History Informatiom

A small part of land of the City of Atlanta was once an American Indian village whose name translates into English as "Standing Peachtree". The land that became the Atlanta Metropolitan Area was obtained from the Cherokee Indians and Creek Indians by white settlers and their armies in 1822, with the first white settlement established in the area being Decatur.

In 1907, Peachtree Street, the main street of Atlanta, was busy with streetcars and automobiles.
On December 21, 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad to provide a trade route to the Midwestern United States. Following the Trail of Tears exile of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma between 1838 and 1839, this depopulated area was opened up for the construction of railroads. The area around the eastern terminus of the town to the railroad began to develop first, and hence the settlement was named "Terminus" in 1837. It was nicknamed Thrasherville, for John Thrasher, a merchant who built homes and a general store here. By 1842, the settlement had six buildings and 30 residents and the town was renamed "Marthasville". The Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, J. Edgar Thomson, suggested that the area be renamed "Atlantica-Pacifica" after the Western and Atlantic Railroad, but this name was quickly shortened to "Atlanta". The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29, 1847. By 1854, another railroad connected Atlanta to LaGrange, and the town grew to 9,554 by 1860. During the Civil War, Atlanta served as a vital nexus of the railroads and hence a hub for the distribution of military supplies. At this time, railroads from Atlanta extended eastward to Augusta and Savannah, northward to Chattanooga, southward to Macon, southwest to Columbus, Ga., and Montgomery, Alabama, and due west to northern Alabama. Following the Union Army's capture of Chattanooga in 1863, that army followed the general route of the railroad southwards (via Kennesaw and Marietta) in 1864, in order to attack Atlanta. The Atlanta region then became the target of the major invasion of northern Georgia by the Union.
The region now covered by Metropolitan Atlanta became the location of several major army battles, including the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Jonesborough (now Jonesboro, Ga.), and the Battle of Atlanta. On September 1, 1864, the Confederate General John Bell Hood decided that his army must evacuate Atlanta-following a four-month-long siege laid on Atlanta by the Union Army under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman. General Hood ordered that all public buildings and possible assets to the Union Army be destroyed. On the next day, Mayor James Calhoun of Atlanta surrendered the city to the Union Army, and on September 7, General Sherman ordered the city's civilian population to evacuate. Sherman's army next torched the buildings of Atlanta to the ground, beginning on November 11, in preparation for the march of his army to the southeast-though sparing the city's churches and hospitals.

Battle of Atlanta during US Civil War, 1864
The rebuilding of Atlanta following the end of the Civil War in 1865 was gradual. From 1867 until 1888, U.S. Army soldiers occupied the McPherson Barracks in southern Atlanta to ensure that the Reconstruction era reforms were carried out. To help the newly-freed slaves of the State of Georgia, the Federal Government's newly-established Freedmen's Bureau worked in tandem with a number of civilian freedmen's aid organizations, especially the American Missionary Association.
Also, in 1868, the Georgia State Capital was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta because of Atlanta's superior rail transportation network, and hence Atlanta became the fifth location of the capital of the State of Georgia. The Confederate Soldiers' Home was built to house disabled and elderly Georgia veterans from 1901 to 1941. Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, promoted Atlanta to potential investors as a city of the "New South", one to be built on a modern economy, less reliant on agriculture. As a focal point of this change, the Georgia Institute of Technology (its future name) was established in Atlanta in 1885 (with its first classes held in October 1888).
However, as Atlanta grew, ethnic and racial tensions mounted. The Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 left at least 27 people dead and over 70 injured.
On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the film premiere of Gone with the Wind, the epic film based on Atlanta's Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel Gone with the Wind. Several stars of the film, including Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Hattie McDaniel, and its legendary producer, David O. Selznick, attended the gala event, which was held at Loew's Grand Theatre, now demolished. The film's fourth-billed star, the British actor Leslie Howard, had returned to his home in Great Britain in September 1939 to help with its defense during World War II. The reception for the film's premiere was held at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, which still exists.
During World War II, manufacturing industries such as the Bell Aircraft Company's large factory in the northwestern suburb of Marietta, a massive growth in railroad traffic - and the manufacture of railroad cars - for the war effort, and great growth at Ft. McClellan, Fort Gillem (ext. 1941), and Rickenbacker Field forced a large growth in the population and economy of Atlanta. Shortly after the war, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was founded in Atlanta.

Interior of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Sweet Auburn
In the wake of the landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, Brown v. Board of Education, which helped bring about the Civil Rights Movement, racial tensions in Atlanta began to express themselves in isolated events of violence. On October 12, 1958, the Reform Jewish temple on Peachtree Street was bombed. The rabbi of the synagogue, Jacob Rothschild, had been and continued to be an outspoken advocate of desegration. A group of white supremacists calling themselves the "Confederate Underground" claimed responsibility.
During the 1960s, Atlanta was a major organizing center of the Civil Rights Movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and students from Atlanta's historically Black colleges and universities playing major roles in the movement's leadership. Two of the most important civil rights organizations, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had their national headquarters in Atlanta. Despite some racial protests during the Civil Rights era, Atlanta's political and business leaders labored to foster Atlanta's image as "the city too busy to hate". In 1961, Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. became one of the few Southern white mayors to support desegregation of his city's public schools.
African-American Atlantans demonstrated growing political influence with election of the first African-American mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1973. They became a majority in the city during the late 20th century but suburbanization, rising prices, a booming economy and new migrants have decreased their percentage in the city from a high of 69 percent in 1980 to about 54 percent in 2004. The addition of new immigrants such as Latinos and Asians is also altering city demographics, along with an influx of white residents.
In 1990, Atlanta was selected as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Following the announcement, Atlanta undertook several major construction projects to improve the city's parks, sports facilities, and transportation. Atlanta became the third American city to host the Summer Olympics. The games themselves were marred by numerous organizational inefficiencies, as well as the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
Contemporary Atlanta is sometimes considered to be an archetype for cities experiencing rapid growth and urban sprawl. Unlike most major cities, metropolitan Atlanta does not have any natural boundaries, such as an ocean, lakes, or mountains, that might constrain growth.
The city has recently been commended by bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency for its eco-friendly policies. In 2009, Atlanta's Virginia-Highland became the first carbon-neutral zone in the United States. Verus Carbon Neutral developed the partnership that links 17 merchants of the historic Corner Virginia-Highland shopping and dining neighborhood retail district, through the Chicago Climate Exchange, to directly fund the Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project (thousands of acres of forest in rural Georgia).