteen thirty-seven.
You were just a thought in a surveyor's mind.
A point on a map not yet drawn.
The Zero Mile Post in the red Georgia clay.

Stephen Harriman Long, he squinted through the pine and the kudzu vine.
He measured a line with his chains through the quiet.
He chose a spot where the Western and Atlantic would end.
And the silence broke with the sound of the name they gave you:
Terminus.
Not a city, not even a town. Just a full stop.
A promise hammered deep into the ground.

And from that one stake, a thousand iron veins began to bleed.
From that one wooden heartbeat, a city's blood began to run.
The heavy chuffing of the engine, the high lonesome shriek of the steel.
Terminus, you were never meant to be the end.
You were the beginning of everything real.

December 'forty-two, the first engine, "The Florida," rolled in.
Brought the sharp smell of coal smoke and a world of hurry and noise.
They tried to dress you up, called you Marthasville for a couple of years.
A governor's daughter, a pretty, softer name.
But the tracks didn't care for a borrowed grace.
They just kept coming, laying claim to the place.

And from that one stake, a thousand iron veins began to bleed.
From that one wooden heartbeat, a city's blood began to run.
The heavy chuffing of the engine, the high lonesome shriek of the steel.
Terminus, you were never meant to be the end.
You were the beginning of everything real.

Then J. Edgar Thomson saw your future in a word.
A name that echoed to the coast: Atlanta.
He didn't write about the Irish hands, blistered on the ties.
Or the enslaved backs that broke to make the roadbed rise.
The official histories are quiet on that part.
But the iron remembers. The ground holds it in its heart.

And still they run. The rails still gleam.
Under the glass towers, beside the neighborhood dream.
The Zero Mile Post is a ghost in a museum now, but the pulse remains.
The city's first, and truest name.
Terminus.