(ideas.videos.)  On Saturday, February 11, 2011, over 450 people showed up to see the southern end of the old Southern Railway for the very last time in its raw state. The idea for the walk started with Angel Poventud, one of the Atlanta Beltline’s biggest fans. He organizes hikes along the old railroads that form its 22-mile loop around the city. On one of those hikes, he met Katie Sobush. They had an idea to invite a bunch of people for one last big Epic Walk.

The corridor will never look like this again. It was beautiful – kind of wild and adventurous. But Atlanta is changing — and growing. If we’re going to have another million people in this town, we’d better get ready. We need to make sure we end up with a city that we still want to live in. We need to leverage that growth to create the kind of city that we want. So we are. A few weeks after the walk, contractors started tearing it up for construction of the Eastside Trail, one of the first built pieces of the Atlanta Beltline. >> Ryan Gravel