East Cobb’s own small town
By Ross Willaims, MDJ
One of east Cobb’s premier neighborhoods, Indian Hills and its attached country club are named for the Cherokee Indians who once lived there.
Georgia took control of the land in the 1830's and opened it up to white settlers. Records of those early settlers are scant, but it is known that members of the Bishop family were among them. Abner and Stephen Bishop drew land in a lottery. Later, Mildred Ann Bishop would marry Robert McAlpin Goodman, who would go on to found the Marietta Journal, according to documents compiled by the Indian Hills History Committee.
The road that would become Indian Hills Parkway, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare, was originally known as Bishop’s Mill Road, after the family.
Though the neighborhood itself went up in the late 1960's and early 1970's, there are still traces of the distant past, said Roger Phelps, a longtime resident and member of the history committee.
Phelps said he discovered the remains of an old grist mill, including a broken millstone, while walking along Sope Creek, one of the neighborhood’s most significant geological features.
Phelps said he has been in talks with historical societies about excavating artifacts from the site to display at one of the neighborhood’s pocket parks.
Indian Hills is a neighborhood characterized by its natural beauty, and Sope Creek is one of the neighborhood’s loveliest features.
There are two prevailing theories as to how it got its name. Some hold that it was so named because in some areas the water splashes so rapidly it looks like there are soap bubbles.
Others say the creek got its name from an old Cherokee man who stayed there after the Trail of Tears.
That’s the story favored by historian Sarah Temple in her 1935 book, “The First Hundred Years.”
“Out on Roswell Road, about halfway between Marietta and Roswell, the new settlers could see the cabins of several Indian families,” she writes. “One of these cabins was occupied by Old Sope who had lived there for so long that a creek and a branch were named for him. Old Sope was a kindly person and little boys liked him so much that they ran away from home to visit him. He would tell them stories and teach them Cherokee words. Although a full-blooded Cherokee, Old Sope managed to remain in Cobb after the Indians emigrated, and such were his relations with his youthful white neighbors that he has left a pleasant memory to this day.”
DEVELOPMENT
Old Sope was long gone by the time developer Tom Cousins set his eyes on the property in the mid-1960's.
Cousins, then in his 30's, had gotten his start building homes in the Augusta area, where he did well for himself, but he knew it was metro Atlanta that presented the best opportunity, according to the history committee’s documents.
Atlanta’s population was booming. The completion of Interstate 85 in 1960 and Interstates 75 and 285 in 1963 made traveling to and from the city much more convenient. And as integration efforts continued in Atlanta schools, homes away from the city became more attractive to affluent whites, the committee writes.
And so by 1968, he started work on the first golf course community outside the perimeter.
The first phase consisted of 532 acres, according to a map filed with Cobb County in 1969, and lots sold for about $7,000.
Hal Adams, an early resident and part of the team that helped develop Indian Hills, told the history committee Cousins initially planned to build one-acre lots, but an economic downturn in the late 1960s threatened the concept, and Cousins’ financial partner, Ford Motor Credit, was not confident in a subdivision built in what was then essentially the middle of nowhere. Cousins scaled back the lot sizes by 25% and cut the size of the planned clubhouse in half to raise the needed capital, Adams said. “It was experimental. We were testing the market,” Adams told the committee.
Cousins enlisted experts such as architect Hans Woldrich of Austria to plan the homes. Woldrich “mixed and matched houses – ranches, split levels and two-story traditionals so their roof lines blended together,” Cousins employee Ben Selman told the neighborhood history committee.
The subdivision’s original covenants called for earthtoned colors for the houses, but brick houses weren’t allowed initially. Adams said sales were slow at first, as it was difficult to find builders to come out and build so far away from anything. But Adams told the neighborhood history committee that lawsuits filed over mandatory school desegregation in Atlanta and forced busing to balance racial enrollment turned more people on to the new community.
“That really kicked it off,” Adams said. “One Saturday in November or December of 1969, we had so many people lined up there were traffic cops on Lower Roswell Road,” he said. “90% of them were from Fulton County. We had a girl go out there and look at the car tags. At times, people were signing contracts on each other’s backs.”
As sales in Phase One skyrocketed, Phases Two and Three quickly followed. An April 14, 1970 maps show more lots under development along Indian Hills Parkway from Fairgreen Drive to Clubland Drive, and by October 1970, Phase Three pushed further west along Clubland Drive. Cousins often remarked he was creating not just a neighborhood, but a city unto itself. Phelps said that atmosphere has remained, and it’s a big part of why his family chose to move to Indian Hills in the ’80s. “I grew up in a small town in Indiana outside of Indianapolis, and it reminded me of a small-town atmosphere,” he said. “The subdivision was at that time, because it was more isolated than today, was its own little community. I adopted Indian Hills as my own hometown. The town I grew up in was smaller than Indian Hills.”
Today, the neighborhood contains nearly 1,700 homes on 2,000 acres, with prices ranging from $300,000 to well over $1 million.
AMENITIES
Early residents told the history committee their top reasons for moving to the neighborhood were its natural beauty and the amenities provided by the country club.
The club is a focal point for social life, hosting pool parties, special events and civic organizations, as it still does today, and the centerpiece of the club is the golf course.
The initial 18-hole course was designed by noted golf course architect Joe Lee and opened in 1969. In 1970, the LPGA hosted its Lady Carling Open Tournament there, and the new course had already earned a reputation as one of the most challenging in metro Atlanta due to its tight fairways and rolling, hazard-filled terrain.
Nestled among picturesque creeks and lakes, it is also one of the area’s most beautiful courses.
“It’s the finest course we’ve played all year,” LPGA star Shirley Englehorn told the MDJ in 1970. “It’s just fantastic, especially when you consider how young the course is.”
Today, the 243-acre golf course has grown to 27 holes and includes a driving range, practice putting green and chipping green.
The country club’s amenities also include eight tennis courts and three swimming pools. Membership is not limited to neighborhood residents.
“Probably 50% of the members are not Indian Hills residents, and that number may be higher now, but it’s certainly the lifeblood of the community,” Phelps said.
SCHOOL
The quality of nearby schools was also a major draw for early residents, but the neighborhood grew so quickly it caused overcrowding, along with discontent from parents outside the neighborhood.
The neighborhood is served by two Cobb County school zones: some children go to East Side Elementary,
Dickerson Middle and Walton High School; others go to East Valley Elementary, East Cobb Middle and Wheeler High School.
East Side Elementary, which immediately abuts the neighborhood, was particularly hard hit by overcrowding. The school opened in 1952, replacing a two-room schoolhouse known as Mt. Bethel School at the northwest intersection of Lower Roswell and Johnson Ferry roads.
In 1971, Indian Hills Properties, Ltd., and Indian Hills, Inc. sold a tract of about 15 acres on Highway 120 and Indian Hills Parkway to the Cobb County Board of Education for $10, according to the history committee. Adams said this was land behind and to the west of the school, which would allow the campus to grow with the addition of a gym and more classroom space.
By 1975, 1,100 students were enrolled in East Side, but the opening of Murdock Elementary that year helped to relieve overcrowding there. Enrollment dropped to 800 with the opening of Murdock, according to the neighborhood history committee.
Today, Indian Hills and East Side have a close-knit relationship.
“The community and a lot of our residents work with the foundation there and all the good works that the foundation does,” Phelps said. “It’s very much an integral part.”
For Phelps, the proximity to good schools was one of the top reasons he came to the neighborhood.
“It was a very highly family-oriented place, a great place to raise your children,” he said. “Our children, one was in the sixth grade and one was going into the ninth grade and Walton High School and their feeder schools are what attracted us to the subdivision. We came here from Houston.”
Though his kids have long since graduated, Phelps said he can’t imagine living anywhere else.
“I’ve adopted the subdivision as my hometown. I’ve been on the Civic Association Board for 24 years. … With this movement now, the city of East Cobb, well, we’ve got the City of Indian Hills right in the middle of the city of East Cobb, if that becomes a reality. It’s just a small-town atmosphere within a large metropolitan area.”