Historic Macon

a plantation east of Macon owned by author
Harry Stillwell Edwards.
President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to
declare war on April 6, 1917. By June the first of
sixty thousand troops began arriving at the new
Camp Wheeler, named for General Joseph A.
Wheeler who was an officer in both the
Confederate and the United States Army. One
battalion of troops trained at Camp Wheeler was
made up of Macon and other Georgia companies.
It was named the 151st Machine Gun Battalion
and it suffered heavy losses fighting in France.
Many of the camp’s trainees did not make it to
war. A large number died of measles, pneumonia,
or Spanish influenza. As diseases spread all of the
people at the camp were required to wear masks.
Early in 1918 conditions grew worse when a
severe flood wrecked the camp. A hard freeze
following the flood made cleaning up the
wreckage impossible for a time.
The town of Macon was filled with war spirit.
Central City Park became a camp for military
police. Citizens planted war gardens to save
food for the fighting men. Mrs. R. L. Berner,
chairman of the Bibb County Food
Conservation Commission, called on Macon
people to have meatless days and sugarless days.
To save fuel, lightless nights were held. Macon’s
eight cotton mills closed for five days, and
electric street cars were pulled by horses.
Macon’s Red Cross, its Young Women’s
Christian Association, and all its churches
worked to support the war effort. Local high
schools and Mercer University began offering
military classes. Comedian Charlie Chaplin
visited Macon selling Liberty Bonds to help pay
for the war. In one week Macon people bought
more than a million dollars worth of bonds. A
parade to show Macon’s war spirit was fifteen
miles long. It took three hours to pass the
platform from which Governor Harris watched.
On the day the war ended, according to
The Macon Telegraph, “The town went mad.”
Before dawn three huge bonfires lit the
downtown streets. Every type of noise-maker,
from a fiddle to a cannon, was used to celebrate
the victory. As seven brass bands played, people
crowded the streets all day.
The month after the war ended Camp Wheeler
was closed. Within weeks the buildings were taken
apart and removed and the land was cleared.
After the World War, Macon joined the
rest of the country in a period of rapid change.
In the Roaring Twenties people began to live
in very different ways. In Georgia, the boll
weevil and low farm prices caused many farmers
to move into towns. Farm life meant work that
was never finished, but town life allowed time
for entertainment. In the ’20s, new inventions
cut time and distance. Women gained new
freedom. The pace of life in the old Southern
town of Macon grew faster.
New public buildings proved that Macon
was doing well. In 1923 the Washington Memorial
Library was opened and, in 1924, the new
courthouse was completed. The next year the new
Municipal Auditorium could seat 6,500 people,
and a new athletic stadium could seat 12,000.
By 1920 Macon’s first truck line was in
business. Trucks and a rapidly growing number
of cars created demands for better roads. By
1925 Macon had 31 miles of paved streets and
Bibb County had 72 miles of paved roads. Soon
after the first traffic lights were installed
automobiles had changed the way people lived
in Macon. New suburbs grew quickly. People
could drive to downtown jobs from new houses
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The end of 1920s prosperity enjoyed
by Macon was foreshadowed by the
collapse of the Fourth National Bank
in 1928. False rumors led to a run on
the bank causing many depositors to
lose their money.
Chapter V ✦ 49