09/26/2026
The Flying Saucer That Landed in Woodstock
In the summer of 1969, Woodstock got a hospital that looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie
Woodstock, GA:
The summer of 1969 was a remarkable time in American history.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were preparing to make history on the moon. Americans were fascinated by space travel, computers, automation and the promise of a futuristic world.
And right here in Woodstock, a building that looked remarkably like a flying saucer opened its doors.
It was the Cherokee Atomedic Hospital, an unusual circular medical facility that became one of the most recognizable pieces of Woodstock’s history.
The hospital officially opened on July 20, 1969, the same day Americans landed on the moon. Georgia records from the administration of Gov. Lester Maddox document the opening of Cherokee Atomedic Hospital in Woodstock on that date.
It was an extraordinary coincidence.
But the story of the Atomedic Hospital actually began years earlier and hundreds of miles away.
A hospital built like a wheel
The Atomedic concept was developed by Dr. Hugh C. MacGuire of Montgomery, Alabama, beginning in the 1950s.
The idea was radically different from the traditional hospital.
Instead of long hallways lined with patient rooms, the Atomedic design arranged patient areas around a central core. The concept was intended to reduce the distance nurses and doctors had to travel between patients while also making the building more efficient and less expensive to construct.
The Auburn University Archives describes MacGuire’s concept as a circular hospital with patient rooms arranged around a central nursing station. The design was intended to improve efficiency, simplify construction and potentially reduce healthcare costs.
The first Atomedic Hospital was constructed in Montgomery in the early 1960s.
Then came the World’s Fair.
The “Hospital of the Future”
A second Atomedic hospital was constructed for the 1964 to 1965 New York World’s Fair.
At a time when computers were still enormous machines and many of the technologies Americans take for granted today were in their infancy, the hospital was promoted as a glimpse into the future.
The circular structure featured technology that seemed almost unbelievable to many visitors, including computer systems and microwave equipment. Later accounts of Woodstock’s history describe the World’s Fair structure as the “Hospital of the Future.”
But there is an important piece of the story that is sometimes lost.
The Woodstock hospital was connected to the original Atomedic experiment in Montgomery, while the World’s Fair featured another Atomedic structure.
Archival material from Auburn University states that the original Montgomery hospital was ultimately moved to Woodstock in 1969, while the World’s Fair hospital was a separate Atomedic facility.
That makes Woodstock’s strange flying saucer even more remarkable.
It wasn’t merely inspired by a futuristic hospital.
Woodstock became home to an actual piece of the Atomedic experiment.
Dr. Evan Boddy and Woodstock’s growing medical community
The hospital also grew out of Woodstock’s rapidly developing medical infrastructure.
Dr. A. Evan Boddy arrived in Woodstock in 1962 after training at Emory and Piedmont Hospital.
At the time, Woodstock was still a small town. The population was only around 1,000.
But the community desperately needed more medical care.
A 1960 to 1970 report from Georgia’s State Medical Education Board provides a remarkable snapshot of Woodstock’s medical development.
The report says Boddy initially came to Woodstock after a survey demonstrated a significant need for physicians. The Woodstock Medical Clinic opened in 1962 and eventually became a busy medical center serving patients not only from Woodstock, but from communities including Holly Springs, Acworth, Roswell, Alpharetta, Austell, Smyrna and Canton.
By the time the Atomedic Hospital was being developed, Boddy and his colleagues were attempting something considerably more ambitious than simply adding hospital beds.
The state report described the Atomedic facility as a potential working laboratory for studying ways to improve hospital operations and reduce the cost of healthcare.
It also noted that the facility was being built with computer capabilities and was among the most modern hospital designs of its time.
Inside the flying saucer
The architecture was unlike anything most Cherokee County residents had ever seen.
Instead of the conventional rectangular hospital, the building was circular, with patient areas radiating around a central core.
The design placed critical hospital functions in the center while allowing medical staff to work around the patients rather than walking long corridors from room to room.
Georgia Tech records from the era describe the Woodstock facility as a 22 bed circular experimental hospital that relied heavily on electronic equipment. Engineers were even studying ways to predict when equipment would require maintenance before it failed.
In other words, Woodstock was participating in an early experiment in healthcare technology, hospital design and systems engineering.
Today, ideas such as centralized monitoring, electronic records and technology assisted healthcare are commonplace.
In 1969, they were futuristic.
Woodstock before traffic lights, Woodstock before today’s hospital system
There is another fascinating detail about the Atomedic story.
Preservation Woodstock notes that Cherokee Atomedic Hospital opened in 1969 on Arnold Mill Road, on property that is now associated with the Northside Hospital Cherokee Amphitheater area.
The organization describes the hospital as opening before Woodstock even had a traffic light.
That fact captures just how small the community still was when this futuristic building arrived.
Woodstock wasn’t a major metropolitan medical center.
It was a growing small town that had somehow become home to a hospital designed around ideas that seemed decades ahead of their time.
A piece of Woodstock that disappeared
The Cherokee Atomedic Hospital remained part of the community for decades.
Historical sources differ slightly on the exact closing year, with Auburn’s archival material documenting the Woodstock facility as operating until 1992, while local historical accounts have placed its closing later, in 1994.
What is not in dispute is the building’s importance to Woodstock’s medical history.
The site later became associated with Woodstock’s municipal development, including the location of the city’s early City Hall.
The strange circular hospital that once looked like something from another planet eventually disappeared from the landscape.
But the story did not.
Remembering Woodstock’s flying saucer
Today, most people driving through modern Woodstock would have no idea that a futuristic circular hospital once stood here.
There is no giant flying saucer sitting beside the road.
There is no futuristic hospital announcing itself to passing traffic.
Instead, its memory survives in photographs, historical records, the stories of people who worked there and a miniature replica preserved at the Cherokee County History Center.
The replica offers today’s residents a chance to see what once seemed so extraordinary.
And perhaps that is the most fascinating part of the Atomedic story.
In 1969, Woodstock wasn’t simply watching the future arrive on television from the moon.
For a time, the future was sitting right here in Cherokee County.
A round, aluminum hospital that looked like a spaceship had landed in a small Georgia town.
It wasn’t a UFO.
It was something much more interesting.
It was Woodstock’s vision of the future.
