Heart of Home

This has been an often visited spot for me. Over and over, I just have to go back and perfect my attempts at capturing it. And this is easy, because this is home, where I grew up.

Not this building of course, but this small town, Montezuma, Georgia, USA. Never a large town, it has a population in the neighborhood of 5,000 people, and, like much of small town America, it has an uncertain future. Like myself, so few stay. There are so few opportunities there.

But it has an old history, built around the railroad, literally. A nearby community called Traveler’s Rest, heard that the railroad would bypass them in favor of this site, and they moved their town to the present site of Montezuma, which was named after the Aztec king, according to local lore, by returning soldiers from the Mexican American War. The dates are close as the city was officially established in 1854.

This early 20th century depot was the police station when I first remember, and after the city offices moved out, it decayed for years and the railroad threatened to raze it. Ultimately it was saved and houses a museum today, in a small town that owes it’s past to the railroad and its future… we’ll find out.