Let me take you back to a time when horse drawn carriages ran up and down the main street (Bouldercrest Rd.), stirring up clouds of dust, and tended to their horses at a Black Smith shop located near the Old General Store.

The roar of the train pulling into the Station and the shake of the ground drowned out the common mid-day sounds of the town in motion.

The Heart of the town centered around the Bank, General Store and the Rail Road Station.

The general store was located across from the Bank and passengers from the train would disembark and frequent the town.

This is the old town of Ellenwood. Some say that it received its name over 100 Years ago by a soldier returning safely from war thanks to a kiss.

According to an old news paper article on Ellenwood, the town was named by a soldier returning from war - for a girl named Ellen.

The story has it that a young man going off to war asked two sisters if they would give him a kiss for luck. The first sister wouldn't but the second sister, Ellen, would.

And so after returning from war, the soldier, now a experienced and self-made man of importance, named the town after Ellen, possibly believing that she had granted him the luck to live through the war and return home safely.

Today the Old Bank of Ellenwood comes complete with a bay where it is possible that horse drawn wagons containing money or gold shipments for the bank, once unloaded their cargo to be stored in the vault! The vault has concrete walls surrounding it that are said to be "three feet thick".

The concrete walls contain Rail Road Tracks as support, likely from the rail road that runs beside the building.

These tracks seem to be not only used to reinforce the massive concrete walls but may even be forming an impenetrable cage as the vault!!!

The History of the town is deeply buried and filled with unsolved mysteries. The first mystery is of course how the town really got it name.

The second mystery comes from the discovery of the rail road tracks in the bank vault. The history of Clayton County indicates that towns like Ellenwood and Rex sprang up around the rail road. The County History also seems to indicate that the rail road was contracted and built by a Rail Road and Banking Company. So the mystery is how or if the Rail Road and Bank were connected in some way.

Some surrounding Historical Towns also include Rex, Georgia (1 Mile down the tracks South) with its Mill, Morrow, Riverdale and Jonesboro!