Allatoona, Georgia

[1] It was once a small mining community until a dam was erected at the base of the Etowah River, completely flooding the town of Allatoona.

[2] After the Battle of Atlanta Southern Confederates wanted to stop General Sherman and his army of Northern troops.

[2] The leader of the Confederate army, General Hood, and his soldiers were ordered to destroy the railroad that ran through the town of Allatoona.

[3] Confederate soldiers, in an attempt to fight off the larger number of Union troops, resorted to rocks and hand-to-hand combat to secure the town of Allatoona for the south.

[3] John Clayton's plantation home, known as the Clayton-Mooney house, was used as a Union headquarters as well as a makeshift hospital during the battle.

[4] The first official recognition that the present dam site on the Etowah River near Cartersville, Georgia, was a prime location for a hydropower project was in a document entitled, "Reports on Examination and Survey of Etowah, Coosa, Tallapoosa and Alabama Rivers", prepared in 1910 by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.

[4] With the installation of the dam and the town of Allatoona now transformed into a lake, the surrounding areas were converted for recreational use.

Out of the dozens of parks at Allatoona two of those are handicap accessible so that all patrons can still take part in lake activities.

[6] In 1998, Lake Allatoona clocked more visitor hours than any of the other 450 Corps of Engineers projects in the United States.

[5] In the 1980s during a drought that affected Bartow County and other regions, the water level of the lake reached an all-time low due to the dry conditions.

During the peak of the drought, onlookers were able to see the old roads, remnants of houses and tree stumps clearly visible from above water.