Glover Park in Marietta Square hardly qualifies as Cobb County's best-kept secret. But it definitely qualifies as one of the best-kept places - if not the best kept - in Cobb County.

Savannah has lots more squares than we do, but if we're going to match up one-on-one, our best against its best or any other Georgia city's best, I think Marietta Square would win.

It's got everything an urban square should have - a cast iron fence around it, ancient shade trees, brick sidewalks, a bandstand, a gazebo, a play area for the kids, lots of grass, a statue, a fountain and plenty of visitors.

And it didn't get that way overnight. Although there have been periods during the city's history when Glover Park was the focal point of downtown life, there were other times as well, such as in the 1800s when the unfenced square was routinely the domain of wandering farm animals.

More recently, it was the site of a day-labor pickup point in the 1980s. Those who didn't get picked up in the morning - as well as a fair-sized contingent of homeless, drunks and bums - would hang out on the Square all day and half the night, snoozing and smoking and generally making it an inhospitable place for most everyone else.

That began to change in the mid-1980s when then-Mayor Bob Flournoy Jr. led a campaign to raise funds for a $1 million renovation. Among the donors were Academy Award-winning actress Joanne Woodward, a Marietta native, and husband Paul Newman. The Square was redesigned, freshened up and now has regained its status as downtown's anchor.

Despite the heavy traffic that comes with hosting a major event seemingly every weekend throughout the year, the grass is always green, the fountain stays clean, the trashcans are promptly emptied and the brick sidewalks kept immaculate. Credit for that, and for the way most events there come off so seamlessly, must go primarily to city Parks and Recreation Director Rick Buss and his staff, and to his longtime predecessor, Ron Ransom.

I had occasion to be on the Square at dawn this year the day after the July Fourth celebration. Just a few hours earlier Glover Park and the rest of Marietta had been crawling with people partying and watching the fireworks - and leaving behind a huge mess.

But by the time I was there that next morning, Buss's people and the city's Sanitation Department workers had the park in ship-shape already. You would never have guessed there had been a throng there the night before.

It's fair to say that the mayors and councils since Flournoy's day have been very supportive of the Square's mission - which is to draw visitors downtown.

I have been on the Square countless times this year and others as a participant or patron at such events as Art in the Park, the Book Fair on the Square, the July Fourth festivities, the annual Gobble Job (coming up again this Thanksgiving!) and various concerts and political events.

The Marietta Kiwanis Club, of which I am a member, erects roughly 1,100 flags around Marietta on patriotic holidays each year, and did so again on Saturday. Forty or so of those flags are placed directly in Glover Park, adding a fluttering panoply of red, white and blue to the downtown scene.

We gather at 7 a.m. to start the job, and it's always a special time to be on the Square with the sun just starting to climb the sky. There are few people around and hardly any traffic. Can't beat that!

We put the flags back up again Saturday for Columbus Day, and we'll put them up one more time this year, for Veterans' Day.

Marietta Square is what makes Marietta what it is, what distinguishes us from countless other towns and small cities. Now that we've figured out the formula for its success, it's our job to guard it just as ardently as Coca-Cola guards its famous formula. And I think that shouldn't be too hard to do.

Joe Kirby is Editorial Page Editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and co-author of the forthcoming "Then & Now: Marietta Revisited."