For the first time in nearly a year, we have some visitors. 

Rita and Randy decided to come down for a week.  Great deliberation, care and preparation went into their visit planning.  Everyone has been behaving themselves over the past couple of weeks so we’re as clean as we can get.  

Once together, we decided to hit the road for a series of day trips since everyone has been suffering from some form of cabin fever.

We start our fun with a visit to the Western and Atlantic Railroad Tunnel museum near the Tennessee border.

There is a small museum showing relevant Civil War and 18th Century Railroad equipment and ephemera.

Examples of some preserved “Sherman Neckties”.  These were were a railway-destruction tactic used in the American Civil War. Named after Maj. Gen.  Sherman, the neckties were railway rails destroyed by heating them until they were malleable and twisting them into loops resembling neckties, often around trees. Since the Confederacy had limited supplies of iron, and few foundries to roll the rails, this destruction was very difficult to repair. 

Brenda demanding that her photo be taken.

In the background is the Clisby House.  It was constructed in 1848 alongside the tunnel that passes through the Chetoogeta Mountain. Originally named “Meadowlawn”, it was built by Reverend Clisby Austin as a farmhouse that grew to include 320 acres.
After Austin left the house during the Civil War, the house was used as an army field hospital. Officers and generals both John Bell Hood (CSA) and William T. Sherman (USA) – slept and planned in the second floor bedrooms while doctors treated wounded soldiers and performed amputations in the kitchen and in outdoor tents.

The Western & Atlantic Railroad was founded in 1836 to connect the Tennessee and Chattahoochee Rivers, however one barrier stood in northwest Georgia: Chetoogeta Mountain.   Construction on the tunnel began in the summer of 1848 and spans 1,477 feet.  It was completed in less than 22 months and on May 9, 1850, the first Western and Atlantic locomotive passed through the tunnel and the connection between Chattanooga, Tennessee and the new town of Atlanta, Georgia was complete.

While in operation, the tunnel was controlled by both the Union and Confederate Armies at various times throughout the Civil War and even witnessed the “Great Locomotive Chase” in April of 1862.
As the demand for more railways grew, so did the trains themselves and by 1926, so many train cars were getting stuck in the tunnel that the decision was made to build a larger parallel tunnel through the mountain, ending the use of the W&A tunnel in 1928.

Brenda and I walked through the tunnel to the far end, looked around and then walked back.  It is dark and very windy inside.

Near the tunnel is the revered burial site of Confederate General John Bell Hood right leg.   He served with Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet in the Civil War, but his left arm was badly wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. He moved south with his troops and was injured again at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia, this time with a leg wound that needed to be amputated.

The wound was so severe that after the amputation four inches below the hip the surgeon placed his leg in the ambulance so that leg and man would be buried together in the likely event they did not survive.  The amputation was done nearby at the Clisby house.

But Hood did survive and returned to active duty, fighting in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 and other skirmishes until he was defeated at the Battle of Nashville. Legless and with a useless arm, the general spent the rest of his life working as a cotton broker in Louisiana until he, along with his wife and oldest child, died of yellow fever in New Orleans.

Clisby Austin was businessman as well as a farmer and minister, operating a two story hotel and a general store close to the train depot. 
The main room was used to display merchandise with shelves and counters holding everything for sale – from meat and produce to hardware and specialty items like paint, coffee, kerosene, and much more. In many cases, the general store was also the post office with the owner serving as the town’s postmaster.

Much to our disappointment, the Clisby house wasn’t open to us today.   They do open it up for guided tours, but one has to make a reservation for that in advance (Covid stuff) and we didn’t prep ourselves well enough.  This is worth returning to again if we can get it and explore more.

The Clisby Austin House also served as the headquarters for General Sherman while he made his plans for attacks against nearby Dalton and Resaca, which became the opening battles of what would later be known as the Atlanta Campaign. The area hosted many engagements and camps throughout the course of the war. In and around Tunnel Hill, there were small conflicts in Sept 1863, Feb 1864 and March 1865.

It was soon lunch time.  We found a restaurant that met R&R’s standards for social distancing.  They wanted this picture taken to send to their daughters so they wouldn’t worry quite so much.

We then went to the Etowah Indian Mounds in Cartersville.  

The Etowah are named (now) for their settlements that ran along the Etowah river.  This 54 acre site was their largest and most sacred site.  Evidence shows that this pre-Columbian (Early Mississippian) tribe have lived in this region for nearly 10,000 years.  

This town was occupied in three distinct archaeological phases that ran from about 1000-1550 AD. It was at its peak roughly from 1325–1375 AD

Archaeology suggests that from 3000-5000 people lived here.

Etowah has three main platform mounds and three lesser mounds. The Temple Mound, Mound A, is 63 feet high, taller than a six-story building, and covers 3 acres at its base.

Modern Muscogee, Creek and Cherokee tribes all claim to be descendants of the Etowah.

Ascending to the top of the largest mound.

View from the top.. Rita, Randy and the Museum  in the distance.

One of the lesser mounds and the Etowah river.

Rita and Randy at the top.

Re-created waddle and daub hut.. Evidence suggests that there were nearly 1000 of these at the site at any given time.