The history of Atlanta dates back to 1836, when Georgia decided to build a railroad to the U.S. Midwest and a location was chosen to be the line's terminus. The stake marking the founding of "Terminus" was driven into the ground in 1837 (called the Zero Mile Post). In 1839, homes and a store were built there and the settlement grew. Between 1845 and 1854, rail lines arrived from four different directions, and the rapidly growing town quickly became the rail hub for the entire Southern United States. During the American Civil War, Atlanta, as a distribution hub, became the target of a major Union campaign, and in 1864, Union William Sherman's troops set on fire and destroyed the city's assets and buildings, save for churches and hospitals. After the war, the population grew rapidly, as did manufacturing, while the city retained its role as a rail hub. Coca-Cola was launched here in 1886 and grew into an Atlanta-based world empire. Electric streetcars arrived in 1889,Carson, O.E., The Trolley Titans, Interurban Press, Glendale, CA, 1981, p.xi and the city added new "streetcar suburbs".
The city's elite black colleges were founded between 1865 and 1885, and despite disenfranchisement and the later imposition of Jim Crow laws in the 1910s, a prosperous black middle class and upper class emerged. By the early 20th century, "Sweet" Auburn Avenue was called "the most prosperous Negro street in the nation". In the 1950s, black people started moving into city neighborhoods that had previously kept them out, while Atlanta's first freeways enabled large numbers of whites to move to, and commute from, new suburbs. Atlanta was home to Martin Luther King Jr., and a major center for the Civil Rights Movement. Resulting desegregation occurred in stages over the 1960s. Slums were razed and the new Atlanta Housing Authority built public-housing projects.
From the mid-1960s to mid-'1970s, nine suburban malls opened, and the downtown shopping district declined, but just north of it, gleaming office towers and hotels rose, and in 1976, the new Georgia World Congress Center signaled Atlanta's rise as a major convention city. In 1973, the city elected its first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, and in ensuing decades, black political leaders worked successfully with the white business community to promote business growth, while still empowering black businesses. From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s most of the MARTA rapid transit system was built. While the suburbs grew rapidly, much of the city itself deteriorated and the city lost 21% of its population between 1970 and 1990.
In 1996, Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics, for which new facilities and infrastructure were built. Hometown airline Delta continued to grow, and by 1998-1999, Atlanta's airport was the busiest in the world. Since the mid-1990s, gentrification has given new life to many of the city's intown neighborhoods. The 2010 census showed affluent black people leaving the city for newer exurban properties and growing suburban towns, younger whites moving back to the city, and a much more diverse metropolitan area with heaviest growth in the exurbs at its outer edges.
Native American civilization: before 1836 The region where Atlanta and its suburbs were built was originally Creek and Cherokee Native American territory. In 1813, the Creeks, who had been recruited by the British to assist them in the War of 1812, attacked and burned Fort Mims in southwestern Alabama. The conflict broadened and became known as the Creek War. In response, the United States built a string of forts along the Ocmulgee and Chattahoochee Rivers, including Fort Daniel on top of Hog Mountain near present-day Dacula, Georgia, and Fort Gilmer.
Fort Gilmer was situated next to an important Indian site called Standing Peachtree, a Creek Indian village. The site traditionally marked a Native American meeting place at the boundary between Creek and Cherokee lands, at the point where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee. The fort was soon renamed Fort Peachtree. A road was built linking Fort Peachtree and Fort Daniel following the route of existing trails.
As part of the systematic removal of Native Americans from northern Georgia from 1802 to 1825, the Creek ceded the area that is now metro Atlanta in 1821. Four months later, the Georgia Land Lottery Act created five new counties in the area that would later become Atlanta. Dekalb County was created in 1822, from portions of Henry, Fayette, and Gwinnett Counties, and Decatur was created as its county seat the following year. As part of the land lottery, Archibald Holland received a grant for District 14, Land Lot 82: an area of 202.5 acres near the present-day Coca-Cola headquarters. Holland farmed the land and operated a blacksmith shop. However, the land was low-lying and wet, so his cattle often became mired in the mud. He left the area in 1833 to farm in Paulding County.
In 1830, an inn was established that became known as Whitehall due to the then-unusual fact that it had a coat of white paint, when most other buildings were of washed or natural wood. Later, Whitehall Street was built as the road from Atlanta to Whitehall. The Whitehall area was renamed West End in 1867 and is the oldest intact Victorian neighborhood of Atlanta.
In 1835, some leaders of the Cherokee Nation ceded their territory to the United States without the consent of the majority of the Cherokee people in exchange for land out west under the Treaty of New Echota, an act that led to the Trail of Tears.
From railroad terminus to Atlanta: 1836–1860
In 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad to provide a link between the port of Savannah and the Midwest. The initial route of that state-sponsored project was to run from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to a spot east of the Chattahoochee River, in present-day Fulton County. The plan was to eventually link up with the Georgia Railroad from Augusta, and with the Macon and Western Railroad, which ran between Macon and Savannah. A U.S. Army engineer, Colonel Stephen Harriman Long, was asked to recommend the location where the Western and Atlantic line would terminate. He surveyed various possible routes, then in the autumn of 1837, drove a stake into the ground between what are now Forsyth Street and Andrew Young International Boulevard, about three or four blocks northwest of today's Five Points. The zero milepost was later placed to mark that spot.
In 1839, John Thrasher built homes and a general store in this vicinity, and the settlement was nicknamed Thrasherville. A marker identifies the location of Thrasherville at 104 Marietta Street, NW, in front of the State Bar of Georgia Building, between Spring and Cone Streets. () At this point, Thrasher built the Monroe Embankment, an earthen embankment to carry the Monroe Railway to meet the W&A at the terminus. This is the oldest existing man-made structure in downtown Atlanta.
In 1842, the planned terminus location was moved, four blocks southeast (two to three blocks southeast of Five Points), to what would become State Square, on Wall Street between Central Avenue and Pryor Street. (). At this location, the zero milepost can now be found, adjacent to the southern entrance of Underground Atlanta. As the settlement grew, it became known as Terminus, literally meaning "end of the line". By 1842, the settlement at Terminus had six buildings and 30 residents.
Meanwhile, settlement began at what became the Buckhead section of Atlanta, several miles north of today's downtown. In 1838, Henry Irby started a tavern and grocery at what became the intersection of Paces Ferry and Roswell Roads.
In 1842, when a two-story brick depot was built, the locals asked that the settlement of Terminus be called Lumpkin, after Governor Wilson Lumpkin. Gov. Lumpkin asked them to name it after his young daughter (Martha Atalanta Lumpkin) instead, and Terminus became Marthasville; it was officially incorporated on December 23, 1843. In 1845, the chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad (J. Edgar Thomson) suggested that Marthasville be renamed "Atlantica-Pacifica", which was quickly shortened to "Atlanta". Wilson Lumpkin seems to have supported the change, reporting that Martha's middle name was Atalanta.
The residents approved the name change, apparently undaunted by the fact that not a single train had yet visited. Act 109 of the Georgia General Assembly enacted the name change, which was approved December 26, 1845, and signed into law 3 days afterward. In the same act, the election precinct known as the Whitehall precinct (in the home of Charner Humphries) was also changed to Atlanta. In 1847, the city's charter was approved, elections were held, and the first slate of councilmen and the mayor took office in January 1848.
Growth and development into a regional rail hub
The first Georgia Railroad freight and passenger trains from Augusta (to the east of Atlanta), arrived in September 1845 and in that year the first hotel, the Atlanta Hotel, was opened. The railroad was the chief stimulus to the town's growth, with several lines being added.
In 1846, a second railroad company, the Macon & Western (orig. "Monroe Railroad"), completed tracks to Terminus/Atlanta, connecting the little settlement with Macon to the south and Savannah to the southeast. The town then began to boom. In late 1846, the Washington Hall hotel was opened. By 1847, the population had reached 2,500. In 1848, the town elected its first mayor and appointed its first town marshal, German M. Lester, coinciding with the first homicide and the first jail built. A new city council approved the building of wooden sidewalks and banned conducting business on Sundays. In 1849, Atlanta's third and largest antebellum hotel was built, the Trout House, and the Daily Intelligencer became the town's first successful daily newspaper. In 1850 Oakland Cemetery was founded southeast of town, where it remains today within the city limits.
In 1851, a third rail line, the Western and Atlantic Railroad - for which the site of Atlanta had been identified as a terminus - finally arrived, connecting Atlanta to Chattanooga in the northwest and opening up Georgia to trade with the Tennessee and Ohio River Valleys, and the American Midwest. The union depot was completed in 1853 on State Square. That year, the depot's architect, Edward A. Vincent, also delivered Atlanta's first official map to the city council.
Fulton County was established in 1853 from the western section of DeKalb, and in 1854, a combination Fulton County Court House and Atlanta City Hall was built– which would be razed 30 years later to make way for today's State Capitol building. (After the Civil War, the Georgia General Assembly decided to move the state capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta.)
In 1854, a fourth rail line, the Atlanta and LaGrange Rail Road (later Atlanta & West Point Railroad) arrived, connecting Atlanta with LaGrange, Georgia, to the southwest, sealing Atlanta's role as a rail hub for the entire South, with lines to the northwest, east, southeast, and southwest.
By 1855, the town had grown to 6,025 residents and had a bank, a daily newspaper, a factory to build freight cars, a new brick depot, property taxes, a gasworks, gas street lights, a theater, a medical college, and juvenile delinquency.
Manufacturing and commerce
The first true manufacturing establishment was opened in 1844, when Jonathan Norcross, who later became mayor of Atlanta, arrived in Marthasville and built a sawmill. Richard Peters, Lemuel Grant, and John Mims built a three-story flour mill, which was used as a pistol factory during the Civil War. In 1848, Austin Leyden started the town's first foundry and machine shop, which was later the Atlanta Machine Works.