The History of the Rocky Face Ridge
Here is the historical timeline
Ridge and Valley: An Ancient Geology
Rocky Face Ridge and the surrounding ridges in Whitfield County are part of the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachian Mountains. These long, north/south trending mountains are much older than the Appalachian’s Blue Ridge mountains to east. The rocks were laid down in ancient oceans in the Paleozoic Era. Between 325-260 million years ago, a continental collision caused a process of folding, faulting, and uplifting which led to the formation of long parallel ridges with wide valleys in between. These mountains originally stood much higher than the younger Blue Ridge of today, but over time have eroded to expose a complex array of rock layers, with bands of limestone and sandstone alternating. In many cases, including Rocky Face Ridge, sandstone caps these ridges, with limestone further down, allowing caves, sinkholes, and springs to develop, and rich soils along stream courses in the valleys.
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Photo by Tony Carlson
Native American Prehistory and History
The Native Americans of Northwest Georgia were blessed with abundant resources. The mountains held a vast array of hardwoods and conifers, including massive chestnut trees with their fine rot resistant wood and nutritious nuts.. Wild game was available, which for the earliest hunters included giant sloths and mastodons, as well as the black bear, deer, and turkey that we are familiar with today. The Great Valley between the western ridges and the Blue Ridge Mountains is drained by several navigable rivers, full of mussels and fish, with streamside corridors of rich floodplain soil for the principal crops of corn, beans, and squash. Springs dotted the landscape, providing abundant clear fresh water in all seasons.
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The earliest residents of Northwest Georgia were the Paleoindians who arrived perhaps 10,000 or more years ago but left little evidence. They were probably nomadic, hunting the large mammals that roamed Georgia at that time. The Archaic and Woodland cultures followed. The next Native American culture, the Mississippian, thrived in the river valleys, growing corn, beans and squash, and building villages and cities. Although they mainly cultivated those three crops, they gathered and ate a diverse array of plants, including pawpaw, blueberries, persimmon, red mulberry, wild cherry, and muscadine grapes. This group would have used the area’s long ridges for hunting game, gathering mountainside plants like chestnuts, and harvesting timber for houses, and fencing around its villages. This culture collapsed after the arrival of Europeans, probably because of the devastating new diseases they brought to America. The Cherokee and Creeks followed, with the Cherokees gaining control of Northwest Georgia.
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The Cherokee land routes used the valleys for travel and passed through the long mountain ridges by way of gaps like Nickajack Gap on Taylors Ridge on the western edge of Whitfield County. Many of these Native American trails were used by the first white settlers and are the same routes as some of our modern roads. After the Trail of Tears, when the Cherokee were rounded up by the US government and driven out of Georgia to Oklahoma in 1837-1838, the white settlers moved onto Cherokee farms and plantations and continued similar agricultural practices, with corn as one of the main crops, and cattle and hog production. Cattle were pastured both in forested areas and in cleared areas in the valleys. Timber was used for fuel and building houses, fences, and eventually railroads for a growing community. A fledging iron industry in Northwest Georgia used wood from the surrounding mountains to process the ore. These pressures meant that forest cover declined up to the Civil War.
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Further details on how Native Americans used the land the Southern Appalachians can be found in Donald Davis’s fascinating book, Where there are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians.
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Cherokee Farmstead at the Chief Vann House, Murray County
Civil War Era
The city of Dalton developed as a stop on the railroad between Chattanooga and Atlanta, with the Western and Atlantic Railroad running through Mill Creek Gap. The railroad was a strategic asset during the Civil War, and the battles fought around Dalton were shaped by the geography of the steep north/south trending ridges protecting the city.
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The Battle of Chickamauga took place just north of Dalton in what is now Catoosa and Walker Counties. This Confederate victory sent the Union Army back to Chattanooga where they were besieged by Confederate forces under General Braxton T. Bragg. The Union troops, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, broke the siege, and drove the Confederate Army through Ringgold Gap in Taylor’s Ridge/White Oak Mountain and down to Dalton. The Confederate Army spent the winter of 1863-1864 in Dalton under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston, building up defenses along both sides of Rocky Face Ridge on either side of Mill Creek Gap.
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Examples of Confederate fortifications can be seen at several locations on the ridge’s steep slopes, including Whitfield County’s Rocky Face Ridge Park, Mill Creek Battlefield Park, and Dug Gap Battle Park. Fortifications were also added to Mount Rachel. By spring 1864, Confederate defenders even created a lake by damming Mill Creek, blocking the gap of Rocky Face Ridge leading into Dalton. WPA Atlanta Campaign Rocky Face Ridge Battlefield Pavilion Park at the Georgia State Patrol post on US 41, marks the entrance to this gap. Union forces had spent the winter at Chickamauga and Ringgold and General William T. Sherman was assigned the mission of breaking the Confederate supply line and destroying the agricultural and industrial might of Georgia. This mission would lead him on a path through Northwest Georgia along the Western and Atlantic Railroad toward the railway hub of Atlanta, then on to the Georgia coast at Savannah. Sherman tested the Confederate defenses during the winter in February, skirmishing at Tunnel Hill and Rocky Face Ridge.
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In May 1864, Sherman was ready to begin the Atlanta Campaign in earnest. Essentially, the campaign started just north of Dalton. Coming down from the Ringgold area in early May 1864, the Federals met resistance at Varnell and Tunnel Hill. Sherman gained control of Tunnel Hill and set up his headquarters at the Clisby Austin House. During the winter, he had figured out that the enemy’s hillside defenses protecting Dalton’s north side were so strong that a direct assault would lead to heavy casualties. Working from a forward command post at Blue Mountain, he directed diversionary attacks on Potato Hill, Rocky Face Ridge, Mill Creek Gap, and Dug Gap, but sent the main Union force, led by General James B. McPherson, down from Rossville to LaFayette, screened by Taylor's Ridge, then east to Snake Creek Gap by way of Villanow. This backdoor route through Snake Creek Gap led to Resaca, with the goal of taking the rail lines there and cutting off Johnston’s army.
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Outflanked, Johnston abandoned Dalton and moved south on the east side of Rocky Face Ridge to defend his supply line at Resaca. After passing east through Snake Creek Gap, McPherson met with Confederate resistance as he approached Resaca, and withdrew back to Snake Creek Gap, awaiting the arrival of more Federal troops. Sherman sent reinforcements on the west side of the ridge and the army emerged from Snake Creek Gap again to clash with the Confederate Army at Resaca, the first major battle of the Atlanta Campaign, May 13- 15, 1864. The three-day battle was inconclusive, with heavy losses on both sides. Johnston had repulsed Sherman’s repeated assaults, but Sherman outflanked Johnston’s army again by circling around to the west and crossing the Oostanaula River, causing Johnston to retreat again toward Adairsville to protect his supply line. These opening maneuvers by Sherman set the tone for the rest of the campaign for Atlanta, with Sherman flanking Johnston to the west, around geographic barriers, while Johnston kept pulling back toward Atlanta.
Statue of Confederate General Joseph E Johnston located at the Huff House on 314 N. Selvidge St. in Dalton, GA, formerly located at the intersection of Crawford and Hamilton streets in Dalton, GA.
The Clisby House where General T. Sherman set up his headquarters
Post Civil War: Forest Damage and Recovery
Following the Civil War, the Dalton area took decades to recover from the economic impact of the fighting. However, the area still boasted abundant natural resources. Farming remained a viable way to make a living. Farmers continued to graze cattle and hogs in forested areas. In the 1880’s, industrial logging arrived in the Southern Appalachians, helped by the arrival of railroads to the remote parts of the mountains. Industrial scale logging led to denuded slopes, prone to erosion. Trees, shrubs, and leaf litter normally slow the progress of rain falling on the steep slopes, allowing it to infiltrate into the spongy organic soil layers that build up over hundreds of years or even thousands of years in an undisturbed forest. After clear-cut timbering of vast areas of mountain forest, rainfall rushed off these bare slopes instead of infiltrating. This led to erosion and flooding. Streams choked with sediment from neighboring hillsides cannot carry as much water, so it finds new paths downhill. Without continuous groundwater supply, stream become flasher, flooding during rainy periods but dropping very low, or drying out completely during the summer. By the 1920’s, these poor agricultural and forestry practices, as well as impacts from mining gold, iron, coal, and other minerals had left the north Georgia mountains degraded. Large gullies on hillsides were a sign of many tons of soil lost into streambeds in the Ridge and Valley. Hillside gullies are evident today along the ridge on College Creek Trail at Dalton State College. Although the age of these particular gullies is not known, they remain evident even though the whole ridge is now forested. The next assault on the mountain landscape was the Chestnut blight, which reached the North Georgia mountains beginning in the 1930’s, eliminating this valuable tree species that provided timber and food for people and wildlife.
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In response to this forest decline, the Forest Service was created in the early 20th century to provide a timber reserve and help protect mountain areas from widespread flooding. Large tracts were purchased for the new forests through the 1910’s through the 1930’s in the Southern Appalachians. However, Forest Service acquired many acres of land in the Ridge and Valley that was abandoned during the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. South of Dalton, the Chattahoochee National Forest now lies along the ridgetop of Rocky Face Ridge.
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The Soil Conservation Service, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), was created in the 1930’s in response to widespread soil degradation. This agency and other government efforts, worked with farmers to encourage and subsidize planting trees, shrubs, and grasses to stabilize soil. Planting for conservation continues to be a goal of the NRCS today. Overall, the mountain ridges have much more forest cover than they would have had in 1900. The forest on the ridge is not virgin timber; it has probably been cut serval times. However, it is still a dense, diverse oak -hickory forest with loblolly, shortleaf and Virginia pine, with many other tree species mixed in, including dogwood, sourwood, red maple, and tulip poplar. Understory shrubs include mountain laurel, sparkleberry, blueberry, and many others. Wildflowers include trilliums, dwarf crested iris, heartleaf and galax. This forest cover provides protection from flooding, cooling in the summer, carbon storage, and great spaces to recreate.
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Much of the information about how each group of settlers in the mountains used the available resources draws from Donald Davis’s excellent book on land use in the Southern Appalachians; Davis, Donald Edward. 2020. Where there are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians. University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA.