Georgia Natural Wonder #97 – Dalton - Whitfield County (Part 2). 1,004

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #97 – Dalton – Whitfield County (Part 2)

Yesterday we presented the Natural Wonder of Rocky Face Ridge and the history of the civil war battle there and along Dug Gap.



Today we tangent on the history and other areas of wonder of Whitfield County and Dalton Georgia.



Whitfield County is located in northwest Georgia at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, about thirty miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and eighty miles north of Atlanta. It shares a northern border with Tennessee and covers nearly 290 square miles.



The county was formed from part of Murray County in 1851 and named for the Reverend George Whitefield, an Englishman who first visited Georgia in 1738. Whitefield created the Bethesda orphan house near Savannah in 1740.


Touchdown George!

In writing the act that created the county, the state legislature omitted the "e" in "Whitefield," to reflect the correct pronunciation of the name.



Early History

Hernando De Soto encountered the principal city of the large Chiefdom of Coosa near Whitfield County, at the present-day Little Egypt archaeological site, in 1540. Cherokee Indians inhabited the land that forms Whitfield County when the first white inhabitants, Indian traders, arrived. Among them was Nathan Hicks, who married a Cherokee woman and settled on the Hiawassee River. Their well-educated son, Charles Hicks (born in 1767), established a home nine miles northwest of Dalton and served as the Cherokee interpreter to the U.S. government for thirty years. In 1827 he died at the age of sixty, only two weeks after becoming principal chief of the Cherokees.



The United States signed a treaty with the Cherokees in 1798, guaranteeing their rights to the land in north Georgia that included Whitfield County. In violation of that treaty, however, the state of Georgia claimed authority over the area in 1828. In 1838 the U.S. government, pressured by the state, removed the Cherokee Indians from their lands in Georgia to a reservation in Oklahoma. The forced march from Georgia became known as the Trail of Tears, owing to the number who died along the route.



Even before the removal was complete, the Georgia legislature organized Cherokee County and held a land lottery for white settlers in 1832. Several months later, the legislature created Murray County from Cherokee County. In the 1830s Cross Plains was the primary settlement, which was absorbed into the town of Dalton in 1847. Edward Dalton White, a New York merchant,  got married to Mary Avaline Cunningham, to buy land around the place where a railroad was to be built. White named the town he founded after his mother and grandfather, Mary Dalton White and Tristram Dalton, respectively. Tristram Dalton was one of the two first United States Senators from Massachusetts.


Damn, another Georgia  City named after a Yankee.



I always embellish the name origin when I’m showing folks around.



Edward Dalton White laid out the streets in Dalton and donated land for a park and churches.  The place where he marked the center of Dalton, GA is in the Depot Restaurant. He died on January 20, 1898.


Edward Dalton White

The arrival of the railroad and resulting prosperity prompted the legislature to carve Whitfield out of Murray County in 1851, and Dalton was named the county seat. The thriving community supported Prater's Mill, which was built in 1855 and offered various milling services, a wool carder, a cotton gin, a general store, and a blacksmith shop. The mill building, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.



This three-story grist mill played an important economic role in the riverine South. It was the camp site for 600 U.S. soldiers in February 1864 after skirmishing near Dalton. Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler set up camp here with 2,500 men en route to Tunnel Hill in April 1864. Grounds are open during daylight hours and the buildings are open during the Prater's Mill Country Fair held annually on Mother's Day weekend and the second weekend in October.



Civil War and Reconstruction

The U.S. government recently declared Dalton and Whitfield County to have more intact Civil War artifacts than any other place in the country. The area's prosperity, combined with the presence of very few slaves, led two of the county's three delegates to vote against secession. During the Civil War (1861-65), Dalton and other areas of Whitfield County stood in the path of Union general William T. Sherman's Atlanta campaign.



During the Civil War, Dalton saw its first action during the Great Locomotive Chase, on April 12, 1862. More than a year later, on September 19–20, 1863, massive Union and Confederate forces battled a few miles west of Dalton at Chickamauga, and later at Chattanooga.



After arriving with reinforcements for Union troops at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in the winter of 1863-64, Sherman was put in charge of the Army of the Cumberland and 100,000 men. His initial move into Georgia pushed a disarrayed Confederate army into Dalton. After Confederate general Braxton Bragg resigned, Joseph E. Johnston replaced him at the head of the 50,000-man Army of the Tennessee. Johnston immediately established strong defenses on the mountains north and west of Dalton and camped for the winter and spring at Tunnel Hill, the city named for the nearby 1,477-foot railroad tunnel dug through Chetoogeta Ridge.



While one-third of his men tried to outflank Johnston in the mountain passes, Sherman moved against Dalton and pushed Confederate troops out of Tunnel Hill, where he set up headquarters at the home of a Unionist. The Clisby Austin House was used as a Confederate hospital following the Battle of Chickamauga and Gen. John Bell Hood recovered here after having his leg amputated due to injuries suffered on the Chickamauga battlefield. U.S. Gen. William T. Sherman headquartered here from May 7-12, 1864, during the fighting around Dalton at the beginning of the Atlanta Campaign. The house is privately owned.



Tunnel Hill was the scene of much activity during the Civil War. Goods and supplies going from the Western Frontier via Chattanooga to the Atlantic Coast had to pass through this 1,447-foot long tunnel. An engineering marvel when it was finished in 1850, the tunnel was built by two separate parties who started on either side of Chetoogeta Mountain and dug to the center. It remained in use until 1920 when a larger tunnel was dug next to it. The oldest tunnel in the southeastern U.S. — the first south of the Mason-Dixon line — it was contested at least four times between Confederate and U.S. forces in 1864, and U.S. Gen. William T.Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign on May 7, 1864 by seizing Tunnel Hill, where Confederates had maintained a camp after the Battles of Chattanooga. " The Great Locomotive Chase" raced through the tunnel. A fertilizer company has part of the old Tunnel Hill Depot, where Confederate President Jefferson Davis stopped and gave a rousing speech early in the War. Battle of Tunnel Hill Reenactment is held first weekend after Labor Day. Tours of Clisby Austin offered, with profits going to preservation of Tunnel Hill War sites.



The war came to Whitfield County in the spring of 1864. The First Battle of Dalton included the battle of Rocky Face Ridge and Dug Gap began on May 7, 1864, and ended when General Johnston completed his withdrawal from Dalton on May 12. Sherman's flanking maneuver worked and forced Confederate troops to retreat to Resaca in May 1864. We talked all about this yesterday.


Chaos on Hamilton Street. Yankee’s are coming.

The Second Battle of Dalton occurred August 14–15, 1864. In John Bell Hood's Tennessee campaign, Joseph Wheeler's cavalry attacked a Union blockhouse in Tilton before passing through Dalton and heading west.


The Snowball Battle near Dalton, Georgia, March 22, 1864. A grand mock Battle between several divisions of Confederate soldiers.

Now I include only a few of my photographs as we skim Civil War sites in Dalton.The county was devastated by thirteen battles or skirmishes, including those at Crow Valley, Mill Creek Gap, Resaca, Rocky Face, and Tunnel Hill. Union troops also destroyed much of Dalton, and today the city claims the only standing monument to Johnston.



This is reportedly the only statue in the country dedicated to Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston . On the Register of National Historic Places, it was erected in 1912 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.



The Blunt House & Cook House

Built in 1848 by Ainsworth Blunt, Dalton's first mayor, the Blunt House was used as a Union hospital in 1864. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society. Call 706-278-0217 for information.


Blunt House.

The Cook (Huff) House was Confederate Gen. Johnston's headquarters during the winter of 1863-64 and was the scene of C.S. Brig. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's controversial proposal to emancipate and arm slaves to assist the southern cause.



Big deal adding this marker in 2012.



Confederate Cemetery

From 1862 to Sept. 1863, when hospitals were relocated farther south, four main Confederate hospitals treated the injured and sick. West Hill contains the remains of 421 unknown and four known Confederates and four unknown Union soldiers.



Some died in the battles of Stones River, Perryville, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge and other battles north of Dalton. Others died of disease and sickness in Dalton's Confederate hospitals.



A monument was erected in 1892 to commemorate the Confederate soldiers who died in the battles of Dalton, Rocky Face, Chickamauga and Resaca.





Tangent here on this Confederate General captured at Fort Blakely in Alabama, the conflict's final infantry fight.





Crown Gardens/Archives

This is the home of the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society, which houses Civil War artifacts (some from the Orphan Brigade excavated by the Dalton Civil War Roundtable), and research material on the Civil War. This is part of the old Crown Cotton Mill.

 

Atlanta Campaign Pavilion #2

The second Atlanta Campaign pavilion and relief map is located in Mill Creek Gap. Here the Confederates dammed Mill Creek to create a lake and block the gap, stopping Gen. George Thomas's Federal forces.



The map features the events that occurred around Dalton.



The Hamilton House

This beautiful home, built by John Hamilton about 1840, served as headquarters for the celebrated Brig. Gen. John H. Lewis' Kentucky Orphan Brigade.



Lewis had his tent near the Spring house.



The Varnell House

The Varnell House, built in 1847 by "Dry Dan Dold," was used as a Confederate and Federal hospital and was headquarters for several Federal generals.



A number of skirmishes were fought around the house, including a Confederate victory when Confederate cavalry great, "Fighting" Joe Wheeler swung around the Union left flank on May 12, 1864, taking the town, inflicting casualties, and capturing 100 prisoners, including nine officers.



Also of interest is the site of the historic Western & Atlantic Railroad Station; one of the few still standing and restored to its original architectural state, this site is now a restaurant.





The Southern Railway had two Cincinnati to Florida named trains, Ponce de Leon and Royal Palm that made stops in the town into the 1960s. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad's MidWest originating Dixie Flagler, Dixie Flyer and Georgian also made stops in Dalton. The last train was the Chicago and St.Louis to Atlanta Georgian which ended service in April 30, 1971.



During the 1870s Mormon missionaries arrived in the area. One of them, Joseph Standing, was murdered in 1879 in Varnell, near Dalton, by citizens of Catoosa and Whitfield counties who saw the missionaries as a threat to their communities.


Standing is sitting in photo

Standing is commemorated in Joseph Standing Memorial Park in Varnell.



Economy

The economy of Whitfield County suffered during Reconstruction but improved with the opening of the Crown Cotton Mill in Dalton in 1884. The cotton mill was the first large-scale manufacturing plant in that part of Georgia. By 1916, 1,000 employees operated 50,000 spindles and 1,200 looms.



The mill pushed economic and industrial growth in north Georgia, while thousands of white farmers moved from the country to the mill village.


Mill houses line a street in Dalton, circa 1930.

The Great Depression and the General Textile Strike of 1934 dealt severe blows to the Crown Cotton Mill, which managed to stay in operation until 1969. Modern Dalton still testifies to the strong legacy of the carpet and textile industries. As a leading industrial center in the country, the city confidently proclaims itself the "Carpet Capital of the World."



Carpet manufacturing in Dalton has its roots in the tufted bedspread industry. In the late nineteenth century Catherine Evans Whitener began producing bedspreads using the old craft of "candlewicking" or tufting. The demand for her products led to the growth of a cottage industry by the 1920s, and twenty years later the industry had become mechanized with specialized machine shops producing a range of new products, including rugs.



Unlike northern manufacturers who produced woven wool rugs, the industry in Dalton produced tufted cotton rugs at much cheaper prices. The industry boomed with the introduction of durable synthetic fibers. By the end of the twentieth century, 80 percent of the carpet produced in the United States, and more than 70 percent of the world's carpet, was produced by four companies located in Georgia, three of them—Beaulieu of America, Mohawk, and Shaw Industries —located in Dalton.


Dalton has come a long way in carpet industry.

Immigration and Education

During the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of Hispanic immigrants moved to Dalton to fill jobs in the carpet manufacturing industry. By 2000 Hispanics comprised 22.1 percent of the county's population, and almost half the students in Dalton's schools were Hispanic.


Our Lady of Guadalupe Festival Dalton

In the mid-1980s Dalton resident and Mexican native Teresa Sosa established an annual parade to celebrate Mexico's Independence Day, which falls on September 16. In 2008 around 200 people participated in the twenty-fifth anniversary of the parade, while hundreds more gathered to watch.



In addition to the public schools, the county supports Dalton State College, a unit of the University System of Georgia chartered in 1963.



According to the 2010 U.S. census, the population of Whitfield County was 102,599, an increase from the 2000 population of 83,525.

Notable people

Since this is the permanent post, I provide Links.

Morris Almond, professional basketball player.


Almond

Mitchell Boggs, former professional baseball player.


Boggs

Susan_Dennard, author of The Witchlands series.


Witchland

Stephen E. Gordy, Virginia politician.

Tammy Jo Kirk, NASCAR driver.


Tammy Jo

Robert Loveman, poet.


Loveman

Marla Maples, actress and former wife of Donald Trump.


Marla

Harlan Erwin Mitchell, United States representative from Georgia.


Erwin

Steve Prohm, head men's basketball coach at Iowa State University

Harry Leon "Suitcase" Simpson, African American major league baseball player.


Suitcase

Dale Singleton, motorcycle racer. The Flying Pig Farmer.


Flying Pig Farmer

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We leave you today with our GNW gal, another Dalton baby-doll and Harmon Wages old girlfriend.



Deborah Norville did good after rough start on Today show. She deserves a tangent.

I must warn you guys these last three top 100 wonders of Georgia have bigger tangents than wonders at this point in the list.