Chicken Monument Poultry Park

A chicken figure tops a marble obelisk in Gainesville, Georgia, a monument to a city that calls itself the Poultry Capital of the World. Tasting Table described it in 2025 as a chicken statue standing atop a 25-foot-tall obelisk at Poultry Park, downtown.

The title is tied to Jesse Jewell (1902 to 1975), a Gainesville native, according to Tasting Table, whom The Municipal credits with pioneering vertical integration in the poultry business, combining breeding to marketing within a single company. The magazine said poultry took hold in the area because, as Georgia Poultry Federation president emeritus Abit Massey put it, “The hilly country here was not good for crops.” In 1995 the Georgia legislature extended the same title to the whole state. The Municipal adds that the city has leaned on the name, passing a 1961 ordinance, re-enacted in the 1980s, making it illegal to eat fried chicken other than with one’s hands.