Kevin Benefield

Dec 5, 2024 | atlantamagazine.com | Brady Nash |Kevin Benefield |Emma Hunt |Jennifer Green

While some holiday traditions have stood for centuries (Christmas trees and carols), others have faded from popular view (when was the last time you hung a box of animal crackers as an ornament?). At these Southern destinations, what’s old is new again every December. From Christmas Eve bonfires and glowing Moravian stars to hayrides and fife and drum corps marches, these yuletide celebrations offer a glimpse of Christmas as it used to be—in many cases, even before it arrived in the New World.

Dec 3, 2024 | atlantamagazine.com | Kevin Benefield

The Great Smoky Mountains, a mist-shrouded subrange of the Appalachians, dominate the landscape, as well as the history and culture, of southeast Tennessee. For more than 12,000 years, this was the land of the Cherokee people, until the mid-1700s, when European explorers, traders, and settlers began entering the area in growing numbers.

Aug 8, 2024 | atlantamagazine.com | Kevin Benefield

Northeastern Mississippi is a crossroads and has, over centuries, been formed by that distinction. Corinth, in the far north of the state, came into being in the 1850s when the survey lines for two major railroads intersected, creating a boom town. Known as the Crossroads of the South, it would become one of the most contested spots during the Civil War, as the railroad to which it owed its beginnings became its greatest liability.

Apr 29, 2024 | atlantamagazine.com | Kevin Benefield

Conceived in 1914, the Dixie Highway was the first interstate highway connecting the industrial North to the largely agricultural South. Inspired by the rise of the automobile and the fanfare surrounding the dedication of the nation’s first transcontinental road (the Lincoln Highway, which connected New York City to San Francisco), this network of roads would ultimately link Chicago and Detroit to Miami by way of parallel branches.

Feb 16, 2024 | atlantamagazine.com | Kevin Benefield

Winter in Kentucky is cold. The fields are stubbly with sheared stalks of corn and studded with bales of hay. Weathered gray barns and outbuildings sit alongside thickets of skeletal trees and bare bushes. Set beneath white-blue skies, the land is stark and lovely, the place seemingly simple, straightforward. But there are stories here, threaded through the abiding hills and intermittent valleys, the beginnings of so many things.