When their were horses in Brookhaven- A Memory
The Brookhaven area today, with its schools, churches, shops, restaurants, businesses, residences, government offices and superstores is becoming ever increasingly more populated. Brookhaven traffic is getting thick and parking crowded, and the community is beginning more and more to resemble Buckhead.
As recently as the 1950s and early 1960s, however, Brookhaven was a rural area with woodland roads, and sometimes the best way to traverse them was by horseback. Nearby Chamblee was dairy country with plenty of pastureland for horses to graze. Along Mabry Road and Hermance Drive near Oglethorpe University, there were farms with horses, in places where there are condominiums and fine homes today.
A favorite place for Oglethorpe students to ride horses was at Silver Lake, which had numerous trails. Horseback riding was a part of the intramural sports program at Oglethorpe in the 1950s.
- Dr. Paul Hudson, longtime resident of the Brookhaven area and historian at Georgia Perimeter College, writes stories of Bygone Brookhaven regularly in the Buzz.
