Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Place..... Bibb Mill May 12, 2007
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Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 May 13, 2007, 7:06 pm

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                  On Its Own
                         Bibb City's Still Happy                  
                          By Jay Barrow 
                          Enquirer Staff Writer

  Framed in old wooden houses and short narrow streets, Bibb City sits in the 
northwest corner of Columbus like a still life painting of a part of Southern 
history.
  Bounded on three sides by Columbus and the Chattahoochee on the fourth, Bibb 
City was chartered in August of 1909, a time when the loudest thing in the 
neighborhood was a call to dinner from the back porch and not the jet overhead 
on its final approach pattern to  the nearby metropolitan airport. "All in all 
it's as good a place to live as you can find," says 81-year-old Dan Spivey who 
has lived in Bibb City for about 33 years. During the time Spivey has lived in 
the town built by the Bibb Co. for its employees, Columbus has several times 
tried to annex the little village. Each time the big  city has failed to 
swallow up the little town of 800 people. 
 "I kind of like it being a separate little town and I don't see any reason to 
change it," says Spivey.
  When Spivey first saw Bibb City, from the back of a milk wagon, he thought 
he'd never live there. As he cleans the drum of a washing machine in the 
laundrymat where he works, he swears he'll never leave.
  "I was riding with my son-In-law on his milk delivery route and I told 
him 'Isn't this the prettiest little old town you ever saw!" said Spivey. "But 
I never thought I'd be living here."     Three years later, Spivey went to work 
in the Bibb mill and like most mill employees he rented one of the company's 
houses. "Oh gosh, it was about a dollar a week for three rooms and that's a lot 
cheaper than you'll get today." But even when the company sold the houses, in 
the early 1960s, Spivey elected to stay - buying the house he rented for two 
decades.
  "I stay here because if I've got an enemy in the world, I don't know It," 
says Spivey. "My brother came up here one time and told me I was the richest 
man in the world because I have $2 million worth of friends." Bibb City is 
barely a mile long, from North to South, and less than half a mile wide.
  The houses are no longer owned by the Bibb Co. But most of the people who 
live in Bibb City work for the company or are retired from it.
  The homes are mostly one story, wooden and painted white. The streets are so 
narrow in many parts of the city that only foreign cars can pass one another. 
But the streets at least are paved, an improvement over the time Mrs. Vera 
Bradiey moved into Bibb City. Mrs. Bradley was a young girl when her parents 
moved to the village in the 1920s.
  She's just barely on the other side of middle age today, and she hasn't left 
Bibb City.
  "It was the Woman's Club that got the streets paved," Mrs. Bradley recalled 
proudly. Her mother was a Woman's Club member. "They saved their money for 
years and years until they finally had enough to get it all done." 
   But the Bibb Co. did just about everything else. The company sent around 
carpenters to fix the houses without being asked and they paid all the power 
bills. "We used to leave the lights on all night long and not worry about it," 
the woman said. 
  And in the winter there was always coal in the coal box - courtesy of the 
Bibb, as employees call the mill.
  But by 1966 the last of the company houses had been, sold to their occupants, 
other Bibb employees, or out-siders. Electric lights no longer burn all night 
long in Bibb City and coal no longer heats most of the homes.
  But many of the old times still go on in bibb City.
  There is still a mayor and council, Just as there has been for years. A small 
garbage crew makes collections twice a week and a three man police force keeps 
an eye on things. Bibb City gets water and sewer service from Columbus and fire 
protection from the bigger city.
  But that seems to be as far as residents of Bibb City want to go.
  They pay lower taxes than Columbus residents and Mayor Plez Johnson says they 
get better service.   "Our police have a smaller area to patrol than police in 
Columbus and we get our garbage picked up two times a week," the mayor says.
  But Vera Bradley has another reason for wanting Bibb City to remain 
independent.
  "Its just been Bibb City so long. I think we ought to leave it that way," the 
woman says.

Special Sesquicentennial Supplement III
Ledger- Enquirer, Sunday, April 30, 1978, pg S-13.

    (Ps, sometime in the late 1990'or early 2000' Bibb City became part of 
Columbus Ga.CGT)           

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