If you moved to Hiram five years ago, the Saturday routine was probably some version of Silver Comet in the morning, Target run at midday, Longhorn or Huey Luey's at night. That version still works. It is also missing the two most interesting things happening in town this summer, and both of them sit on the same short line between Seaboard Avenue and Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway.
The argument of this post is small and specific. Hiram's summer weekend has quietly consolidated onto a roughly two-mile east-west corridor, and the newest arrival on that corridor is a halal shawarma restaurant that used to be a food truck in Dallas. If you already live here, the local move is stringing the pieces together in the right order, not treating them as separate errands.
The axis, mapped in about two miles
Four anchors do most of the work on a summer Saturday, and they line up almost geographically:
- Silver Comet Trail, Hiram Trailhead at 401 Seaboard Avenue, mile marker 14.66 on the Silver Comet Trail.
- Ben Hill Strickland Sr. Memorial Park at 372 Oak Street, with an amphitheater, a duck pond, and tennis courts.
- Hiram Rosenwald School Museum at 732 Hiram Douglasville Highway.
- The Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway restaurant row, including the new Shawarma Queen storefront at 5157 Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway, Suite 101.
Nothing on that list is a secret. What has changed is the density. A first-Saturday tour of the Rosenwald School now ends inside lunch range of a halal kitchen that did not exist as a sit-down restaurant six months ago, and both of those sit less than fifteen minutes from a trailhead that most people in town still treat as a place to park, not a place to plan a morning around.
First Saturdays belong to the Rosenwald School
The Hiram Rosenwald School Museum runs a free monthly tour on the first Saturday of every month, 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM. That is the single most under-attended local event I can point to. It is free, it is an hour, and it is walking distance from lunch.
The building itself is the story. The Hiram Rosenwald School opened in 1930 as the Hiram Colored School. It was the only Rosenwald School in Paulding County and, at that time, the only African-American school with a library in the county. The school operated from 1930 until 1955. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, and only about 38 Rosenwald School structures still stand in the State of Georgia. If you have lived in Hiram for a decade and never been inside, this is the summer to fix that. First Saturday, 11:30, 732 Hiram Douglasville Highway.
The trailhead nobody uses like a trailhead
Most Hiram residents I talk to treat the Silver Comet Hiram Trailhead as a parking lot with a bathroom. It is more than that, and the more-than-that is what makes it a real Saturday anchor.
Hiram Trailhead is at mile marker 14.66. Homer Leggett Park is next to the trailhead and has restrooms, water, covered picnic tables, a dog park, and a playground. An original train caboose is located in the trailhead parking lot and serves as a sheriff station for the deputies that patrol the trail.
The caboose is not a decoration. It is a working substation. That single detail is worth explaining to any out-of-town guest who is trying to figure out what kind of place Hiram is.
The out-and-back to Florence Road is the workhorse route. It runs 7.1 miles with about 177 feet of elevation gain, and most people finish it in two to two and a half hours. If you start at 7:30 in July, you are back at your car before nine, and you have used up the only two hours of the day that are not miserable outside. If you push west past mile 16.9, you cross Mill Creek and a rail line over a tall bridge, which is the prettiest stretch inside the Paulding County section.
The trail is also the connective tissue for the rest of the town. The Silver Comet spans 61 miles from Smyrna to the Alabama State Line, and walkers and bikers can travel across the entire town of Hiram on this portion of the trail, with the trailhead itself offering a small playground and dog park.
What just arrived on Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway
The genuinely new thing this summer is Shawarma Queen. The short version: it was a halal food truck in Dallas, and it is now a restaurant in Hiram.
Owner Mohamed Abdelmegeed told Business Debut in May 2026 that Shawarma Queen is transitioning from a food truck into a brick and mortar at 5157 Jimmy Lee Smith Pkwy #101, that the biggest reason for the transition is to offer families and groups a place to relax and dine regardless of the weather, and that the menu covers shawarma, falafel, kebab, and stuffed Egyptian pie. Once they open, they will serve lunch and dinner seven days a week.
That is a specific piece of information gain for a Hiram resident. There has not been a dedicated halal shawarma sit-down operator on this stretch of 278 before. If you have been driving to Marietta or Kennesaw for it, you no longer need to.
The rest of the row has not changed much, and that is a compliment. The Olive Tree downtown offers Greek and Italian food with exposed brick and large windows, and Happy Hawg BBQ off Highway 278 serves Southern classics like pulled pork sandwiches and Brunswick stew. Those are the two places I would still send an out-of-town guest before anything else.
Building the day, in order
If the argument is that the corridor is denser than it looks, the proof is the schedule. Here is a first-Saturday-of-the-month version, in the order that actually works:
- 7:30 AM — Park at 401 Seaboard Avenue. Walk or bike the Silver Comet out to Florence Road and back. Two hours. You are done before the heat.
- 10:00 AM — Homer Leggett Park. Rinse off at the water fountain, let the kids or the dog use the playground and dog park next to the trailhead.
- 11:30 AM — Rosenwald School Museum. Drive four minutes to 732 Hiram Douglasville Highway for the free first-Saturday tour. It ends at 12:30.
- 12:45 PM — Lunch on Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway. Shawarma Queen at 5157 Jimmy Lee Smith Pkwy #101 if you want the new thing. The Olive Tree downtown if you want the standby.
- 2:00 PM — Ben Hill Strickland Sr. Memorial Park. Duck pond loop, shade under the pavilions, tennis courts if you brought a racket. The park is at 372 Oak Street, and offers an amphitheater, several sitting areas, picnic tables, walking trails, a lake, basketball and tennis courts, and playgrounds, and it is open 8 AM to 11 PM every day.
- Evening — your call. The park hosts amphitheater rentals, so on any given Saturday there may be a private event tucked in there, and it is worth a drive-by to see what is set up.
You can compress the whole thing to half a day. The point is that all six stops sit inside a corridor you can cross in ten minutes without traffic.
The one date the whole town organizes around
Everything above works any Saturday. There is one date you should already have on the calendar. Hiram's small downtown area hosts family-friendly events such as its annual Christmas Tree Lighting, New Year's Eve Block Party, Halloween Trunk or Treat, and Fourth of July "Red, White & Boom!" event with fireworks, live music, and food trucks. If you have a house near downtown, "Red, White & Boom" is the one night a year the corridor turns into a single continuous event, and the food trucks that anchor it are worth walking to rather than driving.
Why any of this matters if you already live here
Two things are true about Hiram right now. The city is small, three square miles, and it is inside Paulding County, one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. That combination means the texture of a weekend here is going to keep shifting under your feet. Shawarma Queen going from a food truck to a storefront on Jimmy Lee Smith is a small example of a larger pattern. The corridor is getting denser, and the residents who know how to string it together get more out of the same twenty minutes of driving than the ones who do not.
You do not need to move to enjoy that. You just need a plan for Saturday.
If you are thinking further ahead than Saturday, and want to talk about what any of this consolidation means for your home's value or your next move inside Paulding County, Kelley Lowrimore is happy to walk you through it. Let's Connect.
