CHAMBLEE, Ga. — It may be one of the busiest construction areas in metro Atlanta. Chamblee is a constant hive of building activity.
Inside I-285 in DeKalb County, the proximity to everything makes it highly desirable. Gentrification lives here.
About 100 years ago, it was also a massive area for construction - military construction.
"It started in June of 1917, and they were open to start receiving men by September of 1917," said Michael Hitt, a local historian, the expert on World War 1 in Atlanta.
What now stands as the Southbound Restaurant in Chamblee, was what soldiers would first see when they arrived for Camp Gordon.
"They got off the train at Chamblee, because Camp Gordon will eventually get their own train stop," Hitt said. "But in the beginning, they got off the train there and go right across the street so the officers could greet them and take them into that building."
It's all on the grounds of what would be known as the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport. Established in the summer of 1917, the Chamblee project was one of 16 National Army Training Camps prepared for the U.S. entry into World War I, with 2,400 acres, 1,600 buildings and 47,000 troops.
There were white and black men training there. The black troops were taken to where the CDC building now stands on Buford Highway and Chamblee-Tucker. The white troops entered off Clarimont Road, near the current entrance of PDK Airport at Dresden.
Kim Papastavrdis's great-grandfather, Frank Lunbeck, enlisted as a 39-year-old from Indiana, and found himself in the middle of all that was Camp Gordon.
"He was surrounded by all faiths and colors, because there was a very large African-American regiment and people from all economic levels," she said.
She lives near Emory University and shared her Indiana family's letters from a soldier serving his country long ago in the new world of Atlanta.
"Don't know his motives but it was clear in his letters he wanted to fight in Europe," he said.
Camp Gordon served as a diverse training camp for worship, too.
"It was a survey done at the time at Camp Gordon of the religions at the camp," Hitt said. "It's phenomenal, almost every religion you can think of was at Camp Gordon."
But as quickly as Camp Gordon was constructed in massive scale, it was ordered abandoned in 1920 and totally disposed by the fall of 1921.
Few know of the camp, and there are even fewer footprints left in Chamblee. Yet, its legacy still stands - it was a major component of Americas involvement in the first World War.