As the year comes to a close and Polk County has a chance to look back on the year, there remains one unsolved mystery from 2024 that will likely go down in the history books as “unknown cause.”

Back at the end of February, one of the longtime fixtures on West Avenue in Cedartown that went by many names but was last remembered as the Old Jockey plant was lost to time as a fire broke out in the last remnant of plants of the site and burned it to the ground.

The flames got so hot they burned pavement, melted power lines along the road and shut down a portion of West Avenue for weeks.

Almost a year later, the answers for why the building burned is still to be determined and because of the heat at which the fire engulfed the structure it is probably going to remain an unsolved mystery.

Cedartown Fire Chief Kyle Watters reported that his agency “never got a definitive cause of what started” the blaze that took the building with it, as of earlier this month. The investigation is under the auspices of the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

It was the worst fire in recent memory in Cedartown since the Goodyear plant burned down in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the site’s ruins remained for some time before clearing work got underway and cleanup was completed.

Owner Raul Segura did remove the debris from the site, enclosed the one remaining building and put up fencing around the property. Then the dirt began to move, and a large, flat mound was created in an area behind where the former factory building once sat.

City officials have reported the idea that Segura might be preparing to build a indoor soccer complex on the old site, but no plans or requests have been made of the City of Cedartown for permits for moving forward with such a plan.

Segura additionally owns the soccer fields on Prior Station Road.

Interesting side note on this story: Google Street View updated their collection of photos following the historic fire on West Avenue, and that remains the image that people see on Google Maps for the old plant.