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What's In A Name? | Tanyard Creek
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GPB News Managing Editor Sara Shahriari asked us to find out the origins of Tanyard Creek in Buckhead.
The creek was originally called Tanyard Branch and its name is linked to Atlanta's industrial past.
GPB's Rickey Bevington on Tanyard Creek
According to Richard Waterhouse of the Buckhead Heritage Society, in mid-19th century Atlanta there was a tannery called the Atlanta Tanning Company.
It was located on what was then the very edge of the city, in what is now downtown Atlanta. The tannery was right next to the future site of the World of Coke, situated at the corner of Simpson Street and Orme (now Centennial Olympic Park Drive) Street.
The Atlanta Tanning Company was built next to a creek that begun at Walton Spring in Downtown, and flowed north underneath the current sites of Georgia Tech's Grant Field, 14th Street and Collier Road before finally emptying out into Peachtree Creek in Buckhead.
That creek, of course, was named after the tannery and became Tanyard Creek.
The Buckhead portion of Tanyard Creek is all that remains of the waterway today, and runs through the neighborhoods of Ardmore and Collier Hills.
Click here to find more stories behind curious Atlanta names from our summer 2018 series "What's In A Name?" on 88.5 GPB Atlanta’s All Things Considered.
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