Search for the Spring
East Point Historical Society recently posted this aerial photo from the early 1950s, looking north along the railroad tracks that form the city's industrial core. If you look closely at an open field in the bottom left, you can spot the source of the Flint River north of Willingham Drive. In fact, that field is bounded by Plant Street, but on this map from 1911, it was “New Spring Street.”
In an early history of East Point, this was referred to as the “Baugh Spring,” named after Col. Edward Baugh, who operated a plantation here from the 1870s through the 1890, when “subdivision fever struck our southside.” In 1894, an enterprising hotelier rebranded it “Magnesia Springs” and built a 50-room sanitarium there, advertising its proximity to the splendid waters. Magnesia Pottery Works took the name when it opened a plant on New Spring Street in 1906.
“He says that he has traveled all over this country and has never found anywhere better water than that which flows abundantly from the Magnesia springs.”
For a very brief period of time, the headwaters were not just a water source for nearby industry, but a tourist destination!
